What sales people want from you dear Santa – I mean dear CEO and dear GM for 2018!

(sing along to the tune ‘All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth’)

Everybody stops and stares at me
The discounting’s gone wrong as you can see
I don't know just who to blame for this catastrophe
But my one wish on Christmas Eve is as plain as can be

All I want for Christmas are some Backbone tools
Some Backbone tools
Get some Backbone tools
Gee, if I could only have some Backbone tools
Then I could wish you, "Merry Christmas"

It seems so long since I could say
"Won the deal ‘cause I talked about the value!"
Gosh, oh gee, how happy I'd be, if I could sway you

All I want for Christmas are some Backbone tools
Some Backbone tools
Get some Backbone tools
Gee, if I could only have some Backbone tools
Then I could wish you, "Merry Christmas"

I was reflecting on this past year, as a B2B pricing strategy consultant delivering Negotiating with Backbone workshops to our clients’ sale teams across the globe, I realized something very simple: every sales person is looking for something to aid them in price negotiations, something that works for them.

That ‘something’ would help them achieve their commission targets while making more profitable deals and with higher prices.

What I typically hear as we start a Negotiating with Backbone workshop before they know what we will cover throughout the day is: ‘what’s in it for me’.

Sales teams have gone through process transformation in the last 10 years but those processes are falling flat when it comes to understanding the price to value relationship and conveying the price in a meaningful, monetized way to their customers in the negotiation.

Also in workshops with B2B sales people, I hear that they feel a bit ‘alone’ against the ever-increasing size of the customer buying center which adds complexity to the negotiation. The CEB recently published that the typical B2B buying center now involves 6.8 people – that can be a daunting number for a single sales person.

What sales people want from you dear Santa – I mean dear CEO and dear GM – are some tools which support them in achieving the goals you set for them. They need sales tools which transcend your organization to align the price to value conversations across the commercial team, to communicate the true buyer behaviors and to recommend negotiation tactics as they face an ever-increasing complex buying center.