Month: February 2020

Sales managers, here’s something I’ve noticed that may be frustrating you when your new salespeople start their sales negotiations.

When coaching new reps on their sales negotiations strategy, I’ve noticed many of them will start with a price reduction. Now, I’ve worked with inside sales reps performing transactional sales, and I’ve worked with outside salespeople making major deals. And I can say without reservation that offering a discount without fully understanding what the prospect wants will cheapen the sales process and your product offering. It smacks of the  high-pressure sales tactics that were prevalent back in the Mad Men era of sales. The unspoken message is, “We don’t care about you or your issues. We just want to move the product as quickly as possible”. And that is not the message you want your sales team delivering to your potential customers.

Here’s something else I observed in coaching these teams and in leading a company. The salespeople who can tie customer issues to unique benefits stick around longer.

Those salespeople that rely on price reductions as a working sales negotiation strategy have a higher churn rate.

An Example of How Price Reductions Fail in Sales Negotiations

Here’s an example from our director of technology of how price reductions can work against your salespeople during sales negotiations.

When I worked in the field as a system engineer for an enterprise storage company, my sales rep and I were involved in a deal that would have brought in over $300K for the company. After I brought all the pieces together, configured the system, created the proposal, and generated the price, she suggested that we include the standard discount as well.

Against my strongest arguments, she went ahead and stuck in the standard 10% discount. When we presented our proposal to the customer, the decision maker immediately “sharpened his pencil” and went to work. Here are the objections he had:

He dissected the proposal and said he wanted to take certain pieces out because he could get them cheaper elsewhere.

There were items in the configuration he wanted out because he felt he could do without them.

He said that he could shop around and get the same equipment at a lower cost.

He stalled and said he needed to run it by the owner of the company.

When the sales negotiations had ended, he had the price reduced below our cost because my sales rep folded at every counteroffer just to move the deal forward.

Naturally, our sales manager did not sign off on the discounts and we lost the deal along with the time we invested in the project.

Coach Your Team on What to Expect in Their Negotiation Process

Before your salespeople present their proposals, let them know that their prospects are going to ask for reductions, discounts, and preferred rates. And unless they’ve done a good job of differentiating their offering, their prospects will use the competition’s price against them.

Your salespeople should look for every opportunity to provide unique value that none of their competitors can provide. They should avoid commoditizing their solution by focusing on price reductions. Instead, have them use the knowledge gained in the diagnostic phase to highlight the prospect’s hot issues. Have them present how their solution is uniquely qualified to address those concerns.

When they take this approach, there’s less incentive to focus on price as the sole selling feature. And when their prospects do hit them with the  “I’m gonna check out the competition” argument in their sales negotiations, they’ll feel perfectly justified in answering, “I think you’ll find that no one can provide you with the tailored solution that we just discussed.”

Scarcity is one of Robert Cialdini’s principles of influence. When used with no forethought, the entire sales experience becomes overly manipulative. But when you get your salespeople to make their solution scarce by highlighting its uniqueness in their presentations, they begin to use scarcity strategically.  And what your prospects perceive as scarce will command a higher value and a higher price.

Let your team know that their prospects are  expecting a battle over price. Tell them to surprise their prospects instead by starting with points of agreement. Get them to show how their solution is uniquely tailored to address the stated needs of the prospect. By redirecting the prospects’ attention on their main issues, your sales team can make price a secondary consideration and turn their sales negotiations into solution discovery discussions.

Need More Ideas on Instilling Your Sales Reps With Better Negotiation Skills?

To learn more about how away-game selling can improve your team’s negotiation abilities, contact Tyson Group here.

Looking for ways to boost the performance of your sales team?  Want to give your crew some easy wins? Here’s how you can coach your team in their sales presentation delivery that will have a big impact on their closing rates.

Now, I know that some of their deals will be sizable, requiring detailed supporting documents. However, what you must remember is that they are salespeople, not the head of state of some small country. The fate of a nation isn’t going to hang on their every word. There is definitely no need to have them reading their sales presentation from a written script.

I’ve delivered scores of speeches to groups around the country in addition to delivering hundreds of sales presentations to clients. I learned from those experiences that as a speaker, you need the awareness to read the audience and the flexibility to respond to them in real time. Your sales reps need that same awareness and flexibility to address any questions, issues, and challenges that their prospects might bring up. And like a speaker, they need to be free to respond to the needs of their audience, also known as their prospects. To do that, they need to be aware of how the audience is responding to their presentation in the moment. Delivering your presentation from a rigid script steals that flexibility away from them. And their prospects know this.

How Awareness During Presentation Delivery Saved a Deal

Back when I managed a crew selling professional development programs, one of my sales reps asked me if I could join a client meeting. Kelly was in the prescription phase and she had prepared an outstanding presentation for a department manager of a local company. She wanted me there to give her some feedback on her delivery.

When she sat down with the manager, she handed him a copy of the proposal and kept a copy for herself. She then proceeded to read through the proposal as her presentation. After about 2 minutes, the manager stopped her and said, “Don’t read me the proposal. I can do that on my own time. Talk to me about this deal.”

