About Wayne BerryI want a better deal – take it or leave it!
Have you ever had someone say this to you?
I often hear people at my workshops say to me, “Everything was going well, we’d been talking for weeks and then suddenly when I thought we were about to put the deal together, they wanted to negotiate a better deal. I didn’t know what to do!”
So what should they do?
I am often asked if I have some kind of “Silver Bullet” cure to solve this problem.
The truth is, there is no one simple answer to this question.
A better question to ask is, “How do I avoid ending up with a situation like this?”
You see this situation is NOT the negotiation.
It’s the end result of the negotiation.
It’s the symptom, NOT the cause of the dilemma.
However it’s not all over for this person if you possess some good negotiating skills. It’s not too late to salvage the situation.
A better strategy would have been to avoid getting into this situation in the first place.
The problem is most people do not understand that negotiating is a process, not an event.
I hear people say things like, “It was all going well for 2 hours until the end, and then they wanted to negotiate.”
I’m sorry but I’ve got some bad news for you if you’ve ever felt this way. The negotiation did NOT occur at the end of the 2 hours. It began at the beginning of the interaction with this person and if this person is a good negotiator, it actually began long before the person started talking with you.
Too many people fail to understand this, and end up with an event called “being pressured for a concession”. They think that this is the negotiation. It’s not. They been negotiating for 2 hours and just didn’t realise it!
So what can you do to avoid ending up as “Shark Bait?”
How do you avoid being forced into an unprofitable deal, or even losing the deal altogether?
Here are a few quick thoughts.
1. Learn about negotiating
It doesn’t come naturally in our culture. It’s a skill that you should develop if you are serious about your career in sales or to become a top property investor. Not having these skills is costing you big time in lost deals, lost profits, lost dollars and lots of stress.
By the way, many of the people you deal with these days ARE developing these skills – ON PURPOSE. They are not just playing it by ear. That’s for amateurs.
Next important thing to do is…
2. Understand what’s happening
There are 6 stages in every negotiation. They are;
a. Preparation.
b. Rapport.
c. Gathering Information
d. Exploring Options
e. Trading Concessions
f. Nailing Down the Deal
We don’t have the space here for a full explanation of each of these phases, however realise that all negotiations involve these phases. They can take seconds, hours, days or months depending on the negotiation. Learn about them and understand what happens in each phase.
3. Know that you have more power than you think in every negotiation
The problem is most people think that the person they are negotiating with has all of the power.
That’s simply not true.
There are more than 20 sources of power in most negotiations. Problem is if you don’t know what they are, you will feel helpless. Find out about them.
Next…
4. Beware of the ploys, gambits and dirty tricks
Negotiating is game.
However it’s a game where you can get hurt if they don’t understands the moves, the ploys, the gambits and the dirty tricks that people use. I teach people how to spot and counter more than 30 “popular” ones.
If you don’t understand them, learn about them.
People who understand negotiating don’t become “Shark Bait”. They put together profitable deals and enjoy success.
I received an email about a month ago from one of our clients in London…
John King is a graduate of one of my negotiating workshops and his company sells large scale manufacturing equipment in the UK and Europe.
John wrote in his email…
“Wayne we were getting murdered in deals where we were up against cheaper competitors. My sales people were slashing prices and our margins were suffering badly. We were going backwards fast. I remembered that negotiating game we played in your workshop and thought that’s the answer. You probably didn’t even know about it but I ordered a copy of your audio program, “Get the best deal every time”. I wanted my sales people to learn the lesson that I learned that night.
Well I thought you might be interested to know that this decision has added more than $5 million good old Aussie dollars to our GP over this last 12 months. I sat my guys down and we went through each CD one at a time at our sales meetings and also they listened every day in their cars and at home. We developed some new strategies and used that 15 page check list of yours.
Well you’re right, negotiating skills make all the difference. When I think of all the dollars we gave away before my guys got “Top Gunned”, I could cry. Thanks mate. I owe you a big beer.”
I love getting emails like John’s. Anyway the lesson is – get those negotiating skills!”
