Tag archive for ‘Negotiating’
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My Best Closing Tactic
Getting people to laugh helped me close more deals than every other method combined. Steve and I were negotiating our first deal. He was pushing me to the wall for a big discount. First, I was unwilling to cut my price. Second; I didn’t need to, because he had already made the emotional commitment to buy, which was why he was pushing so hard.It got tense. You know the type of tense negotiations I’m talking about. This wasn’t a poker faced, behind the shades, all in Texas old ‘em negotiation. This was an in your face, blood on the wall, last man or woman standing deal.
Finding an opportunity to raise a smile seemed impossible, but Steve finally gave me the opening, “You have it and I want it, so let’s make this deal.”
Without hesitation and a smile I said, “Steve, having is better than wanting, and I have it and you want it.”
He had a hard time catching his breath and nearly laughed himself to tears. I knocked off less than 1% on a six figure sale and we did plenty of business together down the road.
A father and son team tried working me over on $60,000 piece of equipment we were dying to sell. The son offered me $48,235.61 or some hokey number very close to that. Our deals are rounded off to the nearest zero, so this smelled fishy.
“Do you mind if I ask how you came up with that number?”
“My dad told me to offer you that.”
“Do you mind if I speak with your dad?”
“That’s an interesting number” I chortled. “Do you mind telling me how you came up with it?”
“It sounded good to me” he laughed.
“Well, $60,000 sounds better to me.” We laughed. He then explained that he was teaching his son how to buy. We agreed that I would give his son a small discount and a feel-good moment. We settled at $57,000, which I was very happy to get. His son felt like a hero and his father appreciated the discount and my handling the situation with a good sense of humor.
Of all the closing tips, tricks, and manipulations, nothing works better than authentically making someone feel good. And the best way to do that is to put a smile on their face and a laugh in their belly. Joke telling isn’t the only way. Most often, when we’re in tight negotiations, there is something in the situation that is truly funny. Try not to take yourself and selling too seriously. When all else fails, self-deprecation works very well.
When you laugh, the world laughs with you, and so do your customers.
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The Lever that Removes Price from Negotiations
You have done a superlative job qualifying, establishing value and ROI, and have the customer’s agreement to both. Now price is the issue? You have invested time, effort, expense, and you’re frustrated, disappointed, and appropriately ticked off.
Don’t show your pain. Grin and bear it, because you’re at the beginning of the negotiations, not the end. When the buyer argues price, what they’re really telling you is, “I want what you have, and I need your help to justify this purchase.”
While in the midst of fear of losing a sale, we lose site of the customer’s own frustration and disappointment. Abandon fear and refocus attention on the reality that they have invested more time, effort, and expense than you. They have worked with other salespeople, researched the market, written justifications from cost analysis spreadsheets, and had too many meetings. They have a lot of skin in the game and they want to walk away with something for their effort just like you.
Price is the easiest solution, but you don’t have to take the easy way out.There is absolutely, positively nothing more powerful to leverage during negotiations than the buyer’s want of that “one thing.” The secret is finding out what that “one thing” is. One method that serves me well is offering a horse of a different color. Remove an option or feature, scale down the offering, or suggest something completely different.
- Can you live without a saddle?
- Would our smaller horse work?
- How about this nice mule?
If they consider any of the alternatives, problem solved, price is no longer the issue. And when the answer is, “No, I really want that “one thing” bingo! The buyer has given you the lever to close the deal. Even if they are stuck on one feature, you have successfully shifted the negotiations from price to the most important mechanism in sales, want.
Frank Bettger illustrated this in a story that when I read it over thirty years ago, changed my life and became a seed that grew thousands of healthy sales. A Chevrolet PR executive named William Powell bought a home in Detroit and said the realtor “was one of the smartest salesmen I have ever met.”
The realtor listened intently to Mr. Powell and discovered that he had wanted to own trees all of his life. The realtor drove Powell to a house in a wooded suburb that had eighteen gorgeous trees. Powell told the realtor to sharpen his pencil, because he could buy similar houses for less money. But they didn’t have the trees and the realtor continuously pointed to, and counted all of the trees.
“He sold me eighteen trees and threw in the house. That is real salesmanship.” – William Powell
A new customer named Steve visited our warehouse to inspect two near identical Cincinnati machine tools. They weighed over 60,000 lbs each with identical footprints of something over 20’ X 15’. One could machine a part 100” X 40”, the other 100” X 60”. At over 12’ tall, the 20” difference in height seemed negligible to Steve and the 50% higher price was difficult for him to swallow. Price became the battleground, for him.
He adamantly insisted that he “had to have the larger machine.” Steve told me that “one thing” to win the battle over price.
“The extra height is extremely rare” I explained. I recommended the smaller machine and offered him the same capacity in a lighter duty machine from another manufacturer, sidestepping price.
We went out to eat, talked about family, sports, politics, and everything and anything other than the deal. After dinner, he said he’d take the larger machine, full price. We became friends and did business together for years.
Find out what the “one thing” that the buyer wants, clamp on to it like a pit-bull, and don’t let go.
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