How to coach your team members to develop a negotiating mindset

Hello Sales Reset Leader

Some of your team members are likely struggling with negotiating with their customers.

Much of this might be due to a perception of their unequal power relationship with customers. They might believe their customers have all the power.

Especially in the early stages of a sales career, salespeople believe they need to defer to customers' greater power.

In our Weekly Sales Reset newsletter this week, we emphasise the need for your team members to negotiate constantly. By negotiating constantly, your team members are more likely to manage everybody’s expectations more effectively.

And that will mean more reliable sales results for you!

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s first Weekly Sales Reset“:

• Title: If you're in B2B selling, you should always be negotiating!

• Subtitle: Negotiating is a mindset. Equal rights for salespeople!

How to improve your team's results this week

• Where to look for evidence

• Expected pushback

• Role-Play Recommendations

• Invitation to Weekly Sales Reset Stories - LIVE! o …

Where to look for evidence

We strongly recommend reviewing the evidence before your coaching sessions with each team member. The evidence you find will make your coaching significantly more effective.

Before you meet with your team members for your 1:1 coaching sessions this week, here’s where to find the evidence you need about their negotiation effectiveness.

You’re looking for evidence that your team members used a version of “If you give me some of what I want, I’ll give you some of what you want.”

Accompanied meetings, call recordings, and transcripts are the best places to discover what’s happening. You might also find evidence in emails and proposals.

You’ll likely find that some of your team members are giving away much of what they can give without getting anything in return.

Expected pushback

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members.

1. I don’t have permission to negotiate: You’ll likely encounter various versions of this pushback of varying intensity. You can help your team members realise that negotiating is a mindset.

2. My customers won’t negotiate with me: It’s more likely that your team members are encountering people who are more skilled negotiators!

3. I don’t have the required negotiation skills: This is the key. How can you help your team members develop the negotiating skills they must use at every stage of their sales process?

What are your best responses now that you know these potential pushback areas?

Role-Play Recommendations

1. Best Current Opportunity: What are the most significant aspects that require negotiating in each team member’s best current opportunity? Clarify how this approach will work with the specific details: “If you give me some of what I want, I’ll give you some of what you want.” Role-play the conversation.

2. Most Significant Next Meeting: What negotiations are likely in their next most significant meeting? Role-play the conversation.

3. Biggest Recent Loss: Role-play the significant negotiation that should have occurred in a team member’s recent loss now that you know what you know.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Invitation to Weekly Sales Reset Stories - LIVE! online

We’re hugely interested to hear how you and your team members get on with these recommendations about negotiating.

You and your team members are welcome to join us for a 45-minute discussion to share experiences in a weekly session in our FREE Sales Reset Together community every Tuesday from 16:30 to 17:15, UK time.

The session is designed to allow participants to share their experiences and stories about each Weekly Sales Reset theme.

Click here to join the community and learn more about the Tuesday session.

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Do your team members subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Weekly Sales Reset?