The mindset is that I want to create value and capture fair return for that
value, not just on my side, but for the customer as well.
You're listening to the audible Ready Podcast, the show that helps you and your
teams sell more faster. We'll feature sales leaders sharing their best insights on how
to create a sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth. Presented by
the team Afforce Management, a leader in B to B sales effectiveness. Let's
get started. Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel
klepp Miller, joined today by Tim Cato. Hi. Tim, Hello,
Rachel, How are you good? How are you doing? You know,
it's a wonderful day here in the southeast United States. It's sunny, everything's
comfortable, little warm. Well, what a perfect day to talk about our
topic for today. Yes, yes, and so often when we bring Tim
on the podcast, we tackle the topic of negotiation, and that's what we're
going to do today. But specifically we're going to talk about presenting multiple options
to your buyer, your customer. Why that's important, how you frame it,
tips for doing so, how to frame your mindset around presenting multiple options
and I know Tim is going to share some great tips for us as we
talk through this topic, So let's go ahead and dive in. Tim.
We've said this before, but I think it's important to level set here at
the start of our conversation. Let's start with the mindset we need as great
sales negotiators and how that mindset carries through this idea of presenting multiple options.
Perfect. Well, let's start with that mindset. Then. The mindset is
that I want to create value and capture fair return for that value, not
just on my side, but for the customer as well. And that's where
the mindset of using multiple options really comes into play. Rachel. It is,
for my money, the most underleveraged best practice in a sales negotiation that
allows us to operationalize that mindset. I said a lot there, Yes,
but the mindset is really the well you said, operationalizing that mindset that is
exactly what we want to do, and selling this way throughout the sales process
and carrying that through negotiation allows us to keep the focus on values. To
talk a little bit about why that happens. Yeah, and again, another
distinction of a great sales negotiator. They do not see sales negotiations something that
takes place at the end of the conversation with the customer with the intent of
simply reaching in a agreement to sell them something for them to buy something.
Right, the mindset how you operationalize that, create and capture value is it
starts from the very beginning. Right, we're laying the foundation of the things
that matter the most of the customer through our expertise and knowledge, expanding the
customer's understanding of the scope, the depth, the breadth of what they're dealing
with, and the potential for the value that can be achieved for them if
they think through how they're going to address those problems. Now that you can
consider a foundation, a lot of people say, well, that's selling,
yes, and guess what two for one, it's also negotiating from the very
beginning, I'm building my position to be able to help the customer get more
value, maybe than they anticipated, and help us capture more value, maybe
more than we anticipated, by laying down that foundation so that by the time
we get to what someone call the formal part of the negotiation, the back
and forth to reach an agreement, I'm not just putting things out getting things
back putting things out. I'm building my final negotiation strategy to reach an agreement
on the foundation of everything that's been done up till that point. Now here's
the key, Rachel. In sales negotiation. A lot of sellers think that's
the end. I find a way to reach an agreement with the customer.
Wrong. Guess what the real negotiation might actually be getting ready to begin the
implementation, the utilization, the success, the measurement, how many people use
it, how often do you use it? How do we track renewals,
reorders, expansions. Those are all negotiations, even Rachel, getting time with
the i MC buyer, the executive buyer that bought whatever it is in the
first place, to check in three months later. Sometimes that is a negotiation.
So laying the foundation early, operationalizing it in reaching the contractual agreement,
and then setting up the ongoing relationship that is a continuum. That the mindset
of creating and capturing value is really the kind of the driver behind all of
that. And each of those components has multiple options in them exactly. And
you said something at the start of that answer that I also wanted to make
sure people heard we want our customers to buy instead of us to sell.
