Top 5 Negotiating Skills for Salespeople

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winnie and Selling Podcast. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Rich Development Systems. At the end of most proposal or quote presentations, there's a chance of a negotiation breaking out. Being unprepared is not a good option and will probably prompt an unplanned of reaction such as a price reduction. The professional salesperson is prepared and ready to respond, saving the sale and maintaining profitability.

0:34 You're going to have to sharpen your pencil. As Scott and I discuss top five negotiating skills for salespeople and other concerning conundrums on Episode 659 of the Winnie and Selling Podcasts. I'm really looking forward to that discussion, Bill. There's something in the opening when you say price reduction. I started my sales career in real estate and I was told by Roger Butcher, I remember it specifically, he said, do not use the term price reduction.

1:03 It's a price adjustment. We adjust according to the marketplace. Yeah, but we never adjust up to negotiation. But we have a client that they said price adjustment or they said price increase or price reduction. And I said, is it safe to use price adjustment? Does the price ever go down? And they go, yeah, sometimes the price goes down. I said, then let's use price adjustment. That way it leaves uncertainty that sometimes we give it back to them later when they continue the price.

1:32 I think we can do that when we're talking about an entire price adjustment across the board. But when we're in the middle of a negotiation, we're not adjusting the price up. Okay, thank you for reporting that out to me. Let's charge you another 10%. We'll get into that later. But right now we're going to do the book, recovering the one thing by Gary Keller. Today, we're going to discuss chapters 11 and 12. Chapter 11 is the success habit. So this turns the big picture question of what's the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary into a small focus question.

2:13 It's broken into what we commonly see as the wheel of life. We've seen this wheel of life and I think most of us that have gone through a sales training or anything like that. And so it has a slice of pie. So we have spiritual and health and personal life and relationships. And in this particular example, they use job. I like the word career because a job is within a career and then talks about business. And I'm not sure what's the difference.

2:38 Okay. And then finances. And he's adapting each of these seven areas into the small focus question of let's use career as an example is what's the one thing I can do to hit my monthly sales goal. So it starts to get really, really specific on that. And in the book, they list all of the areas, so spiritual health, personal life, etc. And then they have questions in there that you ask yourself, what can I do in this area such that everything else is easier or unnecessary. And I like that, but I don't think life is like a pie and there are slices. I think about my faith. I don't have a slice of pie that has my faith. My faith is my entire pie and everything I do within the pie is related to things.

3:25 So it's tough for me to be able to break that down into small pieces. Now I can make a commitment of it as a goal to a specific goal within that area. But sometimes the pie slices, it comparts and mentalizes that area. And it's part of the whole pie instead of just one slice. What do you think though? Well, you know, back on chapter eight, he was talking about the lies that were told. And a balanced life is one of those lies that were told that life is going to be in balance. And my challenge with this chapter and with this wheel of life, situation that we've seen in other people talk about, you know, I got a flat tire in my wheel of life, is that he said, be out of balance.

4:04 Now he's trying to get me in balance on all these seven or eight or 27 areas. And we're moving from the one thing to the seven things. Right. Wow. And that's a challenge for me because what I believe is that in order to be successful, sometimes you need to be out of balance. Which means there's maybe I'm not putting as much time into my family or maybe I'm not putting as much time into whatever one of these balance relationships.

4:33 I'm horrible at relationships anyway. So, you know, I don't know. True. Thanks a lot. So anyway, I just don't put time into relationships. I'm okay. If you don't call me for seven years and then you call me and I'm just as happy to hear from you. I don't need to invest an hour a week into my relationship with Scott. Yeah. Yeah. With somebody I don't, I'm not going to see. But if they call me, I'm happy to, I'm happy to hear from. Yeah.

5:01 So anyway, that's kind of the challenge I have with this. Although I do think there's nothing wrong with setting some goals in your personal life and your faith life, whatever. Right. Right. And some things have to be on autopilot. Well, they have to be, you know, and they bring up one of the areas is to make it a habit. So research says that you can, you know, take 66 days to set a new habit or to break an old habit. But, you know, it's only if you're really focused on it, I'm sure that it can be less.

