Negotiations as a Key Sales Challenge

The research we referred to previously in identifying key sales challenges also highlighted 'Negotiations', with concerns including maintaining profitability, customers who continue to reopen the negotiation / more concessions, gaining higher prices, closing win-win deals and handling adversarial conversations. Their analysis concluded

When viewed as a whole, the data suggests that the focus should be around preparing effectively for intense price discussions, identifying a strategy to justify value and responding effectively to clients who continue to reopen negotiations. While intensive preparation for finalist presentations is the norm for most successful sales people, most do not put the same energy and discipline into preparing their negotiation.

These recommendations (such as effective planning for negotiation conversations) relate closely to the support FranklinCovey offers to clients in the area of effective negotiations. In a couple of crucial areas, however, we go further. For example,

• Rather than just 'identifying a strategy to justify value', a starting point for us is the paradigms / beliefs people have about the value being offered by the services they provide. If this connection to value is not something they genuinely believe in, then their ability to credibly claim fees / charges that are in effect an 'exchange of value' is significantly diminished
• Our conversations with clients also help us understand how the role of procurement teams (and the frequency of their involvement) is changing the landscape of client negotiation. What we hear is that there is a 'continuum' of procurement experiences which range from highly professional engagements around value and value exchange to more adversarial engagements where there is a 'hardened' (and often singular) focus on budget reduction targets. While these conversations are not straightforward, they do often follow a pattern, with some common approaches being used by (and regularly trained to) procurement organisations. FranklinCovey's approach here is to cluster these approaches into groupings of 'top tactics' commonly used (including dealing with downward pressure, questioning the validity of proposed  investment levels, anchoring and unanchoring, 'krunching', ultimatums, the 'nibble' and change orders) and then provide insights into new ways of thinking and new ways of working that can be applied to find a resolution to what (at first) first may seem like intractable situations.