We want the choice to be there's aligned to the outcomes that they're trying to
drive. So when we're talking about this mindset that Tim has mentioned, it's
about keeping the value top of mind for the customer and keep I mean their
outcomes type of mind. But also your process has to be aligned to that
so they are able to buy based on what they want to achieve versus you
giving your sales presentation, which means Rachel both selling and negotiation, or something
I do with the customer as opposed to something I do to the customer yes
with not too awesome. So, given that mindset and that framework we've kind
of talked about so far, when we come up with our multiple options,
you know, different plans a customer can choose when they buy from us.
What do we want to make sure that we're thinking through as salespeople, and
what should that finished product look like? Walk through that for us. So
I might start this one with a little bit about what it is not okay
good. That's a lot of our customers have experienced sellers in the past,
believe it or not, and you know the reality is they've experienced some good
selling and they've experienced a lot of bad selling, and the historic traditional common
view of presenting multiple options more often than not fits into the not so good
selling category. And let me tell you what I mean by that, all
Right. One of the things that we're trying to do when we show up
and work with our customers as experts in solving the problems, they have deep
domain knowledge, telling them all that we have done to learn, all that
we have learned from others that they can leverage, and we do all of
that through the whole sales campaign and we show up at the end in a
very manipulative way. Right, We've been a knowledge partner. We've been an
expert. You know. The parallel here would be Rachel. I work with
a physician and they do an awesome job and hearing me out, going through
testing, diagnosis, and then at the end they say, yeah, I
am the founder of a medical vitamin company, and I think you're a whole
thing. You need to order my vitamins. Now here's the thing. You're
gonna urge just one hundred to try it out, but I'd like to recommend
a volume purchase of five hundred, because that's really going to get It's like
this whole thing that I thought was good was a set up. It feels
manipulative at the end. And so where does that come into multiple options.
Imagine you've been working really well with the customer drive and discovery. They're getting
insights, leveraging your expertise. They feel so good about what you're positioning to
them, they say, hey, why don't you send me a proposal?
And in that proposal it looks something like this, right, This is how
they usually title option one by some of what I have for this amount,
by these kind of services for that amount, and oh, by the way,
do it within this time frame. And here's what your price is.
That's option one. Option two buy more of my stuff for maybe a slightly
discounted price, get more services which costs you a little bit more. Oh,
by the way, I'm going to allow you to buy that at two
times instead of just one. In other words, what ends up happening Rachel,
And the way multiple options are perceived in the marketplaces being used is they're
not tied back to anything that was done in the past. We assume the
customer will know the value of option and one Option two other than this one
looks like it's is a subset of that one. It's basically multiple options on
how much of my stuff do you want to buy without strong connection back to
the reasons why, and frequently for their position somewhat technically, if it's a
technical sale, right, it's you buy this and this, and we leave
it up to the executive buyer economic buyer to determine what does an asynchronous platform
do to help me understand how I get visibility to all my I assets.
I mean, that's my problem, right, and you're telling me to pick
between these two things, and all it looks like is a menu of how
much of your stuff I want to buy and go. Guess what the careman
organizations have learned over the years, Right, there may be something in there
they want, but odds are there's a lot of fluff, because I know
you'll be shocked to hear this, Rachel, just like my listeners, our
listeners will be shocked to here. Sometimes those options really reflect what we,
the sellers, hope the customer will buy, to the point where let's say
I give them three options, one being one I know the customer will never
say yes too. It's woefully incomplete, but it does have a low dollar
amount right, I give them that offer, almost trying to not laugh because
I know that's never gonna fly. Right. Then I give them an offer
that is that one with a few enhancements in it. You know, it's
like, you know, probably use a bad phrase, I'm trying to shine
up something that's stinky, and it's just still gonna be stinky. And I
know on that second one, there's no way that customer is going to go
for it. It's got a couple things in there that the customers already told
us I'm not going to do, and we're gonna see if we can say,
well, if you give us some of this, I'll let you slide
on some of that. And then there's the third one that's got the bright
lights on it, it's got background music. It's clearly in their eyes,
the one you want them to buy. That, Rachel, is the epitome
of a manipulative close at the end. And guess what that generates, right,
mandates for concession. Now that's the common view of multiple options. Let's
flip it around to what we mean by multiple options, Rachel. Okay,
first of all, there are two or three bundled solutions that represent different forms
of value. To the customer, not based on our stuff, based on
their problem. It's like, what approach to your problem do you want to
take? Do you want to take the creative foundation? Do you want to
take the roadmap to transformation? Do you want to take the low cost approach
