[Sales] Every conversation is a negotiation with Saad A Saad

In my mind, you can't be a good seller without being a good negotiator. To be a good seller is to get somebody interested and motivated in what you're offering to be a good negotiator. Those two things go hand in hand because somebody can be motivated and interested, but you need them to take actionable steps. That's what negotiation is about. These two things go hand in hand throughout the entirety of the process. And if you can be good at both of those two things, you're going to decrease the time that you get to signature and you're also going to be better off with the terms that you end up with at the very beginning.

Before we get into today's show, I wanted to tell you a little bit about what we have going on over here at Succession. So Succession is a Life Science sales membership that includes on demand courses to uplevel your sales skills, resources to plan and execute your sales process, a community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered by experts twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month, or you can uplevel your entire sales team with courses and customized learning designed for each individual rep. Come and join us over at Succession Bio. Okay, let's dive back into the show. All right, Nick, we got a good episode. This one. I'm going to be giving a lot of information and I expect you, you and I expect to also be getting a lot of information from you. So if you're wondering what this is about, it's all going to be about negotiation. And so we talk a lot about gives and gets. We have Saad Assad who's on the podcast today. He's a author, negotiation trainer. He also was adjunct faculty teaching negotiation at Columbia City and Pace universities in New York. So this guy knows his stuff. He lives in breeds negotiation. And I really love this conversation. I learned a lot. But what stood out to you, Nick?

Yeah, I really enjoyed this. Learned loads, relearned some stuff I'd forgotten, as always, you know, and I think that as sales reps, we negotiate every day. I think it's a skill we all need to really work on and make sure we hone because actually I've been guilty of not doing it as well as we should in the past or focusing on the wrong objectives. And I think there's some really good actionable information in here. We also learn how children and their bedtime can help you negotiate better. So listen out for that.

Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. And I think some of the other big takeaways that I had were that everything from day one is a negotiation. Right. It's all around little micro negotiations, gives and gets. We need to stop thinking about negotiation is just around price or just around terms that happens at the end of the deal. And then a lot of other just like really good tactical things that everybody can implement into their day to day.

Yeah, total. Now get a pen on the pad. You're gonna need it.

Yeah, that's true. So you'll definitely want to take some notes, come back to this one because there's lots of good stuff. So what do we always say?

Nick, Doug Ryan.

Hey, Saad, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you here.

Hi, Harrison. Nick, nice to see you too. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's good to see you again. As you know, we gave you a little prep. We asked everybody the same question when we kicked these things off. Give us a crazy or funny story that's happened in your career.

Absolutely. So I teach negotiation, negotiation skills to sellers. One day I was facilitating a workshop in New Jersey, actually, and I'm telling the story about Shaquille o' Neal and his trade negotiations with the Orlando Magic. Some of you basketball fans are listening to this. You'll know perhaps some of this story. But basically Shaq has with the Orlando Magic for four years. He's thinking about renewing his contract and instead he ends up deciding to sign with the Lakers. And I'm telling the story and then all of a sudden somebody in the room is like, hey. Raises a hand. I'm like, yep, jump right in. It's like, I used to represent Shaq and his trade negotiations. I'm like, what? That's absurd. We need to have a chat. We need to have a conversation. And the guy actually used to represent Shaq for retail deals. I don't know if you're familiar with JCPenney retail store in the U.S. i think Shaq had a partnership with them, so wasn't expecting that before telling that story.

So he definitely had the inside scoop on. On your story too, right? Exactly. We'll check to you a little bit.

Yeah, it's always nerve wracking. You're like, I think I know this story, but here's a guy that was actually in the story, listening to it.

Well, for any British people listening, basketball is just netball, but easier, I think.

Right?

That's what it is.

Something like, Neil was pretty good back in the day.

So now we. I heard of him.

None of the others he's everywhere though. He's got to deal with like every major brand in the U.S. yeah, between.

