Holden Advisors Blog

Have you become trapped in your own mindset – convinced you are selling a commodity or that even you yourself have become commoditized? Are you falling prey to confirmation bias when you sell? Well, sellers, it’s time to wake up and start thinking differently.

Hear Travis Umpleby discuss the Poker Playing that happens during a negotiation and the rules of the game.  Many salespeople make the common mistake of taking the first card they are dealt in a negotiation.  This is one of the biggest traps a seller can fall prey to because that card is usually around price and discounting.  Learn to stack the cards in your favor and call the Poker Player's bluff to win the game.

At a recent partner conference, CEOs and Presidents of value-added resellers discussed how to support their commercial teams and navigate the evolving landscape of selling, training, organizational design, and trust. Listen as Adele shares the Executives' viewpoints on what to start doing now to defend value in the marketplace.

In a recently published study, there was a claim that nearly three quarters of executives do not understand Buyer Behavior¹. What an interesting statistic. While the area of study around buyer behavior remains a hot topic, there doesn’t seem to be a proportionate amount of interest from those who should seemingly care the most – the C-Suite. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. Customers are quite possibly the most important aspect of any business, and we simply do not spend enough time or energy understanding what they do and why they do it.  

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with the VP of Pricing for a $15B manufacturing company. The primary topic of our discussion was the implementation of a pricing technology system that would suggest target prices based on benchmark deals within comparable customer segments. A few interesting trends quickly materialized in the dataset:

Recently, we've seen a number of negotiators get taken to the cleaners in business and politics when they just didn't know how to deal with a bully. You know who they are: they yell and scream at you, pounding the table throughout the process. Think about the current trade negotiations with China—the same thing happens in business all the time.

Is Your Product a Commodity? Is it really? Or, does your customer cry commodity to get you to decrease your price? Adele McLean talks about how you can get out from under the negotiation tactic "cry commodity" to avoid the commodity trap.

Celebrating 10 Years of Pricing with Confidence (video 7 of 11).

Celebrating 10 Years of Pricing with Confidence (video 9 of 11)

In our book Negotiating with Backbone, Reed Holden describes strategies and tactics designed to combat the Procurement Pricing Buzz Saw. The situation was described well in a white paper by Reed Holden Selling to Procurement: The New Normal.  I strongly urge you to request it and read it.