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5 Proven Strategies To Enhance Your Sales Negotiation Skills

Are you tired of you and your team walking away from sales negotiations feeling like you could have done better?

There’s a good chance you lack the right skills and strategies to successfully negotiate, making the process even more challenging and stressful than it inherently is. 

Fortunately, there are ways to enhance your team’s sales negotiation skills, increase your chances of closing deals, and negotiate favorable terms with decision-makers and prospects.

This article explores five proven strategies to improve negotiation skills in detail and provides practical tips and examples to help you put them into practice. 

Identify the Right Person To Talk To

Before contacting a company, find the decision-maker with the authority to cut deals with you. 

Identifying this decision-maker before reaching out prevents you from contacting the wrong person within the organization, creating an unnecessary back-and-forth over who to contact with your offer.

Finding this person before reaching out to the company enables you to practice anchoring in negotiation. Knowing who they are and what they want allows you to influence their perception of what’s fair and use it to your advantage to close deals that favor your company.

For starters, establish your buyer persona. You want to zero in on zero in on people who are most likely to buy your product.

Next, research the company and its organizational structure to determine who the decision-makers are. You can also use social media platforms like LinkedIn to find more information about this person to help personalize your sales outreach and pitch according to their needs and wants.

Create Value for the Product You’re Offering

From information you gather about the decision-maker, align your product benefits according to what they value the most. This approach helps you establish a stronger position in the negotiation and increase your leverage to negotiate favorable terms.

It also differentiates your product from competitors and increases the perceived value of your offering in the eyes of the customer. 

Start by highlighting your product’s unique features and benefits and demonstrate how they can help decision-makers achieve their goals and solve their problems. 

Use their pain points to craft incentives or value-added services to sweeten the deal and make your offer even more attractive. You can use sales intelligence to provide you with a better understanding of what ails them, giving you ideas as to what incentives they’ll find interesting.

Another way to create value for your product is by establishing a strong relationship with the customer and demonstrating your expertise and knowledge of the industry. Doing so allows you to position yourself as a valuable partner and increase the customer’s willingness to negotiate favorable terms.

Explore Other Opportunities to Make the Deal Work

It’s common for decision-makers to be apprehensive about your offer for various reasons. Your goal is to work through their concerns and find ways to make things work with them, and come to a reasonable agreement.

Having a solution-oriented mindset for every sales negotiation allows you to be more flexible and creative in finding mutually beneficial solutions. 

This strategy points you back to the customer’s needs and priorities to help you find ways to address those needs while still achieving your own goals. It is important to note, however, that you shouldn’t present alternative solutions immediately during the negotiation— only bring up these opportunities if they resist your initial offers.

For instance, if the issue involves pricing, make the deal more attractive to the customer by offering alternative pricing models, such as installment payments or volume discounts.

Another strategy you might try is being flexible when setting sales appointments. Instead of giving them your available times for the appointment, let them decide when they want to hold the call. By letting them choose when the negotiation will occur (and how), you give them control over the situation, which makes them more likely to take your call and become your client.

By being open to compromise and alternative solutions, you can increase your chances of building stronger relationships with your prospects—if not reaching a successful outcome.

Keep Your Emotions in Check

If the decision-maker is making the negotiation unnecessarily difficult, it’s easy to let your emotions, such as anger, frustration, or impatience take control. Giving in to these emotions, however, will simply derail the negotiation process and everything you’ve worked for up to that point. 

Instead, remain steadfast and keep your eye on the prize, which is to close the negotiation with a sale. Everything else is just noise to keep in check.

First, prepare yourself mentally and emotionally before the negotiation. You can practice relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or visualization to calm your nerves and reduce stress. It’s essential to maintain a positive attitude and approach the negotiation with an open mind and a willingness to collaborate.

During the negotiation, it’s important to actively listen to the other party and try to understand their perspective. Showing empathy and understanding allows you to build rapport and establish a more productive dialogue. 

Finally, it’s crucial to focus on the facts and avoid making assumptions or jumping to conclusions. By staying objective and rational, you can make better decisions and negotiate more effectively.

To further help your sales team keep their eye on the prize, implement employee rewards to acknowledge salespeople who not only kept their emotions in check but also closed the sale. This approach gives them more incentive to get the job done.

Know When to Walk Away

Just because your goal is to close the deal in front of you doesn’t mean you have to give your arm and leg for that to happen.

To do this, you must set clear goals and objectives for the negotiation and establish a bottom line that you are not willing to cross. 

You can also consider the other party’s behavior and willingness to negotiate in good faith. If the other party is unwilling to compromise or makes unreasonable demands, it may be time to walk away.

Another way to know when to walk away is to consider the opportunity cost of the negotiation. If the decision-maker is strong-arming you to make a deal that puts you and your company at a disadvantage, it’s better to walk away from the table instead of making the deal happen just for the sake of closing a sale. Knowing when to walk away allows you to avoid wasting time and resources on negotiations that are unlikely to be successful. 

Conclusion

The most important thing to know about sales negotiation is that it’s not about winning or losing but about finding mutually beneficial solutions that meet the needs of both parties. By focusing on the customer’s needs and priorities, you also make selling your products much easier.

The key to achieving mutually beneficial solutions is enhancing your sales negotiation skills. Whether you’re a seasoned sales professional or just starting, take the time to develop your negotiation skills and put these strategies into practice. These strategies will help you optimize in advance the sales process and convince decision-makers to strike a deal with you.

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