to dealing with this problem? It's framed. Each of those options, first
of all, are framed or branded in a interest that the economic buyer would
first recognize and be willing to invest in. At a minimum, say they
say, this is the establish a foundation of visibility into our it assets proposal,
compared to the identify ongoing visibility to our IT assets to enable cost reduction,
security enhancements, compliance understand downtime option. Now, those might have technical
things in them, but what I'm counting on is based on what I've done
up front. I know that those two branded titles will matter to the people
that are determining the priorities of their investment. And then if I do it
right, it's got. Each one has some things bundled underneath, Rachel,
but they're totally justifiable back to the business outcome that they're framed under. And
now an amazing thing happens. First of all, Rachel the customer says,
looks like you were listening to me, right, it looks like you understand
my business seller deficit disorder. Wait, we always come back to that article.
I think it's an automatic pin in anything I do, Rachel, because
it's so powerful. Right, But you look like you understand my situation.
You clearly have expertise. And if I say how come you got this thing
in there, you say, because you told me, You told me you
wanted to you told me this was important. Well when did we say that
way back at the beginning, and we were repeated it several times? Oh
yeah, I did say that. Now I understand why you're included. That
makes sense to me. Right, And then they look at the second one
and say, well, how come this one is configured different? Well,
it's a different business outcome. It's something you know, this one said you
just wanted to get started and understand how big your issue is this one is.
You know, you'll get that idea, but it's not a one and
done thing. It's an ongoing thing, and you want to drive it through
reporting, through consulting, through tracking of measurements and metrics that helps you get
to the long term plan. Oh I get that. That's why you have
consulting services in there. That's why you have reporting in there. That's why
you have automated reporting. A measurement didn't Oh, now I get it.
And guess what, Rachel. A beautiful thing happens Somewhere along the way,
somebody says, well, I like a lot of that one. But there's
two things in there I'm not sure we need right now. What if we
pulled something from here the first option into the second, the option on gain
initial visibility to my IT assets. What if I pulled two items out of
that and put it over here to gain ongoing visibility and operationalize that. What
if I put those over here? Now, look what's happening, Rachel.
This is not a conversation on mandates for concession. This is a conversation on
trading, and any sales negotiator in the world knows that at the end,
I would much rather be in a conversation about trading with the customer than responding
to mandates for concession, which are typically one way. It's just got all
kinds of tactics and manipulation around it. So when we talk about multiple options,
A couple things to keep in mind, what's the intent both to demonstrate
our knowledge, our expertise, and our credibility in solving their problems, giving
them options that are viable, understandable, And second, I want to mechanically
design trading into the final contractional negotiation as opposed to mandates for concession. So
to do that, multiple options are always built on the foundation of what took
place upstream, that conversation and selling, of them, identify their problems,
of them understand their required capabilities or decision criteria. That then when it's I
mean, I know I'm going to give them multiple options. If this goes
forward, at some point I'm going to give them multiple options, I'm going
to have to explain it. Why not start building the foundation for that right
away and change the conversation at the end. If you wanted me to put
a title on this, Rachel, it's called change the conversation away from them
feeling like you're trying to manipulate them into one thing you want that they got
to dig into and find out where the fluff or excess is. To Wow,
you're showing me two viable approaches here. You have backed it up with
what I've said. You have shown me what it will take to get there,
and now you've put me in a position to work with you to configure
this in a way that's right for me. Very different approach. Yeah,
that's great, And I think this if I were to sum up a couple
of additional thoughts that I had while you were talking rambling on no, not
rambling on it at all. I think this is fruitful and I hope many
of you are backing up the conversation taking notes. Because the customer wants to
feel good about their decision. I mean a lot of these deals that our
listeners are selling, our big ticket items and in tight economies, and when
budgets are scrutinized or spending scrutinized, the customer wants to feel like they are
making the best decision possible for their company. So by you presenting multiple options,
giving them a couple of paths to take, they can better visualize or
get their heads around the different outcomes that they're trying to drive and the purchase
that they want to make. Because you know, for us, as in
the selling process, things can get murky and we're dealing with multiple decision makers
and we're having meetings and we're trying to coalesce it and get it on one
PowerPoint slide for the deal right what we do. So breaking it down this
way helps the customer get their heads around the purchase as well and the outcomes
that they want to drive. And you know, I've taught communication classes before,
Tim, and one of the mantras we talk about in any communication speech,
communication, rhetoric business is to think about not what you're saying or you're
presenting to frame it a different way, but how it will be received.