Him and Snoop Dogg, I think they've like, you know, taken over all the brand deals. All right, cool. Well, let's, let's jump into some of the negotiation stuff we wanted to talk about. Maybe would be a good place to start, is defining negotiation. Because I think there are many different terminologies for what negotiation is. You know, some people think of it as like, this is the last thing you do before you sign on the dotted line. And, you know, people think of it as you're going in. It's like you want to spend $10. I'll split the difference and make it 5. Right. Like all sorts of different things. So would love your kind of high level definition before you dive into the details.

Yeah. There's a misconception on negotiation and I see it all the time. So I teach negotiation predominantly to sellers. And when sellers start to think negotiation, they start to think conversation around price or a conversation around deal terms. And when they start to think like that, they start to think, well, that doesn't typically happen until the end of the deal. The way that they're typically defining negotiation is haggling or bargaining around price. And that's a misdefinition. The way I define negotiation, it's an outcome based conversation. Anytime you and another person are an outcome based conversation trying to reach some kind of outcome, and the reality is, is that you're in a negotiation and it's a missed opportunity to not think of that conversation as a negotiation. Or more critically, it's a missed opportunity to not structure that conversation as a negotiation.

Interesting. So like outcome based conversation being there's either something in it for the customer or the client you're talking to, whether they want information about your product or service or does that that includes like a discovery call would be an example. Outcome based call.

Yeah. In that discovery call, your outcome may be as simple as, I'm trying to get this person to share information with me. That's an outcome that you're trying to reach. That's fair. Maybe the second discovery. Go ahead, Nick. Sorry.

I'm gonna say by this definition, basically every conversation we have with a sales rep is a negotiation conversation. Because the outcome could be, I want them to remember me so that they will answer an email in future. The outcome could be I want them to engage more in a second meeting. Or it could be sign the PO.

Or we. And we talk to a lot of scientists who are more introverted. So it could be as simple as I want to get this person to open up and have a conversation in general. Yeah.

It'll be introduced me to your colleagues. It could be, tell me a little bit more about your process. Share with me this information that you typically wouldn't share with anybody. All of those little conversations should be thought about as negotiations and could be structured as negotiations.

Got it. And so then I imagine even then it's not like this is a negotiation conversation. Well, you could think of it as a negotiation, but then I imagine every little nuance or every mini outcome is also a negotiation. A little give and get kind of situation. There may be.

Yeah. The guys and the gals that do this really well start to think really preemptively and start to prep and identify all those critical negotiations that are going to get them to signature. So they've identified some kind of prospect, they've had some conversation. One of the first things they may ask in the beginning of the conversation, tell me a little bit more about your organization or tell me a little bit more about what it's going to take to get us to signature or who else is going to have to be involved in this. They ask some iterations of those questions and in that first discovery conversation, what they typically leave with, it's all the things that they're going to have to negotiate on in the future. Five or six or seven conversations, depending on the complexity of their deal, they're ultimately going to get them to signature and that's what they negotiate.

That makes a lot of sense. And so then where do you see sort of like in this process then?

Right.

If reps are thinking of negotiation as late stage, what are they kind of doing maybe incorrectly in the earlier stages where they're not thinking of these negotiation tactics or thinking of the conversation as negotiation.

So for it to be a negotiation, and you alluded to this a little bit earlier, Harrison and Nick, you did as well, is there needs to be some kind of get give exchange. Where they go wrong is they're happy to give and oftentimes they don't think about what are the things that they can give to the client that are of value to the client. More importantly, more critically, they're not clear on their gifts, on their guests, what.

They want in return.

What are they lobbying on behalf of? What do they really need at this stage? What's most strategically important lobby and negotiate for at this particular point in which I'm at the deal? Once you have clarity on those things and you have an idea of some of those gifts that you can give in return, you'll be in a brief place.

I think that when you talk about get sim return, that's Yeah, I really, that sort of resonated with me because what we often talk about is with our, when we're training people in sales is don't go for the big win at the end, look for the micro commitments. And I think what we're saying is identify your micro commitments early and negotiate for those. And if you can do that, you're going to start winning incrementally towards your end goal. And that's what people are not doing.