5:32 I think about if we're going to make a commitment to health and drop a few pounds. Okay. You might put a little bit more energy and that is a priority on the life wheel that that that slice. We're going to spend more time there because we want to drop 10 pounds or so we get into a habit of it. Right. Get into a habit and routine. I don't think it's going to take 66 days. I've heard 18 days. I've heard 66 days. I've heard that the old 18 to 21 days is a lot. And I believe that it takes you longer because it's too easy too easy to drop out of a habit. But remember, willpower is not on will call.

6:03 That's right. I remember one of the chapters. Every time we make a decision in one of these areas to put some energy into it. It's going to take some energy from someplace else. It is a time. Like diet, right? Okay. So there's some things I've given which lent you and I have both given up some things for Lent. It's a good time. But that takes energy. You know, I want to grab a piece of candy. The willpower I have to say, I'm not going to do that. That takes willpower. It takes some energy to not grab that thing that I've been grabbing to not have desserts.

6:38 I have that desire. I want something sweet. I want something sugary. I'm not going to do it. That takes some of my willpower to do that thing. So when we break this into these seven areas or however many he had, it takes some energy to say, I'm going to do some work in my OK, I got to do my taxes, right? That takes energy. That's a thing. And it's a mental block. I hate to do them. And my wife's, you know, good white. Hey, you're going to do those taxes yet. She's trying to be nice and not say dummy. Get them done before April 15th. But it's an energy drain that's going to take it from someplace else.

7:19 And that's why you and I have talked about put those those things that require a lot of energy for me that that I have to a lot of willpower. Let's say I try to do those in the morning. And I have more willpower. And then I try to put more client opportunities in the afternoon where it will force me to push some energy into it. I'm not going to go into a client meeting all dragged out. I'll get the energy. I'll find it. I'll create it. I'll manufacture it. Right. So anyway, that's my my bugaboo on this.

7:53 Yeah, I have to come from somewhere. And now when you've got seven small focuses, it's taking away from the one thing, which is this book. Yeah, yeah. A couple of points on this particular chapter is in the closing remarks. It says, you know, you must believe that it can make a difference in your life. If committing to this one thing, this area, and you're breaking it down into that small question, that small commitment, but you have to believe it. You have to believe that that is going to have an impact on your life. And you have to believe in the outcome based on the commitment.

8:27 Commitment will follow beliefs. If you don't believe it, you will not have a commitment to do it. And another lastly, a comment is, you know, and here's from the book until the one thing is done. Everything else is a distraction. Yep. And my good friend, Oliver Frisco, and a God rest his soul. He said one time to me. And I just I just cannot forget this. He said, Scotty. He was the only person that would call him Scotty. He said, Scotty.

8:52 What is the goal? I'm a circle on him, Scotty. Yeah. What is the goal? Everything else is a distraction. And this man could lock in on something and he would not get distracted on it. And that's really, really good advice. And it's nice to see it emulated and repeated in the book. Moving on to chapter 12, the path to great answers. So it starts off, ask a great question, find a great answer. And it uses this think big and be specific.

9:20 Or and research and look at a role model. I don't really understand the research and role model because he didn't use it in the example, but that was part of the opening and the intro. And he uses a circle. So I'm going to call upon your imagination or listeners. And if you actually got the book and you're reading along, you don't need your imagination. But if you're expecting us to carry the load for you, you're missing out on every one of these, what is it? 17 books we've gone through now, Scotty?

9:47 Yeah, 17 or 19. I would. Yeah, I don't know. 4,000 pages. Yeah. You're expecting us to carry the load. You're not getting the most out of these things. You will find yourself in reading. And it's so good at the illustrations described as well. This is a tough one. I don't blame you. It's easier if you can open the book and go, Oh, I know what Scott's talking about. So those that are following along at home, you can test my comprehension. And if you can see the same picture that I have, I did a pretty good job. So let's think of about a circle. So the top bottom or the circle is top and bottom left and right. So the top is big.

10:30 The bottom is small. The right side is specific. The left side is broad. So the upper left hand corner, big and broad upper right hand corner, big and specific lower left hand corner, small and broad lower right hand corner, small and specific. What helped me with this, Scott, is singing also of the urgent, not urgent, important, not urgent. I thought you might go out. Right. There's a quadrants here. This is a different. He just made it a circle. He did. He took the square and he made it a circle. So it wasn't the same as somebody else. This is how we steal ideas.

