Mastering Negotiation: The Top 3 Sales Mistakes That Hold Your Team Back

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Hello everybody. Good to see you. Hopefully this conference is going well for everybody. I work at Red Bear and we have a negotiation company. And today we're going to talk about three negotiation mistakes that potentially could, could hold your team back. And actually we've compiled 10. But I'm going to show you the top three today and later on at the end of the presentation, if this seems of interest, I'll have a link that you can go onto our website, actually download a couple of our white papers. And they're excellent for reading, but little backdrop. So what we did is in our research, we interviewed 121 of our clients in 37 different industries and we actually interviewed 600 personnel to obtain this data. So we've got a robust amount of data we collected. The question that we asked was what in your sales environment makes it particularly challenging to negotiate profitable deals? And I emphasize profitable deals. That's important, obviously. So we've got a viewpoint at Red Bear. We view selling as if we are going to do business and negotiations is how are we going to do business and what does that agreement look like? So I'll share with you like we talked about three of these negotiation mistakes or challenges that we face and we'll go to the next slide. So one of them is for concession strategy. And that a lot of times has a lot to do with giving up things too early in the process, maybe even not even having a strategy, or giving concessions away to potential prospects and clients without getting anything in return. We talk about that value to value exchange in order to get through to a breakthrough deal. So that is one of the main things that we find a lot of our clients have done in the past that we work with.

Number two is not uncovering the customer's real needs. So a lot of that has to do with questioning, failure to understand, asking the right questions, really truly listening as you know, as sales leaders, hey, asking the right questions, gathering the right information, understanding needs versus wants, and really just listening. Once your, your client has the opportunity to, to talk and share what they're looking for. So many times, you know, the, the sales team will possibly just not listen and just talk too much. And we really understand the need for, to make sure we get the right questions, to get the right information, to truly understand what are those needs and what are those wants.

The third one here is information that is basically disseminated, you know, at, at an untimely manner, I think back in, in my career. And, and maybe if some of your sales teams do this, they, they may sell in with teams, maybe somebody from engineering, maybe somebody from the product development just as a team sale. And sometimes individuals can make costly errors and provide inaccurate information or too much information that could be potentially sensitive. And I look back and I think about in my career, sometimes you've got something on your roadmap and you don't really want to share that roadmap. But there's an engineer or somebody in product development that shares that information, gives out things and that can prolong your sale. So really you got to be sensitive to what information is shared, how much is shared and, and when it is shared to really be effective in your, in your sales meetings.

So, okay, what can we do to improve, how do we get better sales, how do we get. Generate additional income, better roi, that type of thing. And so I've got seven things listed here. And some of these, you know, are really key to your team's sales success and positioning. We talk about that all the time. Are you positioning your product or service that adds value, that shows value to your prospects that is so essential. Otherwise you're going to get into that price discussion and it goes straight to the cost and they don't understand the true value. We talked about earlier, managing that information skillfully. Yeah, I know when to deliver information and how to deliver it and what needs to be held back in the potential sales opportunity. Set high targets. We've got a saying here at Red Bear. You, if you know, if you set a high target, those who have set higher targets achieve higher targets and goals. And so that's, it's pretty simple. But you gotta, you gotta, you know, ask for the most and then, and negotiate. Know your full strength, your range of your strength. So that simply is this, It's a, hey, you know what you've got, you're in a position of strength to negotiate. Maybe you got something better than a competition or maybe you have a faster delivery time, better product, better service. Use that and show your full strength. Identify needs. So that's what we talked about earlier. You gotta ask the right questions, get to the root of, hey, is this a need or is this a want? And that's so critical to sales team success. The sixth one here is concede according to a plan.

At Red Bear, we really help our clients plan. We're known for this in concessions because if you don't have a plan in place, things can go south real quick in the middle of a conversation. And so you've got to identify those plans and strategically plan for negotiation challenges, what might come up. Sometimes people will Bring up something about your company that maybe they've heard about or maybe about the competition. How do you deal with that? So if you can strategically plan and be prepared for anything that comes across in a potential sales meeting, negotiation, whatever the case may be, the planning is the key to your success.

So kind of like I mentioned before, we've gotten it, I referenced here a couple of white papers and you can go to our website and they're just download them at Red Bear and then go to resources and white papers, wrong turns, right turns and selling value, not price. They're excellent. They're great reads to, to, to just gather information, share them with your team. Maybe if you have a, have a team meeting, even one on one with individuals, they're really excellent information. Just things that we've gathered, we've learned from our clients of many years of doing business around the globe and we just wanted to share those with you. So probably lastly.

If you see any of this, these things playing out in your organization, we subscribe to a consultative approach and we really focus on our clients needs. We're easy company to do business with. If any of this resonates, you see that, hey, you got some potential to improve your team's negotiations, improve your contracts, increase your, your return on the investment that you all made in your organizations. Reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you. And that's about all I have today. So thanks a lot for, for the time.

Vince. Thank you so much. Boy, that one slide you had right there towards the end with the bullet points listed of some of the big pitfalls right there. Improving sales team performance. So spot on. Thank you for sharing that. I'll tell you what people, grab a screenshot of this and make sure you go out right now to their virtual booth and download the e book that he is giving away because it's absolutely fantastic. The guidebook to sales negotiation training. So grab that. Hey, we're going to be taking a break here in just a minute, but question for you, Vince.

Yes, sir.

How much.

How many times do you see salespeople just literally giving up on the negotiation and not holding firm and staying to the end? In other words, where they give away the farm.

Yeah, that happens frequently and we really see that. It's, you know, they don't want to lose the deal. They almost are advocating for the, for the customer, for the client because they want that deal so bad and therefore you, you may win that deal. But the key is to negotiate the deal so it's profitable for the organization, not Just to get a sale. And so we find that frequently and sometimes you lose that the, the value of, of the product or service that you provide early in a conversation and it goes directly to price. And that is so critical to have that value to value conversation. If you have negotiation exc. Value value exchange. So if you give up something, you get something back as valuable in return or if not better. Yeah, great question.

And it's so about creating value on both sides and low price is not a value equation. I love the comment that Gearhart put in the chat regarding. He says Harvey McKay said it best. A sales negotiation is not just about making a deal. It's about building a relationship. And that's what you're doing when you negotiate. Right. That's why I love the information that you shared. I do hope everybody jumps out. Download the the ebook from the virtual booth and hey, jump out to their website.

Vince, I have a question. What was the biggest deal you've ever negotiated?

Well, our largest client around the globe is Honeywell. We've actually trained 7200 other people around the world and they've been with us for a lot of years and they keep coming back to us because they get such favorable results. And one their key executives said this is one of the greatest investments they've made in their personnel in the history of Honeywell all over the world is, is going with Red Bear and having us train 7,000 of their folks. Yeah, that is amazing. And I have one more question. Yeah. What is the role of creativity in the negotiation? Yeah. No, and that's, that's a hard thing to teach sometimes you. That's a good question. And it's like really asking. We like to just ask a lot of questions, really try to get that, get that relationship developed that's so critical. And then asking those right questions and then you can get creative with your solutions, with your offering, with your negotiation. So a lot of that time, a lot of those things are just learned.

Self taught. Sometimes others like us, we will teach how to do that through planning and, and getting prepared for your meetings with your clients. Yeah. Good.