Right.

But you're saying I have to prepare for a call by thinking about these things ahead of time.

Wild. Right?

What are the implications? But here's the other beautiful thing that happens, Nick, is if you're negotiating all along, you're training the other person that you are a negotiator and that you need things in return. If you fail to structure those conversations earlier on as negotiations and you're just giving information and giving this and giving that and giving demos and giving proof of concepts, what you're telling them is I am here to service you. You dictate what you want and I just give. That is not a two way relationship. That is not going to set you up for success. I'm closing the deal and that is not going to set you up for success. I'm making sure that you get good margin when you start talking price and deal terms.

Yeah, that's really interesting because I, I kind of see two buckets of, I would say, I would call them bad initial conversations which are one bucket is you go into it and you kind of pitch. Right. It's like I'm just going to give you dump all this information. It's have everything that you need so you can make the decision. Right. It's kind of like the pitch, the. Yeah, that, that, that's one. Then the other one though is the death by discovery questions which is. It actually becomes only you're trying to get everything and you're not giving anything. And so you actually kind of have like both of these like opposite ends of the spectrum that I see as you're challenging for reps because you're trained to ask questions. And so if you're trained to ask questions, you're going to ask these questions. But then if you're also not giving at the same time, it can be.

Just another example of the death by questions is that I once had a somebody call me trying to get me to Go to a conference. And when I was like showing disinterest, they started the question. It was so clear as a script because they were trying to get me to go to one conference and they were asking what the annual revenue of the company was like. It was that going so crazy. Yeah. And they just disengaged me completely.

I mean, the core of this is you want to start to strike that balance right from the get go that I'm going to be giving some things, but I'm going to need some things in return. And every little subtle interaction that you have with the clients, you set yourself up by preparing for some of these conversations and thinking about what some of those gets and gives are ahead of time, you'll be 90% ahead of most people, arguably.

What do you, what do you recommend? Like, if we were to get really tactical, right. And say, what are like five gives or gets that reps could think about conceptually. So then when they're prepping for a call, like, here's some examples of like what you might want to be thinking through.

Yeah, I'm going to brainstorm a couple and then you jump in and then we can kind of structure them in a particular sequence in order. First one that I think about is how is that particular prospect thinking about the problem that they have? Maybe they're not thinking about it altogether. Maybe they're thinking about it in a particular light. Critically important that you do that for negotiation because you don't want to set yourself up for a commoditized conversation down the road. They might be looking at you, they might be looking at some other competitors. You need to figure out how are they mapping this problem so you can later on start to strategically sort of expand their perception of value by talking about the unique things that you do. That's, that's important in the beginning. The other thing that comes to mind that's important in the beginning is getting the prospect to identify what their process.

Is like a software, like how they.

You know, say you're on board and you're good to go. What would need to happen in order for us to get a signature? Who else would need to be involved? Who was going to have to sign off on this? Is there anybody else that owns the budget? You know, you iterate those questions accordingly. But basically what you're trying to do is trying to get them to identify all those mini commitments that are going to have to happen within the organization so you can negotiate on behalf of those things. Those are the first two things that come to mind.

I Wonder if you can almost like reverse engineer it. Right. So you could say as a rep, what are all the things that successfully have to happen for you to close a deal? Right. Which are to your point, we have to get them to have a first conversation, give us certain amount of information about them, the organization, make sure if they're qualified, some things of that nature. We probably have to get multiple stakeholders involved depending on the complexity of the deal. Right. It's like probably in the range of seven plus people that have to be involved in every deal in some capacity. Right. So if you're stuck with one, not helpful. So that's probably another negotiation. Who are the typical people involved in these deals? You've probably got, you probably need to understand just like how they're going to make the decision both from like a process perspective but also from a criteria. It's like how, how do they want to actually make this decision? How are they going to be evaluating it? To your point, in the context of competition, in the context of different features, capabilities, whatnot.