11:06 And he went small and big and specific and non specific, but it's it's breaking this into quadrant so you can put the right things and where am I going to put my time, right? Yeah. Yeah. For some reason in the chapter, he started with quadrant four, which is where you want to end up. So lower right hand corner corner corner is where we're at. So here's the question that he has. Small and specific, right? Lower right hand corner. I think so. I'd have to look at mine. Because if it was a square, I could figure it out.

11:37 Yeah. Exactly. The circle throws everything else. Here's the question. What can I do to increase sales by 5% this year? Small and specific. Is what he's he's really concentrating on quadrant four quadrant three lower left hand corner. What can I do to increase sales? So this is a broader question. Not as specific lower upper right hand corner quadrant two is what can I do to double sale? So a little bit more specific on that, but still a little bit broad and then quadrant one upper right hand corner.

12:13 What can I do to double sales in six months? A little bit more specific. So each of these questions can represent bigger, small, specific and broad. So even if you don't want to use the circle or the quadrants, just think about how detailed you can get in some of the goals that you have and to be able to visualize it. And as you're doing that, this is also in the same chapter. This is out of the book. The challenge in asking great questions is once you've asked it, you're now faced with finding great answers.

12:45 So the answers fall into three categories and they're doable. They're a stretch goal and the possibilities that can come out of that goal. And I really liked how they broke that up within this particular chapter. So how did he, what direction did he start in four and come backwards? Yeah, I think he did. He started in one and go forward. No, he started in four and then went backwards all the way down to the general one.

13:16 I don't see how that helps us. I guess maybe that's how my mindwork is in broad down to specifics. Take that broad goal. I want to double my sales this year and then start. Okay, how am I going to break that into smaller goals? Or how am I going to eat an elephant? I can't double my sales in December. That's what you've always said. Don't wait on this goal. You've got to break it down into small segments so that each week or month, however you want to do it or two week period, but maybe how often you're going to meet with your boss.

13:50 How can I put this into goals that I can then achieve and know immediately when I'm behind? Because I can't get six weeks behind and then go, oh my gosh, I have way off my goal. Right, now you're cramming for a harvest in the woods. Yeah, well, that's right. I can't go out and sow in August, hope to reap in September. I had to sow back in April and May. It takes four months for some things to grow. And so often, I think we forget that harvesting is such a valuable recognition of how the world works. I plant one seed of corn. I don't get one seed of corn back. I get an abundance. I get a stalk with 10 ears. Each ear has thousands of corn pieces on it. That's the only way we can grow things.

14:50 But I can't, again, I can't sow in July and hope to reap in August. I've got to sow way back and do it. It's talking about going out and networking and people. I'm not going to get that on one try. I've got to be committed to it and say, I'm going to go out and I'm going to find something every month to go and meet new people. Where you and I are helping each other find new opportunities to go out and meet people. So I think that that's what I really got out of this.

15:27 Yeah. Is that it's the small, specific things, but not just doing them once. Those are the things that doing over and over and over and over again. Those then increase and become the big and broad thing that we were hoping. Right. Right. I want to close on the book on this one sort of saying that we've all heard. Most of us have heard is there's smart goals, specific, specific, attainable, realistic and timely. Yeah. And there's two letters in there. There's two words in there that I would struggle with. Attainable and realistic. And when we have a smart goal and we look at attainable and realistic, we're at doable.

16:14 We're not at stretch and we're not at possibilities. When people make smart goals attainable and realistic, they don't want to be disappointed. They don't want to do more than the minimum. So they look at what I understand what you're saying, but I think it is how your brain works. Right. I may say, I may say the word attainable means if I stretch, I can get this. Okay. Right. You may be looking attainable because of who you are and saying, well, that means I don't have to work at all. Right. You get to this. So, so instead of a 5% increase this month, I need a .0002 and then I got it. Right. I'm going to make a dollar more.

16:57 Well, that you've got to you've got to push yourself a little bit that attainable does not mean easy. Right. Right. This is realistic mean simple. Right. It means it means I can conceive it if I push myself. Mm hmm. So. Let me get understand. I understand what you're saying that, you know, I can't I can't take those two words and have them mean easy and and, you know, sit on my butt. It'll happen years ago. I worked for the world's largest legal publisher and I sold websites to attorneys on these coast and I had a goal of $36,000 in revenue in one year. Now that's not a lot of money, but granted, this was 20 years ago.

