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.
Profile of a Game Changer: Selling in a Competitive Environment
Smart salespeople distinguish themselves from the pack of competitors. They are game changers, and they don’t wait to be pursued by potential customers. Game changers are assertive and effective as they challenge—with diplomacy—a customer’s viewpoint. They think strategically and target potential opportunities that a customer may not yet realize exists, or they recast the way a customer views its situation. If a customer appears to have little interest, a game changer reframes the conversation to build a compelling business case. It is a honed persona cultivated from an investment in thoughtful preparation,planning and confident execution.
Topics: Selling with Confidence
However, the promise of the merger can often fall short of the reality.
Topics: Newsletter, Selling with Confidence
Good-Better-Best Pricing: Would You Pay More for "Better"?
Good-better-best pricing is everywhere. Companies often offer choices on just about everything from all-organic ingredients, to cable bundles for sports fans and those for movie buffs, or pay-in-advance hotel reservations.
Field Report: Using Give-Gets Nets Sales Team $150k Profit Improvement
I received a call late Friday afternoon from one of our clients, a $800m DaaS company. The VP of Sales Transformation had attended a recent Negotiating with BackboneSM workshop and played the role of a Coach. She was collecting revenue-and-profit impact stories from the 30 employees who had also attended the workshop, and she was thrilled with the results they were reporting.
Topics: Newsletter, Selling with Confidence
Win Your Own Super Bowl: Ask the Right Questions to Improve Your Running Game
Questions are like Tools—Pick the Right One for the Job
(Part 2 of 3)
In the first blog of this Asking Great Questions series, I talked about the need or rationale for asking questions. Great questions can undoubtedly be great tools in the right hands. However, as any good craftsperson can tell you, the key to getting the most out of your tools is knowing how to use them. Using a hammer to drive in a screw never works, no matter how hard you pound.
Topics: Selling with Confidence
A Holiday Carol to all CEOs and GMs from your sales team: ‘All I Want for Christmas are Some Negotiation Tools that Work for Me’.
Topics: Negotiating with Backbone, Pricing with Confidence, Selling with Confidence
‘Tis the season for car commercials and countdowns. I will spare you the sentimentality of the great American holiday car spots. Instead, I bring you a bit of fun to close out this holiday season. We’ve had a super year working on really complex and challenging pricing issues, discovering hidden value for clients, and working with sales people to protect that value in negotiations. Some of those same consultants are also talented (and competitive) writers who enjoy sharing insights with our followers. Let’s see who scored the most page views on their blogs.
Topics: Negotiating with Backbone, Pricing with Confidence, Selling with Confidence, Uncovering your Value