On the note that you mentioned Harrison of reverse engineering, you should be able to reverse engineer after your first couple of discovery calls. Maybe it's just one call, maybe it's two or three. But by the time you leave those conversations, you should know exactly your signature. I know exactly what needs to happen in order to get the signature and I know exactly what needs to happen before that. And I know exactly what needs to happen before that. You should be able to reverse engineer all the way back to your first fall that you just had.

I mean you can basically prep from step one all the many negotiations you're going to need to have along the way. Exactly. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think the other piece too is knowing where the common non price negotiation levers are early can help you frame them for. I'm sure we could talk about that one. Right. But it's like they're non pricing negotiation levers. And so how do you talk, how do you introduce those early versus like at the very end where it might be too late to have those matter.

Before you go there, before you go, how do you introduce them? I think that that's for some reps and some people. That's a novel concept that there are non price or time. Mainly price and time is people with all they think they've got. So we should probably start with what are those non levers. Levers. Let's start with the English word. And then, and then, then we can discuss how you introduce them. And when I Think.

Yeah. So we talked about this concept of gibs, right? When people think about Gibbs, they think of concessions. Sellers start to think of concessions. They have this misconception that a concession is only when I give a price discount. That's wrong. A concession is anytime you give away anything of value. And things of value are simple as your time or information or insights or consulting or an introduction to your colleague or a demo or a proof of concept of whatever it may be. You could think of all of those things as concessions because you should use them as trade offs. Like I can do a demo for you, but in return, here's what I'm going to need from you. That's. I know that answers your question entirely, Nick, but we can continue with that thread if you want to.

Yeah, I think that does. I think the other thing that would be good too is like I guess we're talking about negotiation in two, two sections here. One is like the negotiation around these micro commitments. Then there's also like terms negotiation which could be like length of contract, like implementation time, professional services, add ons, all of these other sorts of things that are also non price related.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Or even just like willing to do a case study for somebody. Right. Like get that on writing in the contract. That could be worth something to your organization, especially in the early days.

I think the weird thing is that this is something as reps that have been doing it for a long time, we should be epic at.

Right?

We do this every day. This should be, we should be amazing at this. And the outside perception in a lot of industries of salespeople is that they're always trying to take, they always want something.

Right.

However, I don't think that's true. I think the sales reps are really bad at asking for something in return and think if they just keep giving, we'll get the deal. And I actually think it needs reframing.

That you need to ask more 100%. So this is. Harrison, you've read a little bit of the book. You were introduced to the concept of friction. But this is the exact tendency that I've seen. So I've been facilitating for sellers for the last four years strictly negotiation. And the pendency that I see is people have this assumption that if I just give, I'm doing this person a favor and I'm doing myself a favor and it's going to increase the likelihood of me being able to close this thing. So. And I, I think the exact opposite. It's true actually. People have this tendency that in these Negotiations. I need to avoid friction because I want this person to feel positive towards me and I want them to have a good experience. So what they tend to do is they tend to just give, give, give, give, or they tend to convey that they can make a lot of trade offs right from the beginning. And as a result the other person to some degree, I imagine, loses respect for them and their product, perceived value of their offering. And another degree, if you're leaving the impression that you are the one that's doing the given throughout this entire time, you're not clear on your grips. It's not likely that you're going to get to the finish line in that pursuit.

Nobody wants a relationship without friction.

Gotta be a two way street.

Because I, I don't know, sometimes I feel like the opposite is. I try and think about, well, I'm. We're in a lucky situation personally where we own this business and we can kind of make stuff up as we go. Obviously not every rep has that capability and so. But sometimes when I'm thinking about how do we make our sales process better, more efficient, more effective, my first thought goes to reducing as much friction as possible. How do I make this so easy for this person to say yes to that? We, it shortens the time that we're spending on the sales price. Like basically all of these like things that it feels like it would make it easier. That's kind of where my, my head goes. So yeah, I'm just kind of curious. I'm in coach me so I can fix that Richmond to get better.

