Untap Your Potential in Business Negotiations With Ian Koniak

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted special specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Ian, thanks for joining us today.

Great to meet you, Kwame, and great to be here.

Yes, it's great to have you, my friend, especially after hearing so much about you. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. My name is Ian Cognac and I'm the founder and president of Ian Cognac Sales Coaching. And I work with account executives to help them elevate their game by learning the mindset, the habits and the skills needed to perform at the very highest level in sales. Before that, I was a 19 year veteran of tech sales and I sold to some of the largest companies in the world at ricoh. My first 10 years I spent there and then nine years at salesforce.com where I was their number one enterprise accounting executive and really did a lot of trainings and helped a lot of people within Salesforce learn how to sell at the highest level. So I've been training and coaching and leading sales teams my entire career and now I get to do it full time for a living, which is a dream come true.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, your career speaks for itself. But I mean, if there's any value add, I will say that you have done a great job with Shane, our head of sales here with the work that you've done and the coaching that you've done. So I personally can attest to the wizardry that you bring to the sales department. So we appreciate that.

Shane is a unique person and he's just fantastic. And you're so lucky and blessed to have him on your team. He's wonderful and the privilege has been mine. He's just a joy to work with. So thank you for that.

Our pleasure. Well, great. Well, let's jump into it, listeners. We are going to cover three main things as I'm looking at these three things, each of which could be their own episode. So we'll get as deep as we can. So the first thing is negotiating large enterprise software deals. The second one is how to negotiate with senior executives. And lastly, how to negotiate with purchasing departments. Ian, just tell us a little bit about your experience specifically with negotiating large enterprise software deals.

Sure. I had the challenging role at Salesforce of being what was called a strategic account director. Director. And so an account director. Their role is to sell every product in the Salesforce bag. Well, Salesforce is a big company and we have a lot of different products and services. So we own companies like Tableau, for example, and Mulesoft and Exact Target. And really it's a giant toolkit of software solutions that can help companies transform how they sell, how they service, how they market to their customers. And so I ran a team of roughly 20 account executives and a lot more engineers and support resources. And my role was to take the entire portfolio of Salesforce products and services and position this to our biggest enterprise accounts, to grow those accounts with, with Salesforce rather than having them deal with, you know, lots of different people. I was the quarterback who would have to put together very complex deals with multiple products and services for really, Salesforce to be a strategic partner to these CL and get the collective strengths of all of our products and services, working on behalf of what a customer needed to do to really transform or drive business results at the highest level. So I worked with CEOs, I worked with COO, CFOs, the C Suite, across some of the largest Fortune 500 companies to put together some very complex and very strategic deals that were in some cases, career breakers or career makers for, for my clients because there was a lot of consequence if they were successful and there was a lot of consequence if they were, you know, if they, if they failed and So I had very long sales cycles. These, these were seven or eight figures in size. Small deals were a few hundred thousand. Large deals were north of 10 million. And so I was doing that for the better part of nine years at Salesforce. So I have a lot of experience kind of negotiating and also creating these agree, we call them enterprise license agreements, where you could use, you know, the variety of Salesforce products in some cases in an unlimited capacity and for, you know, sometimes 20, 30, 40, 50,000 users in these companies. So these were very big deals, they were very complex and they were very difficult to execute. And I did some of them successfully and sometimes I didn't, sometimes I failed and I didn't actually create the contracts. We wanted a lot of learnings from both winning and losing over the years, but fortunately now I've gotten to a place where a lot of what I teach can be replicated. And it's not rocket science, but it does take different skills than just closing a one person company or closing a coaching client, for example, where the dollar value is a lot smaller.

Yeah. Oh, this is great. So many different angles here. And one of the things you talked about were you were talking about the skills that are required to be successful at this level. So when you're thinking about your larger deals, what are some of the key attributes of successful salespeople negotiating these types of deals?