How does it mean to the person. And at the beginning of this conversation,
you talked about how you want the customer to feel when they're part of
the selling process, when they're buying from you, and when you present the
multiple options with one solution Bake, that's like manipulative, as you said,
that's going to be received a certain way. But if you frame that up
and really think about if the buyer just took this one slide or this one
PDF and looked at it, how is that going to be received. Am
I going to be perceived as someone who is really presenting a solution that's going
to solve their business challenges? Or am I looking like a seller who's just
trying to get this deal in by the end of the month, and those
are two different things. I think that's a good litmus test for us to
use whenever we're communicating with the customer, but particularly around these multiple options.
I love that so much. Rachel. There's another old saying in sales negotiation.
Whatever gets anchored into the conversation is what you will negotiate at the end.
So imagine software. Whether we're using old school multiple options or we're just
throwing that big old everything plus the kitchen Sinc Proposal in front of the customers.
It's almost always some configuration of our stuff, our price, and the
timing, and we do it to ourselves. Guess what you're going to be
negotiating. How much your stuff do I need to buy? How much is
it going to cost? What is the timing? And it's not uncommon for
you know, we get what we deserve in that situation. It's not uncommon
for a procurement person to say, Okay, let's start with the timing.
I'm not going to do this by the end of your quarter. We did
it to our Why do they always wait till the end? Because you've taught
to him that they get the best deal. Now we could go back.
I don't think I need all these things? How much? If I took
this out? How much? If I took that out? Oh well,
if you're willing to do that, won't that have an impact on the overall
this or that? And oh, by the way, if you're willing to
do that, I might do it before the end of your quarter. That
is a self inflicted wound. What happens when we present multiple options with multiple
outcomes that let's say it is procurement. Remember one thing, right, chel,
Procurement always buys on behalf of somebody else. Who's the somebody else that's
going to be receiving this, and say, okay, they're probably recommending we
buy too much of their stuff. I know they probably pump that up ten
or fifteen percent. And if you hold out to the end of the quarter,
we'll get a better deal. That's the direction of the procurement person.
Guess what they're going to come back. Here's what I did on amount of
stuff, here's what I did on percent a discount or pricing. And oh,
by the way, I think I could get even five percent more if
we say we might be willing to do it earlier. Such a predictable average,
common approach to negotiation. What if there is procurement and procureman said,
hey, they came in with different options. Well what are the options.
Well, they didn't do it the way most do. There's not an option
one option too, there's an option create baseline understanding for visibility to our itsts
across the entire organization, and hopefully that internal customer says, well, that's
actually what's in that one. And then they start going through and they call
over there, you know, their technical buyers, they call over the other
influencers that helped create the inputs that was based on Hey, this seller says
we need these things to produce that outcome, and the people around that that
kind of embarrassing. Well, honestly they got that from us, and I
think it's pretty critical. If we don't have it. We're the automation site.
We can do it manually, but it takes a year, it takes
fifty people, and it's all on spreadsheets and the second one and it doesn't
give us current visibility to what might be broken, what's out of commission.