I guess what's coming to mind from what you suggest and what some of the things that you're saying, Harrison, is like you're thinking about friction in the sense that I want to remove the inhibitors that are going to get them to signature. Right. One of those inhibitors could be you. One of those inhibitors is the fact that are you negotiating on the things that you need to negotiate in order to get the signature.

Interesting.

Even down to, I guess like you said, perceived value. The two things you both were talking about there maybe think of a specific scenario. And this is giving away lots of secrets, I guess to anyone who wants to engage in our services for Legion. But we often are like, hey, yep, you want to get this done? We can get this started in two weeks.

Right.

That's removing friction and giving something.

Yeah.

However, if we were like, well this takes time. It's high value is adding friction in that process. But is it perceived as better because we're adding value? You see? I mean so there's this trade offs in these processes.

I think we're using friction in two different ways or defining friction in two different ways here. Okay, yeah. The way in which I'm defining friction is simply making sure that every conversation or every outcome based conversation that you're having with the client structured as a git, give, exchange.

Got it. I see what you're saying. So don't just give without adding the friction of asking for a get versus A, versus friction where. Yeah, okay, I see what you're saying. Right, yeah.

Simply making sure that the client has been conditioned that this is going to be a two way street in every interaction that we have.

Yeah, that's, that's fair. I mean that's definitely ways that we can prove that. That's for sure. Yeah.

Think about sales, right? It could be people to train it, but it's still always something to learn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially, especially when you talk to like people like yourself who are literally experts in light specific field of negotiation. Literally wrote a book on like negotiation. Right. And so like, which we'll talk about here in a bit. But like those are. You have so much nuance in this one specific realm that anybody can take something from it. Right. I think that's valuable in my mind.

You can't be a good seller without being a good negotiator. Right. To be a good seller is to get somebody interested and motivated in what you're offering. Right. To be a good negotiator, those two things go hand in hand because somebody can be motivated and interested, but you need them to take actionable steps. That's what negotiation is about. These two things go hand in hand throughout the entirety of the process. And if you can be good at both of those two things, you're going to decrease the time that you get to signature and you're also going to be better off with the terms that you end up with. At the very minimum.

I was about to say, there's only one way you'll convince me that you're an expert negotiator. And it's a year long experiment.

Right.

And I've got three daughters and one wife. If in a year you can help me win one argument, just one, that's it. One argument. Any of those four people in my household, you're the best at it, my friend.

Nobody, nobody could train that.

So I have a three year old at home and I have another daughter on the way. And it's funny because I think like kids are so like negotiation is this innate thing and if you have kids, you know, kids are excellent at testing boundaries and testing your resolve. They're so good at advocating for what it is that they want. I don't know what happens when we get to adulthood that some of that sort of diminishes and we start operating under the exact opposite sort of philosophy that we have to be giving in order to get better outcomes.

Just start sharing what people think.

Yeah, well, I am. I actually like going into. Apparently, well. But I try to encourage my kids to challenge me because what I say isn't necessarily what challenge it.

Right.

That's 100% accurate.

Yeah. Yeah. This doesn't go in the workplace, but I. And being expert negotiators, like, they come home and they're like, can we have a treat? Like, we have a snack. Yeah.

Yeah.

And one of my kids came in and, like, can I have this? And it was this one chocolate bar, candy bar. And the other kid come in with, like, four in our hand and say, can I have this? And I'm like, well, that's four things. You can't have four things as a treat. That's ridiculous. She went away, and I thought I'd won the argument. She came back with a set of swaying scales and weighed both treats to prove that they were similar. And then I had to go, oh, yeah, of course you can have it. No, this is a dish.

You made a good argument. What can you say that's good? The other thing kids are really good at, they're so good at nibbling, like, getting you to make a little mini commitment, and then coming back and saying just a little bit more. Could you just do this little thing? It's not really that big of a deal. Let me play outside for a little bit longer. One more episode. Let me watch this. And it's like, one. It's exhausting, too. It's. They're good negotiators.

If you want to learn negotiation, just watch children at bedtime when they're told it's time to go to bed. That is the epic negotiation session.

