Are you thinking of choosing different sales and negotiation vendors? You may consider this startegy if you want the best of both worlds. You may be conteplating choosing a tier 1 sales training vendor for selling and a tier 1 negotiation training vendor for negotiation skills.
Choosing different sales and negotiation vendors with different methodologies is clearly more expensive and time consuming on many levels. So is there a payoff? Is it worth it?
Eperience from our clients that have taken this path in the past have been sorely disappointed. In this article we look at the principal reasons why.
Poor Results
We often think the objective of sales transformation is the transfering of best practice. How do we get the sales people to understand how to sell and negotiate better. Anyone who has undertaken such a programme will know that transfering of best practice is actually a subordinate objective to behavioural change. Getting the sales people to actually do what they should be doing is the best measure of success. For example, all sales people know that they should only give a concession if they can get something in return. But how often do we see this basic rule being broken? Training them in this example will not help to improve their negotiating skills in the real world. So if the primary objective of sales and negotiation transformation is to drive behavioural change, having separate sales and negotiation interventions and processes will actively work against your primary objective. That is why the results are so poor. Having separate interventions doubles your efforts and costs, whilst missing valuable reinforcement opportunities. Instead of separating sales and negotiation interventions, you should bring them together into one process and one set of tools that reinforce eachother.
Focus on what actually matters
Over 80% of negotiation training courses are irrelevant to sales people. My favourite phrase on the Salestrong negotiation skills courses is that you can’t negotiate your way out of a bad sales process. At Salestrong we don’t just teach negotiation, we actually negotiate for our clients. What we see time after time, is that a poor negotiation results from poor sales practices further back in time. If the sales person does not know the value that they create for a customer, it is very difficult to defend that value and the conversation quickly turns to the only lever left, price. Salestrong negotiation course focus on ensuring that the value is created, the value is communicated and then it can be captured in the negotiation process. Most negotiation courses assume that the value has been created and communicated and that the sales people need to be taught how to open, counter and trade in the negotiation. In our experience you can’t separate out these issues, they need to be brought together. For example, when avoiding negotiating over price and attempting to negotiate over wider issues, we need to look back at the research and analysis of the account performed in the sales process. Typically what we find is that there are gaps that need to be plugged. Using the same tools makes the process more expedient and substantially more effective.
Who are you negotiating with?
The sales people that we train are often negotiating with trained purchasers. Trained purchasers use specific tools and techniques to manage sales people and leverage their own position at the expense of the sales person. For example, they will issue a tender or RFP. How do you negotiate in such a situation where all attempts are made to strip power from the seller? Traditional negotiating training will not help here. Have you tried negotiating in a live auction? To counter such situations, you need to learn what tools the purchasers are using. Then use these tools to leverage your position, articulate value and drive a differented position that returns fair value back to your organisation.
Conclusion
It may seem intuitive to go with different sales and negotiation vendors. But doing so can produce conflicts that reduce adoption. Negotiation and sales cannot be separated as the two are so intertwined. A poor negotiation will generally have its genesis in a poor sales process. Bring the two together and enjoy greater success across your sales force.