17:38 My commission on 36,000 was 5%. If I hit 48,000, my commission was 10%. And if I did the stretch goal of 72,000, my goal was 15% commission. And guess what the kicker was? It was retroactive. They pushed me to that stretch goal. And I achieved that stretch goal of 72,000. I doubled my quota, my first full year at that company because I did not want to be attainable and realistic. I wanted to go for the stretch goal and nothing. They were paying you logarithmically better. Exactly.

18:17 To hit that stretch goal. And therefore it became not something it became realistic in your mind because you said, look at this is so much more money. Yes. If I hit this, I had the same thing when I worked at Radio Shack. I got paid a percentage of profits, the same percentages. They so each percentage point I increased in profits for that store. I got paid. So if I could get 11% profits, I got 11% of it. If I get 20% profits, I got 20% of it.

18:46 So the curve didn't go up in a straight line. It curved up exponentially so that my first year when I was running the Radio Shack in Murrohe, Mullen Des Moines, I had a bonus check of $13,000. That was half of my pay for the year. Was that bonus? I took that out and I bought a sports car, which I really like and still have, but it cost me a million dollars in the long term. That story, I don't know where that story is, it's somewhere. Let me just add the chapters.

19:22 I'm going to just say one thing. This is a mistake companies make when they try to beat up the compensation plan. They take away that same urgency that you felt that I felt. Do things right because I got paid more instead of getting punished for selling more. And using the model that they talked about in the book, what's the one thing I can do to achieve the stretch goal that is possible? Here's one thing I did. I made more up on phone calls than anybody else in my department. I made over 250 outbound phone calls every single week because I still have a call tracking reports more than anybody else in the department.

20:07 That's why I was number one. I just made more up on phone calls. I was not smarter. I was the newest one to the company into the department. You were so stupid. You didn't know to not do it. No, I don't pay me retroactively at 15%. Yeah, you bet. I'm going for it. That's going to be good in December, baby. Exactly. All right. This has been fun. Great conversation. We got to get on to negotiating skills. All right. Here we go. Next week, though, we're going to talk about part three introduction and chapter 13.

20:35 So just as a reminder, top five negotiating skills for salespeople's our topic today. And Scott and I have had numerous conversations about negotiating salespeople. You need to be successful. And I think they need to know more and the better they are negotiating, the less they will be likely willing to drop the price in order to get the sale. Scott seems to think something different, which I do not understand. I cannot articulate. So Scott, I'm going to let Scott talk about what wrong is. So I thought you're going to cover it. My Scottie, my position is going to change. I'm going to call you Scottie now.

21:11 At least his whole show that I might forget. After you talk about this because I've had a preview of your notes. And here's my position. I believe the definition of negotiation is different when used by salespeople and managers. Negotiation begins with a strategy and planning. I don't think that most people go into a conversation having a strategy and having a planning of how to achieve the goal when you're in sales. I think salespeople have to sell. And I think the only understanding of negotiations with salespeople is concessions and that's cutting the price.

21:47 Well, that's because they weren't trained. I know. But they don't have a strategy and they're not planning on how to have a conversation for a win-win at the end. Well, they're also told, you've got a 10% buffer here that you can negotiate. And the first thing they do is go, hey, we did a class. Scott and I did a class for a company. And we talked about ask questions and don't give up and we're talking about negotiating it. And we did a practice session at the end. The very first guy, his opening sentence was, hey, and if you make the decision today, I'll give you a 5% discount. And I said, what the hell are you doing? We just talked about maintaining price.

22:33 And the first thing you do is give away your only negotiating position as an opening gambit. And he said, oh, I don't do that regularly. I said, bullcrap, you do that every time because that's the first thing that came out of your mouth when we went to a practice session. So that's what Scott's talking about. Right. Exactly. But I'm talking about train them so they don't do that. All right. Change my mind. Change my mind on what you got. There's no mind to change there. You got to have a mind in order to change it. We're going to start about what the five skills I think are important and Scott's going to try and defend his dumb position against his one.

23:09 Yeah. Because he's going to say, don't train him on this. And then they won't do it. No, he's not. All right. Number one, asking questions and listening. Now, this is, you're going to say that sales. Yes. Yes. If you don't have, if you don't know what they need, if you don't know what they want, if you don't know who the competition is, if you don't know what their budget is, if you don't know what their objections are, you're not going to be able to negotiate anything because you're selling the wrong thing.

