Todd Capone presents a four-lever negotiating framework that replaces aggressive sales tactics with a repeatable approach to pricing and concessions. The method aims to reduce discounting, increase contract value, and create pricing consistency across customers in a market where AI and transparency expose inconsistencies.
I'm Todd Capone, and I'm the EIR for negotiation. Now, I don't know about you, but growing up in sales, I always felt like it was weird that I needed a different personality to negotiate a deal than I did to sell it. What I mean by that is sales, through the lens of how I was brought up, was always about helping customers achieve optimal outcomes. We build trust in a relationship all the way to the goal line. Customer says y, yes. And what do we do? Well, in many cases, we start lying. We don't tell them what a good deal is. They got to figure that out, and our focus becomes on our own outcomes instead of the customers. I believe that that's no longer sustainable. And what's even worse is even in my own case, we're being taught techniques taught by former FBI hostage negotiators. That's crazy. You're not releasing hostages from a bank heist. You don't get to tase the customer and drag them to jail. In this as a service economy, the deal is merely an early milestone on the path to having customers that not only buy from you, they stay, they buy more, they advocate for you, and they take you with them to their next organizations. I just believe that it is no longer sustainable to have every one of your customers paying a different amount based on how well or poorly the negotiation went. The proliferation of peer connection and the fact that AI is exposing pricing models already makes that unsustainable. So in this first session, we will cover a simple framework for how you position, propose, and negotiate your pricing. It's simple. It's called four levers negotiating. You will learn how to internalize it in a way that will give you confidence, but set a sound basis for the way that you talk about your pricing. In session two, we covered the simple concession request. So how do we use the framework to address simple things like we need a discount, we have payment term requests, simple things like that. In session three, we covered some of the more complex concession requests, the crazy discount ask, the pilot requests, even some more technical verbiage in contract language like liability, service levels, indemnification. And then in session four, we wrap it all up by giving you the structure of how we set the program and expectations up front in the way that we position it, the power that we give each one of the levers, and how you deliver it in a way so that you're building confidence, you're establishing a sound basis. And in the end, what you're going to find is that you will discount less your ACVs will go up. You will build trust to the go line instead of erode it. You will find that customers are paying the same amount with some flexibility within the levers across your customer base. And if we do part of it right, your forecast is going to become a lot more accurate too. So can't wait to dig in with you. Thanks.