At first, Kelly was a little nervous. She was pushed out of her comfort zone. But when she found her footing, she realized that she knew everything about the company and about the deal she was proposing. At that point, she was able to have a real conversation with the department manager and addressed his concerns in real time.

Something your people have to get comfortable with is that their proposal is not their presentation. They need to remember that people buy from people. As such, they need to have a real conversation with their prospects. Don’t let them get comfortable reading their proposal the same way a speaker reads their slides, using it as a crutch in their presentation delivery.

Create A Framework For Your Sales Presentation

So, what’s the solution? What should they do to boost their presentation delivery? It’s actually quite simple. They need to do what professional speakers do. When you are coaching them through their presentation delivery, have them put their major talking points in an outline form. They can use note cards, PowerPoint slides, or maybe draft their sales proposal that way.

That outline serves as a framework for them to speak about their solution in a way where they can hit the highlights. That will free them to have a real conversation with their prospect. And puts them in a position where they can adjust in real time.

Remember, they’ve asked all the important questions during their diagnosis and they’ve done their research. They’ve put together a comprehensive solution. They are the experts. Help them leverage that power by condensing their proposal into the main points they want to hit. Then, help them use that framework to free up their attention in the presentation delivery and be aware of how their prospects are responding. This will allow them to interact freely with their prospects and build stronger relationships.

In summary, don’t let your salespeople read their proposal from a written script unless they really need the verbal precision. Instead, help your salespeople make better use of their proposal by outlining the main points and create an outline for their presentation delivery. Coach them to control the overall structure and flow of their presentation. Help them remain free to address their audience, making them relatable and approachable. And you will find them closing more deals.

Good Selling!

Need more ideas on designing and delivering your presentation? Get your copy of  Persuasive Sales Presentations here.

As a sales leader, you will often find your people looking to you for wisdom, direction, and reassurance. Therefore, you need a coaching process that takes time to build up the people who make up your talent pool. We need to look beyond what they can do today and help them realize what’s possible tomorrow. When you invest in building your team members, you are investing in your organization’s future.

That’s why, as a sales leader, you can’t settle for just telling your team members what they should do. You need a process for coaching them to achievement.

Using a process gives you consistent results for all members of your team. And it gives you a framework to accommodate an individual’s unique personality through small adjustments.

With that in mind, here are 5 steps of a coaching process for building your individual team members.

1. Start Your Coaching Process By Identifying The Opportunity

The first step of the coaching process is to identify the opportunity. Typically, these opportunities arise from:

• A colleague identifying an opportunity for improvement in another member of the sales team;
• The sales person identifying an opportunity for himself or herself;
• A customer, vendor, or other outsider identifying an opportunity to improve the relationship.
• These different opportunities may stem from a variety of situations, including:
  • the sales rep taking on a new job or project that requires a new skill,
  • a new revelation identified during a team member’s formal performance review,
  • a post-mortem review of a challenge or mistake.

Regardless of the source, always assess the opportunity for coaching and improvement. And commit to a specific result to ensure the best outcome.

Remember, you can manage a process, but you coach and lead people.

2. Establish Desired Results

Once you have identified the opportunity, take time to pinpoint the results when your team member has bridged the gap.

When you establish the results, create a picture framed in the present tense, as if the team member has already reached the performance targets. Also, describe the gap between what the person is currently doing, what they should be doing, and associate an identifiable action with all steps in between. Throughout this process, always circle back to identify the targeted behavior and describe the desired results at the end of the process.

When you outline the process up front, your team member can envision well-defined results. And what they can envision they can successfully reach.

3. Provide Resources

In order for the coaching process to be successful, you must clear away obstructions and make the appropriate resources available. This includes time, money, equipment, training, knowledge, information, upper management buy-in, and support. Most importantly, your team member must commit to the process and want to achieve the results.

So ensure that the appropriate resources are in place and available. Over-promising and failing to deliver causes frustration for everyone involved. If you fail to give your people support, you can leave them with the impression that you set them up to fail, either intentionally or through ignorance. Either way, they won’t trust you in future dealings.

4. Implementation

Once you have the resources in place and you have explained and demonstrated the desired skill, it’s time for your team member to implement the plan.

In order for knowledge to develop into a skill, your people must take action and practice new behavior. But they must sharpen the behavior with the help of a coach who can ensure they are practicing the correct skill. Practice also allows the coach to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement while witnessing the skill in real time.

We must always frame our coaching to ensure that our team members will welcome our perspective. That way, they can learn from our observations as opposed to taking a defensive stance to our comments.

Remember, coaches act as mirrors, providing feedback on how the team member is performing.

5. End Your Coaching Process With Effective Follow Up

When following up on the results, remember that your goal is to effect a behavioral change. You want the team member to perform the new activities on their own. Coaching is a process. So include regular intervals to review the results.

When your team member has successfully reached the goal, take time to acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishment. If they haven’t yet reached the target, take the time to discuss the results they did achieve. Then determine if they need additional resources and what modifications they need to implement before moving forward.

Keep in mind, small acts of recognition throughout the process can have a large impact. So take time to recognize your team member throughout the coaching process. Let them know what they are doing right and acknowledge incremental improvements. Those small bits of recognition you provide will keep them on track and they will achieve the overall results faster.