23:36 You're selling what you got and not what they need. And there's nothing to negotiate on. And then the second thing is you got to ask, ask, ask, you got to ask questions about motivation. Right. Not just about the facts, then how big and how many and how often and what kind of quality and all those. It's, if we do this right, what does it mean to you? You know, I'm working with a landscape company. Who are you going to entertain in this backyard? Who's going to see? Oh, my son's graduation is coming up.

24:05 We're going to have a big party here and we want this backyard to look great. That's the motivation. The size of the amount of, you know, bricks you're going to use and the quality of the bricks, those all then tie into what's the motivation. So, so if you don't do the things right in the sale, if you don't have a good sales process and you don't find out what they need, well, what are you negotiating on? Right. Right. All right. The second one, thorough research and preparation. And that's what Scott talked about on strategy and planning. So this is a different way of saying that, right? But, but are you working to find other influence? Who else is going to be making this decision?

24:47 Right. You know, you're talking to one person, but there's other people's involved. Oh, who's the competition? How do they do proposals? And what's their pricing? Scott and I sat down with what we said on with a number of companies. Recently. And each time we tell them what our process is, they're like, really? You do that. We know our competition isn't doing that. And that is the pre work that we do, the interviewing we do, the sales strategy we develop. They don't do those things.

25:16 They're just coming in and saying, here's what we have off the shelf and we'll teach your people and they'll be great afterwards. Man, we're just knocking our competition out because we know what they're not doing. Right. So, so thoughts on that. What kind of research and preparation do you think about? Yeah, I love the idea of a proposal. You've introduced the idea and we did a special episode on it, the quote versus the proposal.

25:39 The proposal gives context to the situation and the quote is a solution within the context. And putting that together is so important when you're putting together a solution. I think it's really important and this is something that I wanted to save until the end, but I'll introduce it right now. You're negotiating with somebody. I think the first decision that your prospect has to make with you, the salesperson and the company that you're representing is the prospect needs to decide we're going to buy from you.

26:10 Okay, we're going to buy from you. Let's negotiate how we're going to work together. Now, when you're negotiating, now you're working on more than just price. And that ultimately is a concession. Buy first, negotiate later. And when you have that attitude going into an appointment, I think you're going to come across with tremendous confidence. And I think that prospect is going to look at you as a salesperson saying, I like the way you think, let's figure out how we can work together.

26:38 And that's the importance of making a decision on how you have a conversation with them when it comes to that commitment step. And then when you create that proposal to you know, when I do a quote, it's here's how much here's how many. Here's what it is. And we're now all we have to deal with this price or numbers. But when I have a proposal that says, here's how we're going to work together. They can choose what they want. You've introduced me to the good, better best to having more than one type of program in a proposal.

27:11 It takes a little bit more work, but then the customer has the authority and the option to say, Oh, I want to do it this way. I like option B or I like option C. Now we're now we're letting them control it. And then I don't I don't have much negotiation after that because they already chose. Right. And they're probably taking stuff out that's not important to them, not valuable to them. And even possibly outgrown. I was watching the news today. They're doing traffic reports.

27:39 Really? We're doing traffic reports? Every time I leave the house or the office, I put in my my maps. Where am I going? How am I going to get there? Where's the traffic? You know, where's the accidents? Where's the road construction? I'm not watching the news on where the traffic is. It's not it's changed. Yeah. So we're not watching the news anymore. And sometimes proposals have stuff that people don't want because they've outgrown it.

28:02 Or they never they never really needed it. We thought they might need it. They're saying I don't really need this thing. And so so again, I think that that thorough preparation of your proposal shows that you listen to them. And now we're having a conversation about how we listened to each other and how we're going to work together. And we don't just have we have a quote. We only have one thing to talk about. Right. It's a take it or leave it. So ultimately, here's the numbers and the commodity. Yeah, that's right. And we can apologize our own thing because all we're talking about.

28:32 And and we're what does it assume? Well, you know what our value proposition is. You know what we're going to do. You know how we're going to work together. And then we're going to do it one way. We thought we're going to do it a different way. And we didn't talk about those things. So, all right, you got to know what your limitations are. You got to know what you can give up. Right. What are the things that you want to put in there that you might want to give up and and the best work you do in your proposal? I can't tell you the number of times that you and I found this to a good proposal.

