What is holding my sales function back?
It’s great question we often get asked on our Professional Negotiation Skills program.
Our answer: most people make the mistake of thinking of “Sales” as one process requiring one set of skills. It’s not!
Every sale involves two very distinct tasks: converting a prospect into a willing buyer and turning that buying interest into a profitable deal. In short: selling and negotiating.
Under-performance in either of these two tasks is costly to the bottom line.
A great salesperson with poor negotiation skills will deliver promising leads, but then lose important business to competitors. Deals that are negotiated are often one-dimensional, one-off and at poor margins. Poor negotiators are at the mercy of predatory procurement teams and volume is often achieved at the expense of margin, client satisfaction and the bottom line.
In contrast, a poor salesperson with great negotiation skills will excel at sustaining long-term relationships and developing new business at good margins with existing clients. Their challenge is to grow the business by winning new clients.
In short, businesses can’t afford a sales team that does not excel at both selling and negotiating.
Do the quick quiz by asking yourself - what is holding your sales function back:
Plenty of enquiries, but not closing enough business.
Regularly writing low-margin business.
Win-rate of bids, tenders and proposals should be higher.
The sales and delivery/fulfillment teams don’t work in close cooperation.
Too much business is one-off, rather than long-term.
Long list of ‘lapsed’ former clients.
New clients tend to come through sales and marketing, rather than referral.
All of the above are hallmarks of sales teams with weak negotiation skills. If you have thought “Yes, that’s us…” three or more times, investing in negotiation skills training for your sales force may well yield greater returns than investing in their sales skills.
It takes two to tango. In the great dance-off for business, no sales team will make the grade if their negotiation skills are limping along.
For more information call 1300 730 552 or email info@negotiation.partners
Article by Dr. Matt Lohmeyer (Managing Partner, Negotiation Partners)