Well, I think number one, you need to quarterback effectively. So when I say quarterback, it's really about aligning your resources in your own company and aligning resources in the customer's company and getting them together. So in some cases I'm coordinating meetings between the head of my product and the CIO of a customer when there might be concerns about the product roadmap. So being able to navigate and to get senior executives from your company to meet with their company, that, that's a quarterback emotion. I'm not necessarily the one who has all the answers, but if I can find the people who have the answers in my company and find out who in the customer side has those concerns or objects, objections that need to be addressed and get those folks talking, a lot of times that can be very impactful. So that's the first skill, is being able to coordinate and quarterback multiple stakeholders in an organization. I'd say the second skill relates to the first one, which is organization. When you're just trying to close deals and you're just trying to win business, a lot of times you're talking to one or two people and you're trying to just get them to say yes, and sign on the dotted line. But when you're selling a complex, large deal, you know, you might have 5, 10, 15 stakeholders, right. And so being able to understand the roles of each of those people, understand who really has the power, who could be a blocker, who can be a champion, where there's potentially objections coming that you may not know about. It's. It's really not so much about being a good closer as it is about understanding politics and the power dynamics at a company and aligning yourself to the folks that have power that can actually drive change, because they're the ones who are doing a lot of the selling internally within their company. It's not necessarily you selling to everyone. They're going to have to have someone who's a change agent or a mobilizer that's selling on your behalf. So finding those folks and activating them to do what they do best is a totally different skill than being good at presenting or closing or demoing or something like that. And so that requires a lot of organization, it requires a lot of planning, it requires a lot of, you know, discovery, which is, I'd say the third skill is you have to be really good at asking questions and having conversations with executives to be able to uncover, is this an executive that is going to drive change at an organization? Is this an executive who cares about the problem that you solve? Is this an executive who knows how to get things done at their company? Do they know the other stakeholders? Right. So it really is, is about organization, time management, almost project management. When you're dealing with so many different steps, you have to treat it as a project and have a plan and have agreed upon next steps and make sure it's moving versus just being a smooth talker, a good closer, or having good influence skills. So it's really ultimately comes down to pat and knowing that what you do today, even though you might not see a sale for nine months or 12 months matters and kind of keeping that moving forward every single day, even though you don't see the. Sometimes you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is great. Just for the sake of organization, like you mentioned, listeners, we're going to blend, number one and number two, negotiating large enterprise software deals and how to negotiate with senior executives. Because I'm seeing, Ian, how these are really naturally flowing into each other. And so for the listeners, let's do a quick summary here. We have top three skills that we need to pay attention to. Number one, alignment. Number two, organization, and number three, good discovery. Let's go through each of them because they're all so important. And so when you're thinking about alignment, you talked about the alignment of resources and you talked about the alignment of stakeholders and people within this deal structure. So let's break down each one. So alignment, tell us more about what we need to know about that.

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You said resources and stakeholders, but even before then, there has to be an alignment in goals and challenges. So before you get to resources and stakeholders or anything, you need to make sure that your company either solves a problem or helps your customers achieve a goal that is important to your prospect or your customers. So you need to align what you sell to what they care about. And customers generally care about their business more than they care about your business. And so understanding what they care about is step one. And you do that through asking powerful questions. But you also can do that through research. You can look at their company vision, you can look at their 10k, you can look at what they're saying online. And you know, when you, when you reach out to these executives, you really should have a very clear idea of who you're talking to. So for example, going on this podcast, the thing that I was doing before I got on here was listening to your TED talk, right? And understanding your background and being a people pleaser and even your, you know, your preference to cinnamon toast crunch. And you know, being able to bring that into a conversation creates that immediate rapport with somebody. And a lot of times when you're talking to senior executives, you can find out this information online from them. You can find out a lot about them even before you ever step foot in them. So being able to make sure you understand what they care about and that you can position your products and services in a way that directly shows them that you're going to help them, them achieve what they care about, either solving a problem or achieving a goal, that's the most important alignment there is. When you can, you know, go into these large enterprise customers and when you do that effectively, then everything else becomes easier because then they'll bring in their team, they'll bring in other stakeholders, they'll bring in the resources, they'll put you in front of the key folks that they need, you know, to get approval for doing anything with you. But it all starts with, you know, making sure that they see the value of what you offer as it pertains to what they care about.

Oh, this is great. And this is one of those things where when you hear it, you say to yourself, duh. Well, duh, right? But most people don't do it. That's what's crazy to me about it, Ian, and I'm sure you've seen this in your career too. This is one of those fundamental steps in the sales process that people often miss. And so in your experience, why is it that people miss this?

