starson

Senior Sales Manager

Good Citizen

Contributor

Fire Starter

Negotiation Department

Hi everyone,

my first post here, so please be kind. :-)

Has anyone come across a company where negotiation is not seen as an aside/final part of the deal, but a stand alone department?

I am wondering if we in the sales community would not fare much better if we helped our companies professionalize negotiations.

i.e.: person with the relationship is protected. not a part of the negotiation, so that when it gets tough we do not put the relationship in peril.

having clear prep work done before the negotiation. having a pre defined negotiation team and so on.

Your thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated.

🤞 Negotiation

26 comments

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Wait, how has no one in this comment section heard of procurement? Their entire job is to negotiate the price and terms of deals. They don’t do the evaluation, they just sweep in to ruin your day at the final hour.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Yes, correct. So why don't our companies have a professional department as well to counter proc?
A center of negotiation excellence if you need a fancy name ;-)

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

That’s what I’ve used my sales leadership for when trying to work with a tricky deal. Removes me as the bad cop, puts the blame on them.

I don’t think your average company would want or need a team like this. Most is the time procurement does the dirty work for both sides.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Yes, we do the same. Just wondering if we should all "professionalize" it. :-)

punishedlad

Tycoon

Business Development Team Lead

I've never worked in an industry where a procurement department exists, so the entire concept is foreign to me. Didn't realize that was the main job function.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Consider yourself lucky. They are the devil, and they love skim milk.

punishedlad

Tycoon

Business Development Team Lead

🤢

sketchysales

Politicker

Sales Manager

As PBC's comments, larger corps will have a procurement team which will handle that. I have never worked in a company large enough to have a full procurement team, usually what i have done in tricky negotiations is bring in my manager or the owner and have them take the fall within the negotiations to protect my relationship with the client. I have been fortunate enough that in both my current and previous jobs I had/have that support from above.

detectivegibbles

Politicker

Sales Director

Welcome to the war room! Great first post FYI.

My company gives me FULL autonomy to run my own deals. However, our close rates go up heavily when we bring in a team member that has more experience/history in the specific product we're selling.

Like @poweredbycaffeinesaid - leverage your leadership on those tough deals.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Thank you and thank you 🙏

Great feedback. Thanks!

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

Welcome on board at first.

That's the first time for me to hear such a scenario, but certainly I would agree with you to help the companies to professionalize negotiations,only if my commission bonus won't be impacted by any means+having an extra payout for that extra support is a must.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Thank you 🙏

Agreed. Comp should remain unaffected. Ultimately if it leads to higher values everybody wins.

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

urw, exactly!

GDO

Politicker

BDM

Have never heard of it

RandyLahey

Politicker

Account Executive

Welcome @starson ! This is an odd idea but one with potential. I like the negotiation part personally, but I think there could be some benefit to this.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Thank you. Agreed. I love negotiating, but it does not necessarily mean I am doing the best job or that it’s the best setup.
Also proc trains regularly for this. How often do we as sellers?

RandyLahey

Politicker

Account Executive

Great point.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Welcome! I work in Enterprise sales and inevitably end up dealing with procurement. That's after the C-level execs have tried to extract their pound of flesh first.

Good negotiations don't ruin relationships when they are run in good faith. I am not only looking for the best deal I can get, I'm a steward of my company's revenue, so I'm looking out for my company's interests. Likewise, the customer is looking for a good deal for the same reason. Somewhere in there is an agreeable match - one has to find it. Give and get is a very common play, and honestly, reps should be comfortable doing it. Negotiation is also discovery. You want to get to the bottom of why your customer is asking for certain things so that you can propose a solution that will satisfy that request or overcome the objection.

If the negotiation does get tough or complex, I have resources on my end to support me. My manager is a master negotiator and can be brought in at any time to be the voice of our leadership to help progress the deal. We have legal resources to help with contract language. I'm not sure where a professional negotiation team would fit in; we're too small a company to need a separate group for this when we are trained in how to handle it ourselves.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Love your comment. Thank you.

Also have done almost exclusively large enterprise SaaS deals.
My take to negotiations has mostly been along the lines of the Harvard method as well. However with me located internationally and teams becoming more dispersed and international I am starting to find that Harvard does not always work.
Complex negotiations need a different approach...

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I am unconvinced that anybody else could do it better than the team I work within now. There is a fair amount of trust involved.

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

As someone who works a project and with customers cradle-to-grave, the fact that some industries split up the business development and contract closing side is foreign to me. How you could split off negotiation I don’t understand…

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Every single one of my larger customers I stayed in touch and engaged with...but in SaaS it is split. Just the way it is...

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

Yeah not saying it’s right or wrong it’s just not something I am familiar with. I would figure the customer would want to talk to the same person through the whole process, but like you said if that is status quo, then that’s also what they expect.

starson

Good Citizen

Senior Sales Manager

Truth is: i would provide very little value value post sale.
So I stay with them as an escalation point, but that is mostly it. More about the relationship than anything else.

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

I do work with companies where procurement gets involved but not always. We always make sure we know the budget expectations from the DM and that helps us not get much into price negotiation but we do offer some sort of add one if needed.

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

That sounds a lot like procurement. They have their own teams and terms based on product or services.

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starson

Negotiation Department

26 comments

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