articles
negotiation articles
Who is in Charge of the Care and Feeding of Your Value Proposition?
Brian Dietmeyer - February 10th, 2009
Value as a Living Ecosystem
If you were to poll ten cross-functional leaders in your organization and ask the following questions, what do you think the quality of the answers would be?
- What is the definition of value proposition?
- What is our value proposition?
- Who owns the care and feeding of our company’s value proposition?
- Is there a connection between your value proposition and what salespeople say and do at the customer level?
Chances are, for every leader you asked, you would get a different, equally qualified response. More importantly, what do you think the business impact of the disparate answers would be? Especially given the current state of the ecomony? If your value proposition is gauzy internally, it will be so to customers and result in even more pressure on prices and margins…
Linear “Training” vs. Integrated “Solutions”
Brian Dietmeyer - July 22nd, 2008
Most organizations view training initiatives as a “linear” sequence of events. Unfortunately, this perspective fails to address the “interconnectedness” between the process of selling and the process of negotiating. If a sales force requires both sales and negotiation training, the all too typical approach is to first train the entire sales force on selling skills and then circle back and rollout negotiation training as a separate and seeminly unrelated activity.
At the risk of oversimplifying this relationship, selling (opportunity management) is about creating value in the mind of the customer while negotiation is about capturing that value in a deal which benefits both sides. They go hand-in-hand…
The New School of Negotiation
Brian Dietmeyer - March 31st, 2008
You may be making negotiations harder than they have to be!
Negotiating a deal has been made more complex than it needs to be and that’s far worse than confusing, it’s disempowering.
What keep any deal afloat or makes it sink isn’t pulling one perfect response out of an arsenal of a dozen, two-dozen or 200 negotiation tactics. Whether you’re haggling over the price of a flea market watch or trying to close a global, multimillion-dollar deal, every negotiation hinges on only two elements…
Want Negotiation Power? Continuously Expand and Exploit Your Value
Brian Dietmeyer - December 13th, 2007
I turned away a client the other day, the senior vice president of sales for a major manufacturing organization. It could have meant tens of thousands of dollars in potential business for Think!
“You’re problem isn’t negotiation - - it’s a value proposition that’s just too simple. Fix that and most of your negotiation issues will solve themselves,” I assured him. “You’ve got to be willing to find a way to give your customer more than your product’s face value. Otherwise, I can’t help you…”
SAMA Velocity article - Wake up to negotiation reality: transform your negotiations and avoid commoditization
Brian Dietmeyer - September 1st, 2007
You’re delusional. Well, all right, you may not be, but I’m playing the odds. Too many sales professionals work in a state of negotiation delusion, though the marketplace is trying to shake them awake with ever-increasing commoditization.
Twenty years ago, keeping customers at any cost may have been acceptable negotiation practice. However, according to current research…
Three offers are better than one
Brian Dietmeyer - August 15th, 2007
- from Selling Power Sales Management Newsletter
Many sales organizations have successfully transitioned from selling products to selling solutions, articulating value, and solving business problems. But when it comes to negotiating, all that progress goes up in smoke. “Salespeople are selling value, but they’re negotiating price,” observes Brian Dietmeyer, president and CEO of Think! Inc., a global strategic negotiation consultancy. “They are selling complexity well, but then it becomes a commodity during negotiations.”
The solution, says Dietmeyer, is to use a strategy called “Multiple Equal Offers.” MEOs give prospects…
Are your negotiation techniques sabotaging your business relationships?
Brian Dietmeyer - June 29th, 2007
When a negotiation ends, a positive, lasting relationship with the customer should begin.
However, negotiation that demads zero-sum concessions usually results in one side gaining at the expense of the other, which means someone will walk away feeling defeated. This kind of adversarial energy won’t create the momentum necessary to get a great relationship rolling.
But it doesn’t have to be this way…
State Of The Art: Negotiation
Brian Dietmeyer - May 7th, 2007
We’re Not There Yet, Why We Need To Be, and How to Get There
The Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) and Think! surveyed global sales leaders to attain a snapshot of organizational negotiation approaches and benchmark it against their sales management processes. This is a synopsis of the findings.
Rethink Those Tips and Tactics, Powerful Negotiation is Simple
Brian Dietmeyer - January 11th, 2007
You’ve toiled for months to win the deal; you’ve diligently studied the prospect’s issues, needs and strategies, and you are certain that your solution is the perfect fit — and glad of it because the outcome could make or break your future with your employer…
Successful Price Negotiation with Professional Supply Managers
Brian Dietmeyer - June 14th, 2006
The Problem
You have flawlessly executed your sales process at multiple levels within your customer’s organization and now you sit across the desk from the supply manager who states “your competition is 25% cheaper, you have to go back and sharpen your pencil!”? You have a choice; go back to HQ and ask for a lower price, or take an analytical approach to dissecting this problem…..
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