Hottubtimemachine profile picture
Hottubtimemachine profile picture

Hottubtimemachine

Director of Business Development

Good Citizen
Contributor
Fire Starter
+1

Sales vs. negotiation

I did a Linkedin post on this topic a few days ago and have had a lot of responses to it. The number of quality professionals who are afraid of calling themselves "salespeople" is astounding. However, if I ask them to think of their role as chief negotiator, they sound interested. But - they fear they don't have the negotiating skills! Does anyone agree that they are almost the same thing? If my process is to "discover", then "diagnose" what is causing the pain, then "design the solution" and finally "deliver" a great experience for an agreed upon amount, have I not just accomplished the exact same thing?


Thoughts?

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10 comments

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GingerBarbarian
Opinionated
3
Lead Sales
Most sales I have done have not been like negotiations. Most negotiations I have seen are confrontational. The best sales I have ever done were never me versus the customer, but my customer and I against the customers problems.
Plus, I do not suggest negotiating on price. Set your price and stand firm on it. Giving everyone a different deal based on their negotiation skills sounds like a recipe to pass off a lot of other customers who find out you gave one person a sweetheart deal.
tennispro123
Personal Narrative
2
President
I noticed one of the books in here is โ€œNever split the differenceโ€ by Chris Voss. He is a former hostage negotiator for the FBI. He shows you how to negotiate from a place of empathy, and only uses confrontation as a circus trick. One of my favorite books and I highly recommend it.
GingerBarbarian
Opinionated
1
Lead Sales
I totally agree with you, but I also think that is not how most people see negotiations. You can even see it in his book when he talks about going to the negotiation class in Harvard. Negotiation has a image of being an excessive in brow beating and strong arming. While Voss does not approach things this way, many others do. I just wanted to make sure they were seeing sales in a cooperative way.
Hottubtimemachine
Good Citizen
1
Director of Business Development
Yes! I loved the Harvard example. Morons! Chris does a great job of applying his tactical empathy skills to the sales process. Much better way!
GDO
Politicker
2
BDM
Sales is revenue creating. It;s hard! be proud of it!
CuriousFox
WR Officer
0
๐ŸฆŠ
๐Ÿ”ฅ
Justatitle
Big Shot
1
Account Executive
why professional sales people are afraid to call themselves sales people is astounding to me. Without sales for profit business DOES NOT EXIST. Sales should be looked at as a badge of honor and instead its looked at as an annoying department more times than not. I reiterate, without the annoying sales people your company dies.
Hottubtimemachine
Good Citizen
1
Director of Business Development
Love it. I couldn't agree more.
Maximas
Tycoon
0
Senior Sales Executive
The concern about being called a sales person to me came from the idea that most of people think of that Sales as a Job for whom has no job or as a profession that doesn't require any qualifications or even a degree which is not true.
So the other people who're doing the same as we do think that instead of downgrading their titles to be just a Salesperson they decided to appear more techy and brag about the education or degrees they may have to let themselves appear and sound more special and different:)
Hottubtimemachine
Good Citizen
0
Director of Business Development
Perhaps this image is a challenge...

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