Because it's not fun. This is really the fun thing is talking to clients. It's great to just show up and pitch and talk about ourselves because we know ourselves and our products and services better than anything else. So the natural temptation is to just gear towards, hey, here's what we can do and here's how we do it. And that's generally easy to do. The hard thing is to actually go through and really look at a client's website in detail, look at the products and services they sell, their vision, their mission statement. Spend time researching, listening to interviews with your target prospects and what they care about, and then develop a point of view on how you can help them. That point of view, specifically I call this linkage. Linkage is the link between what they care about and what you sell and what your company offers to clients. Right? So developing a very personalized and tailored linkage takes time. It takes maybe a few hours of research before you even send one email and before you reach out and contact people. And frankly, sales is high paced, it's fast, and we want that immediate, immediate dopamine, we want that immediate reward. And so it feels good to have conversations. It doesn't feel good to spend a lot of time researching and developing a thesis about how you're going to help someone. But in fact, when you're selling to large enterprises, that's exactly what you need to do because they get so much people, so many people contacting them, there's so much noise, there's so much, you know, requests on their time. Executives are super busy. So unless you really have a hyper personalized tailored message on, here's what I can do for you. Based on what I learned in my research, they're not going to take a meeting in the first place. And so I just feel like it's counterintuitive to the nature of salespeople who love to meet with customers but don't like all that planning and administrative and research. At least for me, that was something that I would avoid at all costs. You know, because it's, it's not fun. That's the simple answer. It's not fun.

I, I agree. And you know, to borrow from the great Jim Collins, this seems like the distinction between good to great, right? It's the, the great salespeople are the ones who take the time, put in the, the boring work, doing the research, figuring it out, and they're patient through that process. And it takes a lot of discipline to hold back in order to do this the right way.

There's a concept I've been toying with, and I don't remember where I read it, maybe I heard it on a podcast or something, but the concept is really simple. It's self gratification versus delayed gratification. Most of us, most humans, not just salespeople, but most humans, are practicing self gratification all the time. They're going and doing things that give them immediate reward right there. You know, these are dopamine inducing behaviors that fundamentally feel good. So I'll give you a couple examples. You know, going on YouTube and watching a quick video, checking your email and responding immediately because you want to check the box. Doing things that you get immediate feedback. Those are things where you're gratifying your immediate. It's immediate self gratification. It feels good in the moment, okay? But the most successful people are practicing delayed gratification. They're in the habit of doing things that are uncomfortable and frankly, hard first because they know that delayed gratification is more important than immediate gratification. So it's like you pass by in your house and you see a big thing of dishes. Do you go on the couch and do you watch TV and just put it off and procrastinate? Or do you just say, you know what? I'm gonna have to do it anyway. I'm just gonna do it now. And that kind of continuous mindset of doing the hard thing right now because you know you're gonna have to do it becomes the normal after a while. So it really does require training the brain. And when you train your brain to do the hard thing first and to do that every day in all areas of your life. Then you become someone who's reliable, who's dependable, and frankly doing the things like researching an account or spending time on building content or potentially writing a long email copy, those things become the norm of how you spend your day because you know that it's going to lead to freedom and success in the long term because you've seen it over and over again. So for me, this, this whole concept of delayed gratific gratification is the way of successful people. Successful people realize that doing hard things now will lead to a better, easier life in the future. And they just do the hard things every single day. And it's in sales and frankly, it's in all aspects of business and in life that this applies 100%.

And we're really rewiring our brains by creating new neural pathways that push you in that direction, where doing the hard thing, doing the right thing becomes the default. Not what our usual psychologists you would do.

Exactly. And it's, it's, it's an everyday discipline. You said, you said the word discipline. And that's what it takes. It takes discipline every single day. And, and I still have to practice it. I still have to practice it. It doesn't ever change. We are reptilian brain goes back to the thing that feels good. Unless we, I mean, you can spend years developing this discipline and then your brain could, you know, fall back on old habits. And a second, it feels so familiar because the hard thing is to practice self discipline every single day, especially when you're unsupervised. And in sales and in entrepreneurship, no one's telling you what to do or how to do it. A lot of times, especially in strategic selling, you're on your own. And it's like owning a business. So you really do have to show up, you know, first and foremost for yourself. And if no one's watching you, what are you going to do? Right. And if you can do the same thing, whether someone's watching you or someone isn't watching you, then you know you've, you're in a good place.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that you mentioned was organization. And so again, when I think about the typical salesperson, honestly, organization isn't something that usually comes to mind. But when you're talking about if you want to be go from good to great, if you want to close large 7, 8, 9 bigger types of deals, you have to be organized. So let's go deeper into that organization aspect. And I want to focus on the internal negotiations you have to have with your team members in order to get them organized before you even start having those conversations with the prospect.