29:02 We sit down. They pick one and we move. Yeah. They're not saying, Oh, give me. Give me 10% off or give me five. Oh, I thought this would be cheaper. They're looking at it and they're going, Oh, this is a pretty good value. I think the next one we're going to talk about number three and emotional intelligence. Your EQ. How are you emotionally dealing with this? One of the things I like to do is have some ready answers and you go into enough negotiations.

29:28 When they say something like, Well, the most I'm going to pay for this is X dollars. Right. I like to say, Well, what would you like me to remove from the proposal to get us down to that amount? Exactly. And what they, Oh, I don't want to remove anything. It's like, Well, I can't just give you stuff for free. And then they they look and they're like, I've never dealt with that before. When they say, I want to, I want to drop the dollars. Almost every salesperson goes, Okay, how much? Let's see if we can get it down. And what I say is, what do you want me to remove? And they say, I don't want you to remove anything. Well, then that's the price for not removing anything. And we move forward. Yeah, because it was a, it was a fake price negotiation. I like this one. This is, I started it. You'll need to sharpen your pencil. Right. I like to say, What do you mean?

30:16 I mean, need to sharpen my pen. Well, you need to lower your price. And then we get down to what that really means. So, so you need to be ready for these things. You need to expect some resistance and then be ready to answer those questions. But many sales, many negotiations are lost. Because a salesperson doesn't know what to do. And the first thing they know is, Well, I've got 10% buffer here. I can just do that. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Good stuff. So, so identify and understand how that person is going to be able to do that.

30:45 How that person negotiates. And you should have had enough meeting. Here's the thing that causes them a lot of problems, Scott. They never met the person. They never sat down and talked with them. They got a quote over the phone. That happens. And, and now they want to negotiate. I don't understand what's important to them. I don't know what we're talking about. All we're talking about is price. Oh, well, well, they're trying to make my product commodity. No, you made your product a commodity. You never had a conversation. What else do they got?

31:14 Well, you're led with price too. So, you guys your own product. Well, that's the story you always tell. I could save you to any present on your lighting. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number four persuasive communications. You need to be a good communicator. The main thing I like to do when we get in a negotiation is redirect them back to their original goals. Yeah. You told us this was important. Did that change? Mm hmm. And when they say, No, those are still my goals.

31:43 Well, then that's what it's going to cost to achieve those goals and focus them back on that value thoughts on on kind of this. So one thing that I in this area is I think you need to be able to keep in mind that every decision that you make or don't make sets a precedent. And when you set a precedent, you're almost like adding a line of code to the decision going, okay, it has to fall within these parameters or it needs to be based on this.

32:13 It's you set a precedent, which means all future decisions are going to be compared to this precedent. Yeah, we're setting the price with that first negotiation, aren't we? Yeah, that's a precedent. And we're anchoring. When we take a position, we're anchoring something. So like you said, going back to the original goal, we need to go back to what we anchored before and all agreed on whether it's a goal or decision or outcome that we want to have guaranteed or have a greater likelihood of.

32:41 A precedent and anchors are so influential when it comes to negotiations. So continue, Bill. Thanks. Yeah, I think too. Part of that anchor is making sure we find areas of agreement. You know, one of the things about a negotiation and I do this myself, you know, let's say I'm going to buy a used car. Well, the first thing I try to point out to the to the seller is all the problems. Right. Well, you know, there's kind of a big scratch over here. And you know, this is kind of a bond. This is kind of a Bondo area. You had to fix over here. And, and you know, the radio didn't work very well.

33:13 And I'm trying to push that negotiation price down by pointing out. And if they're not ready to say, yeah, but you know, it's a used car. It's not going to be perfect. And that's why the price is where it is. It's not the price of a new car. Yeah, it's got 20,000 miles on it's got a little bit of dings here and there. But, but that's what a used car is going to have. You know, if you expect a perfect car, you better go buy a new one. But they're not ready for that. They're like, Oh, I guess, you know, what if I drop 500 off?

33:41 It's like, okay, we got started, baby. And then that's that precedent you set. That's a guy who said, you know, if you buy it now, you'll be 5% off. Hell, we're already down 5%. Let's see what else we can get. The negotiations started as soon as you drop. You give indications in your in the way you talk that you're willing to already give concessions. Yeah, when you say things like, well, here's the proposal, but you know, we can work with that price.