It gives a zero visibility from a security start Oh yeah, Actually, I
guess I need those things now. It's not procurement coming at us to attack.
Do I really need all that you have in here? Because you and
I both know that's what sellers do. They pump this thing up with fluff.
I can defend everything in there any if you don't want it. The
implication is back to you achieving. You're welcome. So what kind of outcome
do you want? Do you want to get started outcome? Do you want
the long term? We are now in an informed position to manage all of
our assets across organization on a daily basis, you know. And by the
way, if I am a health system of twenty seven hospitals, you know,
do you think about the important to know how many pieces of medical equipment
are available, our purchased, our compliant are on and on and on.
So it just presents it differently. And not only does it not film aniptive,
they get involved on their side to say, well this one, that
one, what about a hybrid, and here's the other beautiful thing. Why
I say it's slander leverage, Rachel. More often than not someone says,
Yeash, some things have changed evolved. Thanks for these perspectives, I'd like
to create a hybrid between the two. Really, what would that look like?
Well, I want all this for that price, I don't. Well,
if it's that price, it's this one over here. No, no,
no, I want to pay less for that. Well, you know,
there might be a way to move closer to it. But here's what
we are going to need in return. We need a multi year commitment.
We need to be able to track, and we want the ability to advertise
that we helped you drive your costs down with that one. By the way,
we'd like a semi annual meeting with your senior executives to get caught.
We now start being able to weave in the things we want and guess what
starts to happen. The value of the final agreement starts to grow, and
what a foundation we've created for once we start working on that three year relationship
to come back with more MATHIL options in the future. So I know,
I'm really I feel like I'm trying to sell this, but it is such
a powerful approach. Now, one last thing, I know you want to
move on. I don't have to wait to the final proposal to use multiple
options. I can use them right after discovery. Hey, I've talked with
the people in operations. I've talked with the people in IT. I've talked
with the people in security. I've talked with the people in product. I've
talked with the people in customer service. I talked to the people in finance.
You know, you might not realize this, but you all don't agree
on your side on what should be done. There's a lot of opinions there.
So I would like to share with you based on all those conversations,
we've had three different directions we could go. Now. I'm not putting a
price tag on it. I'm not even doing going deep in what solutions are
bunderneath that, but I am using those branded options and a value proposition.
You know what I'm counting on, Rachel. I present those options and someone
says, yeah, I've heard some of that too, And now I can
watch the political landscape inside the organization as they socialize those three options. I
either start to get out understanding that one of those is actually the dominant thought,
or I get some insight to the functions that are trying to make their
idea the dominant thought. Again, just tons of utility on how to navigate
not only the business landscape to try and get an agreement done, but also
the political landscape of who are the people that might influence it's And I love
this topic, Tim, because I know that we have a lot of individual
reps out there listening who might not be at companies that have contracted force management
or don't have commanding the message, so to speak. But they're in there
just trying to grind and do the best that they can to get their deals
across the finish line. And this is something that you can really think about
as an individual seller. Let me look at what I'm presenting to my customers,
let me see how it's going to be received. Let me think through
some of these tips Tim share today and figure out how I can give them
multiple options that are aligned to their outcomes. Would love to hear how this
podcast topic maybe has changed your frame of thinking. And if you have any
success stories after listening to this, please reach out and let me know find
me on LinkedIn. But I think there's also the next step here, Tim,
is that if we are leading a team, if we are leading a
sales organization, getting the right mindset around our negotiations strategy is something that will
really move the needle and make things more efficient and effective and stop the fire
drop well and not stopped. We can never stop fire drills. We minimize
the mess that sometimes happens at the end of these deals. And I would
just like to maybe close here with a little bit of your perspective, and
how do you equip a team to think this way? How can you operationalize
better multiple options for your buyers at the manager level, at the leader level,
you're gonna be shocked to hear this, Rachel. Let's go back to
four essential questions. Yeah, I can get my team focused on what are
the big problems we solve for our customer, how do we solve them,
and how do we solve them differently? Okay, now from the insights to
that. As a leader, I can say we should be managing our upfront
discussions. We call its every I don't care what course you've been through.
