Get Your Armor On! 4 Ways To Defend Your Price During A Sales Negotiation

Much has been written (some of it by me) about what a sales negotiator can do when the other side of the table has set a fixed price and just won’t budge. We’ve come up with all sorts of ways to turn a fixed price into not such a fixed price. This time out, let’s … Read more

Learn To Say “No” From A Russian

So What’s So Hard About Saying “No”? As I work with sales negotiators and teams of negotiators I am constantly surprised by just how hard it is for them to say one simple word: “No” . I’m not sure if it’s the way that we’ve been raised or if we all have some built-in need … Read more

Follow The Bouncing Price: What Sales Negotiators Need To Know

A Price Is Not A Fixed Thing Inexperienced sales negotiators often enter into a negotiation thinking that the price of something that they are trying to buy or sell is fixed – it’s set in concrete and cannot be changed. They think that their goal is to “discover” what this price is through negotiating. Those … Read more

Do You Really Have To Have A Target When You Start A Sales Negotiation?

The Problem With Most Sales Negotiations So there you are, all ready to start another sales negotiation. Hold on a minute, are you really ready? Sure you’ve researched the other side of the table, you’ve created a negotiation strategy, in fact you’ve done just about everything that you can think of in order to prepare … Read more

Do We Really Need To Negotiate If We’re Going To Be Partners?

Welcome To The Age Of Partnering Remember when every business used to view themselves as an island? This made life pretty simple for anyone doing sales negotiations – it was always us vs. them. Well, it sure looks like someone farther up the corporate ladder has been reading those business self-help books and they’ve decided … Read more

How To Negotiate A Raise In 2010

What Makes You Think That You Deserve A Raise? As a new year gets underway, it might be a good time to have a talk about one of your most important types of negotiations: asking for a raise. Wait a minute: did I see you just grimace? Did you turn away? Why the reaction – … Read more

Big Mouth Negotiations: Howard Stern Vs. Sirius Radio

The Background That Howard Stern is famous, nobody can deny. That he is paid a lot of money is another indisputable fact. Where things get interesting (from a negotiating point of view) is what happens when his current contract runs out… If you’ve ever listened to Howard for any length of time, he’s always talking … Read more

5 Ways To Get The Most Out Of A Negotiation Team

The Challenge Of Managing A Team Of Negotiators Today’s sales negotiation sessions have become so complex that it’s almost too much for a single negotiator to handle. That’s one reason that more and more sales negotiators are being handled by teams of trained negotiators. This simplifies a lot of the record keeping and tactical details … Read more

To Team Or Not To Team, That Is The Question

Don’t you just love movies? Whenever there is a negotiation going on in a movie, be it with hostage takers or closing a big business deal, there is always the picture of the noble solitary sales negotiator doing his / her best to close the deal against almost impossible odds. Can you tell me what … Read more

5 Keys To Sales Negotiation Success

How can you become a better sales negotiator? For such a simple question, there seems to be no corresponding simple answer. I guess that we all know that the best sales negotiators seem to always know what to do and when to do it. Now if there was only some way that we could pick … Read more