Holden Advisors Blog

This is a story of a highly specialized drug, Ilaris, which is sold by Novartis for $16,000 a dose or $64,000 a year. They sell to under 10,000 patients a year. Novartis discovered that the drug may also have a beneficial impact on heart attack survivors. There are 615,000 survivors a year, 246,000 of whom would benefit from the use of the drug.

Okay, so managing a sales team can be tough. You have a sales team that is in the field doing all they can to hit their numbers and you’re at half-time. You’re asking, “Will we be where we need to be at the end of the year?” The question you should be asking is, “Do your sellers have a wishbone where their backbone ought to be?” The latter is going to get you the results you need.

We are all used to the tough negotiators. Be they in procurement or some other part of the firm, these guys push, distort the truth, and apparently do anything to get a lower price – even if it puts their own business at risk.

It was a simple conversation with 40 pricing professionals, part of a "current events" topic in pricing session. Towards the end, one of the pricing directors for a line of machines raised her hand and said, "I'm about to have a special price promotion my product line of machines. What do you think?"

We talk a lot about how sales teams can Negotiate with Backbone, and rightly so.  This is a huge opportunity to take action in limiting discounts that companies think they need to give to win business.  Our clients’ sales teams are making significant improvements on margin in negotiating their very next deal after learning the Backbone framework.

From: How Fiat Chrysler 'Got Smart on Pricing' USA Today August 10, 2015