Joanne M Smith believes that negotiation preparation in 2023 will be more critical than ever. Why? Because change is happening. We’ve been in an easy negotiation market. She points out that we’re looking at a potential recession where pricing power is going to shift away from suppliers and into the hands of the customers. That’s why she believes salespeople need to plan for tough conversations. Learn what that looks like in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
The best economists believe that we’ll see a recession within months. When it happens, a salesperson’s job will become harder. You have to adjust your strategy to be fair in the economic conditions you find yourself in.
Make sure you have a rationale for whatever your price point is. Does your industry fairly deserve more? Are you in a position where you can increase your prices?
Your leadership must look at macroeconomics, supply and demand, and the cost of inflation, and give you crisp strategies with real talking points so you can have tough conversations.
So how do you prepare for tough conversations in a negotiation?
Ask yourself, “For this deal, what are the toughest questions that I’m likely to be asked related to my offering or to my price?” In many cases, the questions will be price-oriented. When you ask those questions, you know the data you need to prepare to craft a satisfactory response.
A salesperson needs to be comfortable with tension and willing to respectfully enter into price discussions. They have to be able to guide the customer toward a better solution they might not be aware of. If you’re going to be confident, you must prepare.
Joanne asks everyone she trains: How do you self-rate on price negotiation skills and confidence? 90% of salespeople think they’re great at sales and feel like they’re mediocre at best when it comes to price negotiation.
She emphasizes that you have to take a step back and realize that you don’t know enough and start learning. Set up some frameworks to make it easy to prepare and effectively negotiate that price.
Joanne shares some great tips to keep in mind when you’re negotiating:
Joanne was working with a global business in the construction space. They had a clear and fair reason to raise their prices over the last year. But their sales team wasn’t confident and was afraid they’d lose sales. Three different regions started training with Joanne. The European branch decided they didn’t need training. What happened?
The three regions that completed the training got their price increases with high success and little to minimal share loss. The region that didn’t complete training had a 30% share loss in their largest country. Her workshop covered negotiation preparation. They prepared by practicing responding to tough questions. It goes to show that preparation will always be key.
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