Yep.

Yep. Cool. Well, back to sals. So I'm guessing everyone listening isn't a parent, but there's some good parallels. If you are, you should be able to.

Yeah. It's interesting when you talk about the. The little tidbits here and there, though, because they're getting little things along the way, which then they are trying to get to the ultimate goal that they want. So it's kind of similar almost. Right. And. And there's probably this level of curiosity that still exists with kids that sometimes we maybe don't have as much as an adult.

You know what I mean?

Where maybe that kind of leads to some of this.

It's like, yeah, the bigger impact that I think about a lot is I'm also conditioning them on how to treat me in the future in the relationship that them and I have, that's really the bigger consequence.

Right.

And if I leave them with the impression that I'm willing to compromise and concede on everything that they ask me for, I think parallels in sales world as well. I'm really setting myself up for failure or for trouble at the very minimum. And, yeah, I think it will expand.

Just something you just said, Harrison, and something we said about kids. And that made me realize that you said about politeness. And I think actually we live in a certain framework in our everyday life. And what you're doing is when you set that friction, you set that barrier, is you're redefining the framework in which you're going to engage with a client. And I think that's necessary because we often walk into a room and carry on with our defined framework we have of our colleague or our wife or our children. And these are much different relationships. And defining them framework, the interaction is going to take place, I think is a crucial point of what you was just saying. So I want to call that out.

Yeah. And striking the balance, Nick, of being polite, but simultaneously making sure they respect me, they respect my time, they value my insight. If you can strike the balance between both of those two things, which you can do both of those two things simultaneously, you're in a great place.

I wonder too, how quotas play a role in this, in the friction, like the trying to not bring in friction, because especially right now, it's really hard to get new opportunities. And so you try and milk every opportunity you can, and you try and maximize everything you can out of an opportunity, which means you're probably not introducing this friction, you're probably not trying to push back in certain instances, because you're trying to just please every opportunity you can because you hope that that's going to, like, stay in your pipeline and go close. So I imagine that's kind of a part of this challenge is like, how do you disassociate your, you know, pipeline from your selling activities? Right.

They sell this a lot after pointing to, honestly, where the mindset sort of shifted for people. And it's a mindset of, I don't want to miss out on this, I need this. And what they set themselves up for is a mindset of anxiety, the conversations. And when people become anxious and stressed, what they tend to do is they tend to concede really quickly. They tend to be less ambitious, they tend to be a lot more giving. You can see the trouble that that'll run you into.

Yeah.

So I want to talk about one concept that was from your book. It's kind of like the main framework, which is the advocacy wheel.

Right.

You kind of have, I don't know if you want to maybe describe it for people, how you kind of picture it in the different parts of it. Because I think that'll be a really good framing for how you think about, you know, negotiation and how people can think about this kind of give an intro to the book as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So I love the way in which we started this conversation, Harrison, because we started with this thing about mini commitments and structuring. All of those conversations that gets and gives. Where you want to take it a step further is not only do you need to approach the conversation as gets and gives exchanges, but you want to think about, like, when I have this conversation, how do I actually have it? Like, at what point do I mention my get. At what point do I mention my give? How do I go back and forth in between those two things? So the metaphor that I use in the book, the book is called in the lead mastering your sales negotiation, the metaphor that I use is a bicycle. And on the bicycle, obviously, there are just two wheels. In order for you to be effective in sales negotiations, both wheels have to be spinning. And I categorize the two wheels, one as self advocacy, two as other advocacy. What I mean by that is self advocacy is you got. You gotta lobby on your behalf. You gotta protect what it is that you're trying to achieve in that conversation. The self advocacy wheel is fundamentally about that give. Excuse me, fundamentally about that gift. Here's what I'm trying to get in this conversation. It's what should guide the conversation. It's the thing that at some point in the beginning of the conversation here, I'm here to have a conversation to you, with you today about introducing me to your particular stakeholder, sharing with me this information or telling me this particular thing. If you go to the back of the wheel, the other advocacy wheel, it's fundamentally about the other person. So it's fundamentally about the give. If you want to think about it in that way, so crystal clear about what it is that you're trying to achieve, that's the git. That's what should guide the conversation. But in order to make sure that the conversation is grounded and doesn't feel like a one way street and you're just preaching to the other person, you need to make sure that you're empathetic. In essence, you need to make sure that you engage in these things that I call being trustworthy, being curious and being creative. It's fundamentally about involving the other person meaningfully in the conversation. Engage in all of these things, the front wheel and the back wheel. That tends to take you in the right direction most of the time. I know that's a large framework, Harrison, but we can break it down further, talk about different aspects of it if you want.

