The well-prepared concession.

The appropriate confidence.

The perfect timing.

All of these are crucial negotiation strategies and tactics that will advance or stall the progress of a deal.

Training your sales team to negotiate may be more mission critical than ever.

Economic Flux and Sales Challenges

Consumer behavior drives the economy. 

Whether a company is selling B2C or B2B, people’s purchasing habits impact every business on every level. 

Many companies are belt-tightening in response to persistent recession rumors. 

Technology is changing how businesses function, reducing the need for previously vital tools or personnel. 

The big picture is that world economies and the businesses that operate in them are in flux, which can create uncertainty.

That uncertainty makes businesses hesitant to make new purchases of any kind, which makes the job of a rep all the harder.

Reps need to be superbly trained and well-equipped to tackle all of these challenges. Businesses may use economic uncertainty as an excuse to ask for more for less, and all of these trades happen at the negotiation table.

Are your reps up to the task?

Let’s get them ready.

Become a Better Communicator

Sales is human: person to person interactions. Even if there are dozens of decision-makers and lots of relationships to build, that is the heart of what sales is.

Communication is a core competency of salespeople. Good ones, anyway.

This is a skill reps will never reach the finish line for: everyone can sharpen their powers of communication. As they do, they will be building tools that improve negotiations.

Here are some ways to train your sales team in communication:

Listen — But, wait, aren’t we talking about… talking? Isn’t that what communication is? Not in full. Listening skills are easy to ignore but a good rep will leverage them for an advantage.

Do your reps know how to find out what is on someone’s whiteboard? That is, what their key priorities are? Do they know how to build connections? How to really listen to what a prospect needs, rather than waiting for their turn to pitch? 

These are easy to practice and develop and essential to sales success.

Notice — You know the kind of people you love most? The people who notice you. The people who, yes, listen, but who also call you out and ask for your opinion, who want you to speak up, who engage with you on your own terms in a way that suits your personality. 

This is a maximally effective trait that has everything to do with how connected someone feels to you. 

When reps are trained to be more observant, they will notice not just the person they’re speaking to, but the broader circle of influencers who are relevant to reach for a sales scenario. 

Question — Sales reps often conflate confidence with having all the answers. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Discovery is all about taking the position of a learner, and reps who are really good at asking strategic questions will get to the core issues much faster. 

This is especially true in the context of negotiations, where what isn’t said, what isn’t uncovered, and what isn’t volunteered can be the most valuable information for moving a deal forward. 

Let them get comfortable with this posture and be quick to ask questions.

Be Brief — Brevity is the soul of wit and the key to conversational flow. There’s nothing more painful than watching someone talk themselves in circles, using precious moments and losing everyone’s attention. 

Reps have to learn how to keep it short, sweet, and to the point.

In this blog, we talk briefly about the power of silence, which is a whole new level of communication acumen.

Become an Expert

Sales reps need to be experts in two ways:

1. Product/service experts
2. Industry experts

First:

Ill-equipped sales reps with sub-par product or service information will fail.

This may seem like an obvious point but we encounter it more often than you’d think, even in enterprise sales contexts.

Products and solutions are changing faster than ever, whether it be a software update or a value prop shift or any number of other pivots.

In large organizations especially, there can be silos that preclude the collaboration of business development, product development, marketing, sales, and more. There would be nothing more damaging to a negotiation than a rep lacking the latest greatest info.

Second:

Reps don’t just need to be experts in what they sell, they need to have a firm grasp of the industry at large. This helps them speak not just in generalities but to what a company is specifically experiencing in the moment, tying a lot of threads together to weave a compelling argument.

Coming to the negotiation table, reps need to be prepared to handle objections, to be savvy about wording, and to appeal to the right levers. They need to be experts.

How do you train your sales team to become experts?

Here are several ideas:

• Support their personal branding and own voice on social media, your blog, and other outlets (as they have to create their own content, they’ll dig deeper into analysis)
• Encourage personal/professional development through coaching
• Give them access to courses and resources for continuous learning
• Share articles and research with them through internal company channels
• Invest in sales training from industry experts

Become Rejection Resistant

A big part of skillful negotiation is confidence.

Reps who fear rejection won’t have the boldness to stand up and confidently direct a negotiation.

Like any social-emotional skill, dealing with rejection is about mindset.

Accept reality — Reps need to know that “no” is an answer and they might have to live with it. 

While the goal of a negotiation is to emerge with a win-win, they might lose, and they can’t be so afraid of doing so that they remove all pressure from the situation. 

Deals in limbo are almost as bad as deals that don’t go through. In the end, not ending a negotiation with decisive action and walking away with clarity does a great deal of harm. 

Reps need to live with the reality that they may succeed or fail.

Stay optimistic — That reality perspective needs the counterbalance of optimism. 

Reps shouldn’t be fatalistic about the outcome of a negotiation. 

They need to be optimistic about both this immediate situation and their future as a skilled negotiator who can drive ideal outcomes. 

This can be achieved by pragmatically evaluating their performance with a great sales coach: what went right? What went wrong? What next?

Always be opportunistic — Reps in the B2B space may spend tons of time nurturing prospects and getting to the negotiation table. 

Having all their efforts in one basket can be a challenge toward seeing the bigger picture. 

What if it goes south? Is it, then, all for naught? 

They need a good sales leader to help them zoom out and remember that there are and always will be more opportunities to pursue. 

Train Your Sales Team in Negotiation Strategies and Tactics: ASLAN Sales Training

At ASLAN, we believe that every rep on your team who has the will to grow should get the chance.

This means shoring up the full range of skills that make up a high-performing sales rep.

Early stats from our own business show that a huge number of companies are investing in sales training early this year. In a high-pressure, highly unreceptive market, the time is now to arm your reps with the abilities they need to succeed in the real world.

Contact us to learn more about ASLAN sales training programs.