Sales Negotiation Tools that Work

Successful sales negotiation depends on more than just an individual seller’s set of skills. Mastering tactical maneuvers will never provide the kind of framework your sales team needs to consistently win great deals for your company.

An effective sales negotiation process leverages the value and differentiation of your company’s offerings, creates alignment across internal departments and provides sellers with a repeatable framework to use successfully in the field.

You may have a relatively young sales force that's frequently having to negotiate with seasoned procurement professionals. Perhaps, you find yourself getting increasingly frustrated with the fact that your team is always having to discount on price. Or, you know as a leader, that there is a lack of consistency in how your salespeople approach deals.  If you're dealing with any of those challenges, it's likely your organization could benefit from developing some key negotiation tools that support your salespeople's ability to negotiate on value.

Negotiation Framework

A Negotiation Framework creates consistency around your sales organization’s negotiation process. It helps you define what a great deal looks like for your company, and aligns internal resources around that agreed-upon definition. The framework also leverages your key messages of value and enables salespeople to deliver them consistently throughout the customer engagement process.

Value Negotiation Planner

Gathering key information about each buyer and communicating value in each deal is essential for successful customer negotiations. A Value Negotiation Planner helps your team gather and compile key information about each deal and leverage it, from a single point of reference, throughout the sales process. A Value Negotiation Planner for your company should include answers to key questions, like:

• What makes a Great Deal?
• What are the Most Likely Alternatives?
• What are your Anchors?
• What are the Give/Gets? 
• What are the insights you've gained through this negotiation? 

Multiple Options Tool

When you outline multiple options for each customer, sales reps have well-defined and consistent options to leverage in their negotiations. Agreement on this pre-defined criteria also creates needed alignment within your organization and gives reps confidence to position your value and move a deal forward more quickly.

You expect your sellers to successfully negotiate winning deals. Yet, with sales negotiations, come questions and expectations from both your buyer and your own sales organization. Ensuring you have a framework to support sales negotiation creates consistency in the sales organization, streamlines internal processes, preserves margin, and results in a higher average deal size.