34:08 Right. Right. We're flexible. Yeah, we're flexible. Yeah, we're so flexible. You know, that we're going to drop our shorts. All right. Number five. Problem solving and adaptability. Negotiations never go as planned. And you need to be ready for what they're going to say. Oh, I really don't need this. Okay, well, let's re talk about that. You know, one of the things that Scott and I used to do when we started working together is we kind of had the follow up separated from the class.

34:38 Mm hmm. And we found that some of the customers didn't want to pay for the follow up program. And we understood that. And we said, okay, that's great. And then there was no follow up. No. And the class kind of fell flat because there was no commitment. But now these last few classes we've done, we said the follow up and the class they're the same thing. Yeah, reinforce coaching. I'm going coaching and reinforcement. That's right. And when we do that, boy, man, I tell you the comments we're getting from the client. This is the best thing we ever did this long term follow up is, you know, oh my gosh, you're just, you know, just a great follow up.

35:17 Let me add on to that bill, but everybody that we've talked to before where we didn't do it. They all agreed to do the follow up the report. Yeah, they all agree. And we, and we stupidly believed them. And we, but here's what we learned is that people that hire us, our clients that hire us to do the reinforcement to reinforce the content that Bill and I presented, they can't reinforce our content because they haven't quite learned it yet. And they're not going to be exposed in trying to reinforce something that they're not totally comprehensive.

35:47 Well, and I think we reinforce our stuff. Yeah. And the impact is incredible. Yeah, I disagree with that a little bit. I think they just get on to other things. Yeah, they do too. Yeah. You know, one of the values you work consulting is a quadrant to value, not urgent, important. Yeah. Yeah. And the same thing happens with the reinforcement. And that is, it's a good idea, but I'm not comfortable with it. What you're saying. And I've got other things to talk about. So let's move on. Right. Right. And we just, we just don't do it. So we're putting everybody out of the field for three, four days. Now we've got to do catch up. Wait a minute. What, what's going on?

36:26 Wait a minute. What about the application of the new content? Right. The catch up is the application, but we want to do it. So anyway, we got off our track. So be adaptable. Change your process in order to get the things done right. And insist on doing things right. That's what we're trying to talk about. You might be able to adjust pricing, but I think you also can offer different solutions. You can take away timing, have other things that you're ready to do, find alternative benefits that you might be able to take away or add without adding a lot of price. I can give you this. I'm not going to take it out, but I can give you this value added issue, different value added. So, so don't always go to price as the thing that changes the landscape.

37:14 Price is last because here's the one thing I want you to take away, Scott. Yeah. Every cent you take off is profit. Exactly. It doesn't come from anywhere else. It comes from profit. When you take that, hey, you said make the decision now, I'm giving you 5% off. That's 5% of profit that's gone. And it's a $1,000 deal. You just you just gave away $50, right? You gave it away. It's gone. It can't be recovered in and you're not going to do the job worse. So every time you deal with price, you're dealing with profit, pure profit, not not cost a good soul.

37:51 Exactly. You've changed my mind a little bit. I hope I remember. I think we're probably more in agreement than we'd say and that you're saying, don't let them deal with price. I'm saying train them so they know how not to deal with strategy and planning is the key to negotiations. I'll close it up with that topic. Our golden nugget for today is some of us have heard this before. Let us not negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate by John F. Kennedy.

38:20 Yeah, I think that we do just we are afraid of negotiations. People are afraid of conflict. They see negotiation to the conflict. And whenever we're afraid of conflict, the person is afraid of conflict. The person who's not afraid of conflict is going to it's going to win the day. And for guys out there, that was the dating scene when you were young. The guys that weren't afraid to go up and say, how you doing? I'm Bill. They're going to get the girls. If you're going to stand in the corner and hope they come over to you, you're going to get last choice on the girls that are, you know, okay, I guess I'll go talk to somebody. Finally, by time you screwed up the courage,

38:57 the courageous ones have already gone through the program. So don't be afraid to negotiate. That's true. That's true. All right. All the information here, anything you want to find, this is Episode 659. It's on our show notes at winning at selling.com. And go look for it there. Next week, we're going to be covering why entered into the CRM. And I think this is going to talk about the importance of what you brought up earlier, Bill. And that is the motivation. How do you keep track of the motivation of each of your customers, your prospects that you talked to when it comes to making a decision?

39:34 Right. So I entered into the CRM will be our next show. The book collab again, the one thing by Gary Keller, part three, intro and chapter 13. So please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on your social media network. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.