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Negotiation Techniques (That Really Work!)
by Stephan Schiffman
160 pages2 hours
Sales is all about negotiation. Price. Delivery. Terms.
And every day, salespeople leave money on the table. They just don't have the skills to get what they want. Now Stephan Schiffman, drawing on years of experience, shows you how to nail the sale, hit quotas, and boost the bottom line. Schiffman-style negotiation is all about getting the best deal. And he outlines specific techniques to get there.
Things can be tough out there. But with Schiffman's negotiation skills in your pocket, you can do battle and win.
Publisher: Simon & SchusterReleased: Nov 18, 2009ISBN: 9781440513190Format: book
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Negotiation Techniques (That Really Work!) - Stephan Schiffman
(That Really Work!)
AMERICA'S #1 CORPORATE SALES TRAINER
Copyright © 2010 by Stephan Schiffman
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To DMS and JRS
PART 1: BEFORE YOU SIT DOWN AT THE TABLE
Chapter 1: Ask the Right Questions
Chapter 2: What Exactly Is a Negotiation?
Chapter 3: Get a Winning Attitude
Chapter 4: They Want to Win
Chapter 5: Stop the Discounting Madness!
Chapter 6: Never Be Lied To
Chapter 7: Draw Up Your Battle Plan
Chapter 8: What's Your Alternative to a Deal?
Chapter 9: Preparing Yourself
PART 2: SITTING AT THE TABLE
Chapter 10: Making the First Moves
Chapter 11: How to Structure Offers and Counteroffers
Chapter 12: Tricks of the Trade
Chapter 13: What Not to Do
Chapter 14: Who Are You Talking To?
Chapter 15: What to Do When the Discussion Stalls
Chapter 16: When to Be Tough, and When to Be Easy
Chapter 17: Calling It Quits
Chapter 18: The End Game
Chapter 19: The Devil's in the Details
Chapter 20: How to Win, How to Lose
Chapter 21: Coming Back to the Table
Chapter 22: Some Final Thoughts
I want to take this opportunity to thank the many people that have been involved in the writing of this book. Primarily, however, I wish to thank Peter Archer who took the concepts and turned them into a meaningful document that will be used by sales people. In addition, my appreciation goes to Karen Cooper, at Adams, for her belief in our product. It is interesting to think about how a book is developed and the use that it has.
This book is really about sales people, and their ability to keep going, no matter what. I, of course, want to thank Anne, Daniele, and Jennifer for all their support.
Everything in life is a negotiation.
Take it from someone who's been around for a while. I've spent decades observing colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and family. I've taught hundreds of thousands of people how to sell, and I've written more than twenty books about how to sell. I've had a lot of time to reflect on what I do and what all salespeople do—the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
From all this I've come to understand that negotiation isn't just another add-on sales technique, something you learn along with how to close a deal or how to make effective cold calls. Negotiation is at the very heart of sales because it's at the heart of everything.
That's the most basic truth I can offer you in this book. Everything else flows from that understanding.
Of course, some negotiation is very public. Pick up the newspaper or scan an Internet news page and you'll see dozens of stories about negotiations, whether it's in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians or in Detroit between the auto industry (or what's left of it) and the unions. These talks are being conducted by professional negotiators—people who depend for a living on their ability to deliver a win for their side. Sadly, they're often not very good at it.
But unremarked by news sources, every day millions upon millions of negotiations go on. They're over everything from buying a used car to a family's decision about what to have for breakfast. These negotiations are woven into the fabric of our everyday life.
Look at it this way: We live in a society of millions of people—billions of people on a global scale. All of us spend our days interacting with one another face to face, over the phone, and by e-mail or snail mail. And all of us want different things. Some of them are big, some little, some overlapping, some completely opposed to one another. In fact, sometimes we don't even quite know what we want. But we can be sure it's different from what everyone else wants. That's what makes us individuals.
To live together in a reasonably harmonious way, we have to find common ground between those different wants and needs. That's what I mean when I say that everything in life is a negotiation.
The problem is that we're not born with a negotiation gene. And most of the time, it's not something we're taught. When you started kindergarten, the teacher didn't say, All right, boys and girls. Make a big circle on the floor. Today we're going to learn about how to negotiate for what you want.
Because of that, most of us have picked up negotiating techniques on the fly. In that respect, salespeople aren't any different from anyone else. And sadly, as I've seen over and over again when I've talked to groups of them, salespeople aren't any better at negotiation than the rest of us.
That's why I've written this book. Because I believe that if salespeople are going to be successful, they have to be better at negotiation. And it isn't just something you can pick up. You have to learn it. You need to understand the philosophy behind successful negotiation, and you have to learn the techniques for it. Once you do that, you'll start to see changes in the size of your commission, the number of sales you close, the number of prospects you turn into clients. Trust me on this: The payoff for learning this stuff is potentially huge.
Having conducted a lot of seminars, talked to a lot of salespeople, and written a lot of books over the years, I've evolved a pretty consistent set of principles that underlie what I do. You'll find them running throughout this book.
Believe in yourself and in what you're selling
Listen to the client
Gather information about the prospect
Use your time wisely
These are the principles on which my tactics are founded. If you don't master the principles first, the tactics won't work for you. On the other hand, if you keep these basic points in mind, you'll discover that all the tactics flow naturally from them. Like most things in life, it makes a lot of sense if you put it all together rather than trying to use bits and pieces of it.
One of the common phrases used in negotiation books is win-win. I've used this myself in some of my books, but the truth is I don't really like it very much. That's because it begs the question that's at the heart of good negotiations: What are you winning?
This has always seemed pretty basic to me. In fact, I've never understood why so many professional negotiators seem to ignore it. If you don't know what you want to win, how will you know if and when you've won it?
So here's my first big tip to you: Right at the outset of any negotiation, big or small, ask yourself what you want to win. Once you answer that question, you're on your way to being a world-class negotiator.
Before You Sit Down at the Table
Ask the Right Questions
Bob, a friend of mine who happened to be a sales manager, decided that he was finally ready to buy some new windows for his house, so he called up several local vendors, and each sent a salesperson to his house to make a presentation. The windows he liked best turned out to be the most expensive of the bunch, but he was okay with the price and he was ready to buy.
So he called up the vendor and said, Come on over, I want to do business with you.
The salesperson who had made the presentation returned to his house, and before Bob could say one word, he said, You want a discount don't you? Let me give you 10 percent off.
Bob had been ready to buy at the stated price, but now he started thinking that maybe he did want a discount, and that maybe 10 percent wasn't enough.
I don't know, Bob said. Is that the best you can do?
Over the next twenty minutes, Bob said very little. When the salesperson offered him 15 percent, he just shook his head. When the rep upped the discount to 20 percent, Bob grunted. By the end of this negotiation, the salesperson had given Bob 45 percent off the starting price!
Can you imagine the reaction of that salesperson's boss when he learned of the transaction? Can you imagine how the salesperson's strategy cut into his company's revenue?
Discount or Negotiate
I wish I could say that this sort of incident is atypical, but sadly, it isn't. For too many salespeople, negotiate comes down to discount. In the case of the salesperson in the example above, he was giving away the store before he even had to—offering a discount before Bob asked for