Oh man, we could go so far down this, this road because there's so much here. I'm going to take it at the macro level first and then I'm going to take it at the micro level to kind of give some context. So at the macro level, the organization that salespeople need to be successful in selling large, complex deals and in frankly selling effectively any size deal is you need to plan your day every day and you need to focus on the important things first. Okay, and we talked about this, but what are the important things? And I want to give a phrase that I've been using for a few years now which, which really resonates with my clients in the phrases is the expression is called RGAs and that stands for revenue generating activities in sales. There are two types of revenue generating activities. It's in its simplest form, there is creation of pipeline and there is advancing of pipeline. Everything else is noise outside of those two things. So the beginning of the day, the first thing I do is I look at my pipeline and I ask what are the crit actions that I need to do to advance my pipeline. So before this call, I reached out to two people and I made sure that I followed up with them on the critical things that I needed to do to advance the pipeline. That needs to be the number one priority for any salesperson is advancement of pipeline. That comes first and that comes first thing the day. So when I say do the hard thing, that's what I'm referring to. So first for me it meant following up on an order form that I had sent on Thursday and seeing when it was going to be signed and making sure they had received it and getting feedback so I could forecast appropriately. That's what I do first for every single one of my deals is I look at what are the critical next steps that we have to take and then execute those next steps. That's the advancement of pipeline. Now if you've gone through all your pipeline pipeline and there's nothing else to do, then we're going to move to creation of pipelines. So creation of pipeline is. There's a lot of activities that fall under that, but it could be, here are the top 10 accounts that I'm going to focus on prospecting to. Here's the. So it could be account segmentation, it could be messaging creation. Here's the messaging that I'm going to come up with. So I'm going to create some email copy I'm going to create, create some point of view on how I can help people. It could be the research that I'm going to do about the account that helps me build that point of view. It could be identifying the key targets that I'm going to go after in the account that are the key executives. So at Salesforce we might have five or 10 titles that we're going after. So who are those people? Let's research each of them and let's create a message that's tailored to each of them. So all of that activity would fall under creation of pipelines. So in its simplest format, when we're doing emails, when we're doing administrative work, when we're doing non revenue generated activities, we're not using our time most effectively and we're not actually organized because we're doing busy work. We're trying to confool ourselves, but really nothing happens until we're in front of a customer and until we're having a conversation. So that's the framework that I want to leave everyone with is, you know, is what I'm doing right now in rga. And if it's not, then we either just want to delete it, we don't want to do it, or we want to delegate it to someone else. So I call this the four Ds of time management. Okay, so the advancing pipeline, the first D stands for do it now. Advancing pipeline comes first. You always do everything right now to advance your current deals. And the reason why is because time kills all deals. If we lose momentum on a deal, they can go to other priorities. There's a law in sales called the law of diminishing intent which says as time passes, intention decreases because other priorities come up and other things come up. And you know what? They've been fine so long without you so they can go longer without you. So the first D is do it now. And the activity that falls under there is anything that has to do with advancing pipeline. The second D stands for defer it. So that means plan it put on your calendar and that's anything to do with creation of pipeline. So you want to plan your research, you want to plan your prospecting, you want to plan your account planning your strategy, your messaging that has to go in the calendar, otherwise you're not going to do it. Those critical activities I always block off and I encourage people to block off time for research, for prospecting, for emailing, for all those creating a pipeline activities. The third D is delegate. Those are things that are non RPGs that you have support staff for that, you have outsourcers for that, you have other things that you could be doing and frankly there's a lot there. So if it's a customer service issue, you don't want to be a people pleaser. That has to be the customer service person. You want to get them to the right resource on your team that can help them in so you're not the bottleneck. It's not because you don't care about them. It's because you actually want them to get the support they need. So that's an example of delegate in the fourth D stand stands for delete. And that's just don't do it at all. So those are things that are just distractions that are, you know, you know, I'm texting a friend in the middle of the day, I'm going to play with my kids and you know, 2pm when I should be working. But I want that immediate reward. So that's that delayed gratification. Those are all things you want to avoid. So when we ask about organization, it's about filling up your day with critical RGAs that are important and urgent or important and not urgent, but still important. It's everything I'm working on is important to my business and things that I don't need to be doing, I'm delegating or I'm just removing entirely and that if anyone works that way and fills their full day from 8 to 6, you can't fail. You're just not going to fail because you're working on the right things and eventually, you know, success is going to find you. So that's a lot of the coaching I do with people is like helping them figure out how to maximize their time, where to spend their time and where to focus because otherwise the day is just going to overtake you. You're going to feel overwhelmed at the end of the day. You're going to feel like you didn't get the stuff done that you needed to. And I hear that all the time. So hopefully that answers your question. But that's, that's what I mean by organization. There's another micro level that I can talk to if unless you have questions about what I just shared.

