12 Word Script to Negotiate SaaS Deals and Get PAID MORE

All right, Moving on to the next step in the process is uncovering the underlying need or needs behind the concessions and asks that you just got on the table from your buyer. So now that you have the asks on the table, your next move is understand the why behind them. Okay? Your next move is to understand the why behind them. So it's worth delineating a couple things. There's different verbiage used in different negotiation courses. This is the verbs verb, verbiage I'm going to use on the one you. On the one hand, you have an ask, okay? An ask is a particular stance or concession request from your buyer. And typically, it's a means to an end. Okay? It's a means to achieving an end. Now, on the other hand, the underlying need is the reasons behind the ask. It's the why behind the ask. And. And typically, because it's a why, it's an end itself rather than the means. Okay? That is a big, important idea that sheds a light on how you can become a far, far more successful negotiator. Because when you're focused on the underlying need and when you uncover the underlying need and when you solve for the underlying need, you are playing in a world where you're far more likely to get a creative deal done, okay? You have a better chance of finding a creative win, and you have a better chance of closing the deal when you're dealing with underlying needs than if you stop at asks and if you're just butting heads. One ask against another, okay? So the key insight here is ignore what they're asking for. That's probably too strong of a language, but you get the point. Put aside what they're asking for and uncover why they're asking for it. Because their means to achieving their own end might be the wrong means. You might not be able to deliver on it, but you might be able to meet the same underlying need with something else if you can uncover it. So if you fail to ask that kind of question, you literally cannot negotiate. If you fail to uncover the underlying need, you are, in my definition, bartering and haggling rather than negotiating. Right? Negotiating has to do with joint problem solving, and bartering and haggling have to do with giving away value in exchange for value. Now, there's a time and place for that. I'm not saying that's always the wrong answer. In fact, we're going to talk about that later. But the most powerful thing you can do in any negotiation is understand the uncover or understand the underlying need, okay? Because again, the Idea is that you might be able to address the underlying need in a different, better way than the concession request your buyer is asking for. So at the beginning of this course, we had this analogy where there's two people who are, quote, unquote, negotiating over an orange, okay? And just as they're about to cut the orange in half and split it, which means each of them only gets 50% of what they want, one of them had the wisdom and insight to ask the other person, hey, why do you want this orange to begin with? And it turns out the other person wanted the orange just for the peel. They wanted to brew some beer and put the peel into the mixture so that there was a little bit of an orange flavor to the beer. Now, the other person's underlying need for wanting the orange was so that they could eat it. They wanted it with breakfast. And so instead of chopping the orange in half, they peeled the orange. One person got the peel, and one person got the orange itself. And now, instead of each person only getting 50% of what they want, they both got 100% of what they want. Because the underlying needs for from both sides were well understood. And now they could problem solve from a different plane. Okay? They're problem solving from the plane of underlying needs instead of the surface level plane of concession requests. That is a huge, huge idea. So here's how this works. In the last lesson, you were taught to get all of their asks out on the table before responding to any of them. Now that you have all of their asks on the table and you summarize them, ask a question that gets to the underlying need behind those asks. Okay? The one I like to ask is, what's going on in your world that's driving you to need that, or what's going on in your world that's driving you to need these? Right? Help me understand the why behind each one of these. Okay? So here's an example of how this didn't go so well for me recently. I got caught up in the heat of the moment. I forgot to follow my own advice. And I was negotiating with a CEO for a $50,000 P Club deal, and he goes, do you do monthly payment terms? And I, like, instantly let my emotions get the best of me Instead of calming down and understanding why he was asking for what he was asking for. And I just responded immediately. I said, no, almost defensively, no. Most SaaS companies sell annual contracts. We only do annual terms. Now, this led to, like, a little bit of a almost argument. And we eventually came to the Right answer. But it turns out the reason he wanted that was not that he actually wanted monthly payment terms. Right at the time of this recording, it's June and he wanted to be able to punt $25,000 of the $50,000 bill out into January for budgeting reasons, which given that contract size, I was probably willing to do. And so what should have happened is it should have gone like this. Him, do you do monthly payment terms? Me? Help me understand what's driving you to need that. And then him, I need half of this bill to hit in January rather than this year for accounting purposes. Okay, so now I could have avoided a bunch of friction. Eventually we got there, right? This was kind of a low stake situation, but it's still a good example. I could have immediately understood where he was coming from and designed a negotiation to better meet that need instead of just viscerally and emotionally reacting to no, we don't do payment terms. And kind of coming across as a jerk in the process, which I did. Okay, so that's the idea. It's not hard to do. You just have to have the knowledge, which now you do, and the emotional patience to ask it. Now a few other tactical tips before we wrap up this lesson and we move on to the next one. Number one, avoid asking why. Okay, you are asking why, but you want to use different language because people get emotional in negotiations and when you ask why, it can trigger people to go into a defensive mode really fast. You might burn a little bit of trust. So instead of asking why, ask the question why, but with different words. Okay, I like to say what's causing. Right? Instead of saying why do you need that? You might say what's causing you to need that? Or what's going on in your world to need that. It's a far softer way to ask the question why? But still get the same result without putting the other person on the defense. Now, the other tip is, as you're uncovering the need behind the need, it's probably not going to be as simple as just asking the question I recommended and then you arrive there. Sometimes it's more complex than that. You might have to ask follow up questions. And if that's the case, it is in your best interest to regularly summarize and parrot back what your buyer just said and say, did I get that right? You want your buyer to feel understood? Okay. Number one, they're going to continue talking more. Number two, they're going to trust you more. And this, this is one of the biggest truisms in sales marketing go to market and especially negotiation. Customers buy more from feeling understood by you than by them understanding you. Most humans go through life not feeling understood. And if you are the person who puts your own desire to feel understood aside, and you truly try to understand another person through asking questions, through summarizing, through confirming that you got it right, you will have significantly more influence, power.