The Soft Skills and Hard Skills Needed For Effective Sales Negotiations
leadershipteam
Thu, 01/24/2019 – 15:45
Your salesperson, Caroline, has done a great job of opening a large opportunity. The sales conversations with the prospect have been thoughtful and insightful. The deal is at recommendation stage and the prospect puts on his professional buying hat and starts lobbing objections and/or requests for additional concessions in order for the deal to move forward.
Caroline gets triggered by the prospect’s hardnosed buying behavior and takes a defensive stance. She starts overselling, justifying her price and solutions and sounds something like the lyrics to the old Bee Gee’s hit song, “Staying Alive, Staying Alive.” Her emotional response creates the same reaction from the prospect resulting in two people who are fighting hard for their position. Not a good scenario for that win-win relationship.
Sales is a predictable. Good negotiators negotiate. So why do salespeople still act