Yeah, this is great, Ian. And just to recap for everybody else, so the four Ds here we have do it now. We have defer it, we have delegate it and delete it and we also have focus on revenue generating activ. And I think it sounds like really this comes down to one Word, which is focus. Yeah. And then we could extrapolate and add discipline to that. But I think focus is really important because you're focusing on the things that give a disproportionate amount of return on investment.

Organization and focus go hand in hand. We say organize, we think of a clean desk, we think of a prioritization. But all organization is, is knowing what is most important and actually executing on those things. And that's the same thing as being focused. You're absolutely right. So when we talk about focus, the big thing that shifted. I was an average performer at Salesforce before I got to number one. Before I sold these megadeals, I was pretty average. But what I shifted was I shifted my focus to two areas. One, I was going to sell to the big companies. And the second thing I was going to focus on was getting above the power line and working with, you know, senior executives at those companies on problems they cared about. So that really is a shift in focus. And that required me spending my time, you know, developing a point of view for these companies. Also, I use something called account planning, which for big enterprise customers is, you know, a document that you can understand their goals, what the CEO's vision is, what are the main challenges that they're sharing, and then how you can map your product and service back to them. Who are the key executives across the different departments? What do they sell? How do they make money? And it's a document that really gets you to research and spend a lot of time digging deep and understanding what it is that this, this account does so that then you're really informed on the things they care about and can tailor your message specifically. So that's kind of that micro level of organization is having some type of process to really dive into document and to understand your customers so that you can come to them with a very, very specific point of view. For example, if you're selling, I know you know, for. Because I work with Shane, I know a and I sells to some very large clients. If you're selling to a company like Google, for example, that account plan document is a way so you can see all the divisions of Google, right? So Google owns, for example, YouTube. They own Nest. Well, each of these different divisions of Google is going to have their own executives. They're also going to have their own purchasing teams that you could sell your programs to. They're going to have their own DNI teams that you can sell your programs to. So taking the time to map out that org. Str. Org structure, the. The power Players in each area, what those different divisions are. That's what I mean by account planning. Because there's something in sales called, called the Pareto paro principle, which is the 8020 rule, and especially in enterprise sales. And it says that 80% of your sales are going to come from 20% of your customers. Customers. So that was a big shift that I had to make where I really went deep on these customers and sold everything that we had to every division we had. And I didn't have to go and spend time with hundreds of accounts. I really went all in on a very few accounts. But I. I killed it doing that approach. And so that takes a lot of organization. And it takes really understanding, you know, what's the subsidiaries of the account, what departments they have, what they sell, and who are the power players, players there. And that's a process, frankly, that took a couple weeks for me to put together. But, you know, I only had a few accounts, so that was money and time well spent to be able to come up with that account plan.

Oh, man. So good. And so, so, Ian, one of the things I'm realizing, I think that the biggest revelation out of all the incredible things that you said in this episode is that we need to have you back on the show. I think that's really what it comes down to. We have to have you back. Because this is great. Great. This is great. There's so much goodness in here. It makes me feel as though, I don't know, Ian, maybe you've done this before.

19 years.

This is really great.

Thank you. I'm glad it's resonating.

Oh, yeah, 100%. And you know what's interesting? There's so many different angles. We could go with this, but with everything that you're saying, I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, it sounds like some of the toughest negotiation that negotiations that salespeople need in order to be effective will come internally. Because I think about me as a. As a CEO here. I know Shane's office is right next to mine. I pop in with a crazy idea, I ask him to do different things. And now I'm realizing, hey, These are not RGAs. These are not revenue generating activities. And so in order for him to be effective, one of the things that he has to do is set boundaries with me, his boss, and learn how to say no, which is a difficult conversation, but a skill that is a conversational skill that is different, but similar to what you would need in a typical sales negotiation.

