Professional sales negotiating skills and techniques

Danger. Every 1% of sales discount your sales team gives away reduces your operating profit by 8%*.  A 10% sales discount typically reduces the contribution to operating profit by 80%*. The thing is, you don’t need to give away your profit.
*A report  on discounting by McKinsey and Company, based on companies with a 12.5% operating profit.

This master class gives your sales team the strategies and skills to hold their price, or price higher, increase your average selling price, easily contributing 10% to 30% more to your company’s operating profit - sometimes more - and with immediate effect. Do the sums, and judge for yourself the additional income and profit your business can achieve.

Price and terms and conditions negotiation is an every-day part of business-to-business selling today. However, buyers are often better trained in negotiating strategies and tactics than the sellers. Buyers are also in a stronger bargaining position as an increasing number of suppliers, many offering lower prices, compete to gain a share of the customer’s purse.

Negotiating a sale should be a natural process of give and take, to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. However, the reality is often very different.  Buyers make unreasonable demands, lie, stonewall, threaten you with competitors’ prices and even attack your integrity to achieve their cost-reduction targets. 

And even after you agree a deal, some hit you with an additional list of demands, called nibbling, before they finally approve the order or contract.

Discover how to manage customer demands and deal with unreasonable buyer behaviour. ​

Role play is a popular part of an in-company negotiation skills course. Your team members practice the key skills in a simulated ‘real life’ role-play, based on your own business and customers. Each team member role-plays, in turn, the part of the seller and the buyer. Everyone enjoys the challenge and the learning experience.

This training was developed from a negotiating skills course that I originally taught, over several years, for the EEF (The UK Engineering Employer's Federation), for professional buyers of many of the UK's manufacturing, engineering and defence companies.

More recently I ran a series of negotiating skills workshops in Europe, China and the USA for the legal teams of a leading global manufacturer. One hundred and twenty corporate lawyers and paralegals, employed by the company, learnt how to reduce compensation claims and legacy penalties, secure higher income from disposals and protect the profitability of major contracts.   

The strategies and tactics used by professional buyers are examined and discussed during the course.

Does your sales team give away your company's income and profit?

How the training increases your sales income and profit