Yeah, I mean, I think maybe we start with the get side because I think that's probably the more actionable place to go for reps. So it's like if, let's say you've list, you've done your homework and you've listed out here that the five gets that I want out of like this conversation. How do you, how would that be structured? How would you think about it in the context of the framework?

Absolutely. So there's some bad tendencies for sellers once they've identified their gifts. One of the things is they tend to not convey that get clearly and concretely to the other person and just walk on eggshells or frame their git as a question. So rather than telling you something along the lines of critical for me to be introduced to this person, now they say something along the lines, can you introduce me to this particular stakeholder? And what they do is they dilute what it is that they're lobbying and negotiating on behalf of. That's one thing that immediately jumps to mind. So couple of things. When you're trying to structure this conversation, get clarity on what it is that you're trying to achieve, convey it, be concise and use language that doesn't undermine what it is that you're trying to achieve. And just go quiet, See how they respond. You don't know if they're gonna object, you don't know how they're gonna object. You don't know if they need you to give something in return in order for them to agree, let them take it in. And if they reject, you might wanna repeat it once or twice or three times in a way that feels comfortable for you and the other person. But you wanna make sure that they take that get seriously. And then at some point later down the road, after they take that get seriously, you can start to introduce some other gifts, like hey, I have something in mind, if you introduce me to your colleague, I know they're busy. What I can do in return is give them this particular insight or I can give them this particular thing to make sure that their basically a statement.

To them is like, introduce me this person. I plan to do this. And like. But I like that you're mentioning it as a statement where it's like, it's important that this person is involved versus can you introduce me to this person? That is really interesting because it, to your point, it conveys the importance of it and it makes it like, now I need this, right. If I'm going to do this, it's important that this person is involved.

So every negotiation, even those gifts exchanges in the beginning of the process, your git should always be your most ambitious. The Navy, right. It might actually induce some friction. That's a good thing if it induces friction because that tells you that the other person that tells you that you're asking for something meaningful enough. If it doesn't induce friction, then you're not probably. You're probably not asking for something meaningful enough.

I also think that the. A good point actually for me personally. We heard there is that I think I do the give and the ask quite a lot in meetings because I see myself as a someone who's like practices this art. However, I don't think I always link them closely enough. And I think that's what you're doing with the statement is you're linking the two things together rather than just giving and then asking. They're independent. So to follow the bike analogy, I'm probably riding two unicycles. They're not connected rather than an actual bike.

Right.

So I think that that's a challenge that many reps we fall into.

Elaborate a little bit on that point. Nick is making sure that you don't structure your gifts as trade offs. Your bits should be statements. Here's what I need, not here's what I need and here's what I'll give you in return. Because if you're conveying to them that there's room for negotiation right from the get go, you're not being as ambitious as you possibly can be in this conversation.

All right, this is, this reminds me of if this person is listening to this podcast episode, they'll know who exactly I'm talking about. But we were on a call, this was years ago, and he gave pricing and then immediately he said like, hey, it's gonna cost 2k, but I can definitely try and get some wiggle room or See what I can do from a discount perspective. And I'm like, what? You didn't even pause. You just continued your sentence. And so I said we came up with a phrase. It was don't negotiate with yourself. So it was basically, put it out there, shut the heck up. And then. And most of the time, like, I think, and you probably may know this too, is like. Or have thoughts around this is when people are quiet after you maybe ask or go for one of these gets. They're thinking about it. They're not like, yeah, they have to have time to process. And so on your end, you're freaking out because you just put out this, like, price or you just put this thing out into the world. And so time is going real fast in your mind, but you have to, like, put the phone on mute or something. Mute yourself on zoom, whatever it is. And. And just, like, let them think about it, digest it, and then respond before you, you know, come back with anything.