100% and you're right. And you know, just. Just when you know what you need to say yes to, then you also know what you need to say no to. And so if you're RGA driven and you say, look, my job in sales is to create an advanced pipeline. This other thing is not. It's pulling me away from that, then you can explain that to your boss. I mean, I. At Salesforce my last year, I was being pulled into so many. Not pulled into. I was being requested to come into so many different meetings that were not RGA related and that were just literally taking my time. I had to sit down with my boss and say, you know what? I'm not going to be able to attend these meetings. It's not a good use of my time. It's not a value add. I get the optics, but unfortunately, this is actually pulling me away from my customers and it's actually going to impact sales. So I need to say no. And my boss understood. And I probably attended only the very few mandatory meetings that I had to versus everything that I was invited to. So being able to say no and not worry about being a people pleaser is absolutely critical to executing everything we're talking about 100%.

Oh, man. Ian, this is great. I know we're coming up on time, but we'll have you back on here soon. But before you go, make sure to let the listeners know about you, your company, and how they can get in touch with you if they want some of your sales expertise.

Can I share? Since it is a negotiation podcast, can I share my one biggest piece of negotiating advice? Because I know what you're going to do more, But I was asked this and I kind of thought about it going in here and I talked to Shane about this as well for a few of his deals. And fundamentally, the best leverage that you have when you're negotiating is belief in the value that you bring for your clients. Okay. Above all, tax tactics, above what to say when they say this or how to handle this Objection. Or what to do in purchasing, those are all tactics. At the foundation of effective negotiation, in my opinion, is knowing that the client is going to be better off with you than without you. And if you fundamentally believe that you are going to help them achieve their goals, solve a problem, really address some critical things that they need to, then you are not going to be attached to the sale because you know it's for them and not for you. When something is for you and when you're attached to the sale or commission because you want it it gives you commission breath, you come off as desperate. But when you can come with a position of power, knowing, look, this is for you, here's how it's going to help you. Here's the value that we're going to bring, here's the value we brought for other clients that is similar to yourself. And hey, if you don't want it, it's your loss. Right. If you can come in from a position of this is truly for you and not for me, it's amazing the response that you're going to get from customers. And there's a psychology behind this. And it's really simple. When people feel like you need them, inherently, they're going to feel like they need you less, but when they feel like you don't need them, they're going to feel like they need you more. And this is a psychology of sales. So just going in and knowing that what you're doing is ultimately for them and it's going to benefit them, and making it all about them gives you a really powerful position of strength where you're not so attached to having to win the sale because it's going to be their loss if they don't do it. So I made a video on that, and I truly do feel like it's been for me, a game changer in how I sell my programs at companies that I work with, because I know their sales reps, after having spent the day with me, are going to sell much more effectively. And if they just get one sale, one sale, the whole workshop will be paid for, you know, sometimes five times over. Right. So I can go in from that position of strength going in and really be able to justify the investment that people are making when they spend a day with me. Because I know relative to the value I bring, it's. It's nothing. And that has been a way that I really haven't had. Only on one occasion, have had to discount my pricing since I've gone into business for myself. And so I want to bring that up just to leave your audience, since it is a negotiation podcast. Know the value bring, don't be attached to the outcome and really measure the success your clients are having so you can use that as a benchmark for sharing what, what clients can expect in really defending what you're charging as far as your product or service.

Ian, my expectations were high and you still outperformed my expectations. This is great. This is really great. Yeah.

Where to find me, Right? You want know? Kind of. Okay, so I am. I'm very visible Online, if you just google my name, Ian Cognac, you'll find my YouTube channel, my LinkedIn and you know all my social content. The best place to find me and to work with me is if you go to my LinkedIn and you just send me a direct message. I do respond to every one of my direct messages. Just tell me you've heard me on the podcast. If you're interested in my programs, I do teach corporate enterprise sales and I do sales training specifically around every stage of the sales cycle. So if you're a company or an individual that wants training or coaching, you can go to my website, ian cognac.com and finally, final plug I'll give is I'm launching a coaching platform which is a one year membership site where it's going to give people training on not only the skills of of sales but also the mindset and the habits needed to really perform at that high level, which we've talked a lot about today to really get to that next level in sales. And the website for that is www.untapyoursalespotential.com and you can learn all about my program there and sign up for the wait list for when it's launching. I'm hoping to launch end of March, so it's coming up pretty soon. And again, the site is www.untapyour sales potential.com.

Ian.

Appreciate it my friend.

Thanks for having me. Kwame, great to meet you.

Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows to them them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you and I will see you in the next episode.

I'll catch you later, Sam.