The conversations. We have to understand their situation and help them better understand their
situation. I want to use that time period to start growing their understanding what
it's going to take to solve those big problems, because I know eventually we're
going to give a recommendation. I want the recommendation to be heard by the
customer in the context of things that are required for them to solve their problem,
not a list those things they could buy from us. So that's you
know, thing number one, or think number two. I guess, come
up with the big problems, figure out up front discovery. How do we
create customer awareness and appreciation for those items number three? All right, there
are a lot of problems out there that we solve, and frankly, there's
probably about half a dozen ways we could do it, half a dozen business
outcomes we can create. Why not start framing out what some of these multiple
options could look like. You know, there's almost always a foundational piece that
I could do now, there's almost always a long term piece that might save
some more money. There might also be a tan gentle one. But I
can start framing those out right now as a leader and say, we know
these are the problems, that's the discovery you need to do. Here are
the requirements you might be targeting. Any if you do, here's three bundles
or four bundles that we know resonate with the customer. Oh, by the
way, last thing, if we get into a trading discussion, let me
give you a list of things that we'd like in return. This is the
oldest concept in sales negotiation, Rachel, give gets. I'm going to teach
my customer, when you ask me to give you something, I'm going to
ask for something that I get in return. Why not give your teams some
guidance on that so that it doesn't at the end feel like a surprise.
They've been socializing that with the customer. Hey, payments or something we care
about. Hey, doing this on our contract versus your contract actually is worth
something to us. Being able to use your executives in a publishable case study.
Those things matter to us. And now I'm starting to broaden the items
that could be in a negotiation. And here's the other oldest idea in a
sales negotiation, Rachel. When it comes down to one thing, that is
not a position of strength. Right, the best sales negotiating organizations in the
world negotiate on multiple items, and guess what, they don't bring those up
at the end. They've been building the foundation all on. And when I
can negotiate for value across multiple items, and I got a list in my
pocket of additional things we could ask for if they ask me to give one
more thing. I'm always prepared to get value back in return. That builds
our position negotiate. It makes us more effective, and it helps us and
them capture more value. And guess what, Rachel, At the end,
it doesn't look like what everybody else is doing. They consistently get more value
from us. We capture more value. This is a totally uncommon way to
I toly look different, but to achieve different outcomes, and over a period
of time, maybe not the first time our listeners do this, but the
second or third or fourth time they negotiate with a customer this way, the
customer starts noticing and they pick up. Hey, when I share what I
want with these people, they come back, not always with exactly what I
want, but they hear it, and I know they're going to ask for
something in return. So maybe I'll start thinking about what would be a value
to them instead of just what would be a value to me. And this
thing builds off each other and before you know it, and the cycle of
two or three renewal. It's a completely different conversation. Change the conversation,
change the conversation, and there's as much differentiation and how we sell as there
is in what we sell. Your favorite boom Yeah, top the mike.
Rachel, thank you so much for joining me for the conversation. Tim awesome.
As you can tell, I got a little passion for this, but
it is such an underleveraged piece our tool and our toolkit. I would like
people to learn more about how they do it. Yes, and if this
strikes a chord with you and you're an individual rep and you want more insight
into improving your negotiation, improving your discovery, be sure to check out a
sender. We have plans for individuals and small teams and if you're leading an
organization, we can help you. At Force Management. Thanks Tim, You're
welcome. Rachel, good talking to everybody. Thank you to all of you
for listening to the Audible Ready Sales podcast. At Force Management, we're focused
on transforming sales organization into elite teams. Are proven methodologies, deliver programs that
build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the ability to
execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is our experience,
the proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit us at
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Until next time.