Else you can do. Breath at least.

Yeah, something.

So following on and going side with that. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever got in terms of negotiation of sales in general, is be the most comfortable person in the room with the awkwardness. Right. So when it gets awkward and silent, if you can be comfortable. And now I sit there, and in my head I'm thinking, I love this because everyone's hating it. And I've almost become sadistically enjoying the silence. I'll sit there for five minutes if I have to. Now I'm not worried. I'm not leaving. But, you know, I think that's key. You have to become comfortable with that.

Absolutely. That's what's sitting in the friction. Right. It's sitting there long enough, uh, not leave the other side with the impression that I'm gonna give you whatever it takes to make sure I get over the finish line.

I like sitting in the friction. That's a good. Yeah, that's a good phrase. I like that. Any other kind of other stuff that might be worth talking about on the get side of things. We're coming. Starting to come up on the end of the time here.

Yeah, I would get crystal clear on your gets. Phrase them as statements. Don't undermine yourself. Go quiet after you phrase it. And then maybe one additional thing is preemptively start to empathize with this person. What do I mean by that? Is before going into this conversation, if you have clarity on, you get start to think what is in this person's interest, what might. Why might they object and the reason you want to start to think about this for the conversation is so you can start to brainstorm about some potential gives and some potential trade offs you can make. This way they object. Then you can say here, I'm willing to do this for you. In return, here's what I'll give you. Or something along those lines. Ideally, you want to lead the entirety of the conversation. If you have some of those gives in mind, then you can give things that are of lower cost to you but still of value to that person.

I think also to your point, planning this out ahead of time and writing those things down, like, what are the things that are low cost to you that are high value for a customer? Like if you know four or five of those things just have them in your back pocket. The same thing goes for like terms. We were talking about terms earlier. It's like not everything is price when it comes to terms. There's all sorts of different things. And so it's like knowing what those, like knowing what matters most to the customer or to the client and having those in your back pocket are just like great rubbers to hold. Right?

One of the challenges for whoever decides to listen to this afterwards is to apply this framework in your next conversation every time. And one of the things that you should walk out of after those five conversations is you should be able to put together a list of pen glyphs and pen kits and you're obviously going to start to see patterns across your pursuits and patterns across the deals that you're working. Going to be easier to lobby and argue on behalf of those goods. You're going to know some of the gifts that you have in your back pocket that you can make it. The more prepared, the more you have these things in mind, the more likely you're able to lead these conversations and not operate from a place of anxiety and a place where you're sort of reactive and not deliberate enough.

I think that is a great kind of final call to action for everybody is to leverage that in your next conversations and then use those insights to basically better prepare yourself in the future.

One final point for me, because I always get to try and get the last word is don't think your gifts have to be company associated. I think a lot of reps think a give is something that's coming from my company because I'm in a sales call to sell my company. Often the best gives are unrelated. So like I can connect you with X person. Oh, have you seen this paper that's actually associated the same thing you're doing or I've often gone into a room with people and ended up working on an SOP with them because I have experience in that area. You know, it could be completely outside of the company, but they that raise your value as a person because this helps.

Yeah, absolutely.

Also, thank you for coming on, sharing your wisdom with everybody. Where can people go get the book? Why don't you give a quick plug?

So the book is called invalid and it's on Amazon available I think almost everywhere. All right, almost everywhere.

We'll throw a link, we'll throw a link to it in the show notes.

So everybody thanks and here's visual. But so when you, yeah.

So if you're only listening to this on the audio version, you missed the most exciting part of the opening on video. Go over to YouTube and check it out there.

Sam.