Speaker 1: Where's that sweet spot that sits between the customer's view
Speaker 1: of a great outcome and our view of a great outcome.
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately the individual seller's job is to try
Speaker 1: and merge those two together.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the audible Ready Podcast, the show that
Speaker 2: helps you and your teams sell more faster. We'll feature
Speaker 2: sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create
Speaker 2: a sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth.
Speaker 2: Presented by the team at Force Management, a leader in
Speaker 2: B to B sales effectiveness. Let's get started.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm
Speaker 3: Rachel Klett Miller joining me today as our own Tim Cato.
Speaker 1: Hi, Tim, oh, Rachel, how you doing today?
Speaker 3: Good good? We got a big topic today.
Speaker 1: Well, it's one that comes up all the time.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it really spawned from a webinar that we
Speaker 3: just did for teams that sell to the government. Now,
Speaker 3: if you don't sell the government, stay with me, stick
Speaker 3: with me, because we know that government can be a
Speaker 3: much different animal than straight up enterprise sales. And God
Speaker 3: bless the people that work those contracts and one of
Speaker 3: the challenges that those teams deal with in particular is
Speaker 3: the need and the ability to communicate back to corporate
Speaker 3: what those agencies need, their priorities, et cetera, in order
Speaker 3: to drive a great outcome in that final contract for
Speaker 3: your company, but also for the buyer. So as the seller,
Speaker 3: you have to kind of walk this walk. It's more
Speaker 3: of a challenge in government sales because sometimes corporate doesn't
Speaker 3: get all the nuances. But I know it's a challenge
Speaker 3: for a lot of salespeople. I mean, how many of
Speaker 3: us say corporate just doesn't get it. I'm on the
Speaker 3: phone of the customer. They don't understand, right, So we're
Speaker 3: going to break that down today. We're going to talk
Speaker 3: about communicating back to corporate. And there is a foundation
Speaker 3: that you need to understand as a seller to be
Speaker 3: able to do this well. And it starts with understanding
Speaker 3: the key things your company wants in a deal. So
Speaker 3: I want to start there, Tim, Can you talk about
Speaker 3: what that means kind of if we operationalize that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's frame up a couple of things here, because
Speaker 1: you're right by the way that webinar was on selling
Speaker 1: into government these days was awesome. Many of you get
Speaker 1: a chance to listen to that, you really should. But
Speaker 1: here's what's similar to that environment, that's selling environment, and
Speaker 1: what some of you that do not sell into the
Speaker 1: government might still be facing that makes this relevant. We
Speaker 1: would call those complex selling environments. Complex because of the
Speaker 1: customer's organization, Complex because of the political aspects tied to it,
Speaker 1: lots of different interests trying to be met, Complex because
Speaker 1: of the size scope challenge of the problems. Complex because
Speaker 1: of the competitive environment. So anyone that's selling into a
Speaker 1: complex environment, I think this is topic is really relevant
Speaker 1: because you're right, Rachel, it does come up all the time.
Speaker 1: And because of that, I found there are three high
Speaker 1: level concepts that we need to probably organize our conversation
Speaker 1: today around The first one i'll call two way guidance
Speaker 1: on a great outcome, not just us hearing from the
Speaker 1: customer what they want to achieve, not just us telling
Speaker 1: the customer what our company wants to achieve, but a
Speaker 1: two way back and forth exchange. Then the second concept,
Speaker 1: the external sale, how we manage those ideas of a
Speaker 1: great outcome for both sides into the conversation with customer.
Speaker 1: But here's the one you are I think referring to
Speaker 1: a minute ago, Rachel. The internal sale. You know, I
Speaker 1: talk to folks all the time when we do our
Speaker 1: negotiating program and say, what's more challenging the negotiation with
Speaker 1: the customer the negotiation back inside? And I'll give all
Speaker 1: of our listeners a big moment to think what the
Speaker 1: most common answer is, and of course it's the one
Speaker 1: back inside. So I think when we talk about from
Speaker 1: a seller level adual contributor level, how do those three
Speaker 1: concepts come into play to give us guidance on what
Speaker 1: we do to be able to manage both sides of
Speaker 1: the equation we're sitting in the middle of in a
Speaker 1: complex selling environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah so, and then that's kind of the level set.
Speaker 3: And once you kind of assess what your company needs
Speaker 3: and you start working through both that external and internal process,
Speaker 3: you have to do some anchoring, and you want to
Speaker 3: do it early. But I'd love to hear your tips,
Speaker 3: Tim on how you're anchoring on those items throughout the
Speaker 3: sales process to ensure you don't have a late stage
Speaker 3: fire drow when you're working both externally and internally.
Speaker 1: Yeah great, you know, so let's talk about this one
Speaker 1: a little bit and go back to that first concept
Speaker 1: to discuss the two way guidance on great outcomes, you know, Rachel,
Speaker 1: In an ideal world, sellers have gotten guidance from their
Speaker 1: leadership team on what is it that constitutes a great outcome? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, not just pricing levels, not just you know,
Speaker 1: all the legal terms that we got to make sure
Speaker 1: we let the lawyers deal with. But I'm talking about
Speaker 1: detailed guidance, the kind of product services to sell, timing,
Speaker 1: contractual terms, everything that's included in that. Now he said
Speaker 1: it in an ideal world, because what we found is
Speaker 1: more often than not that ideal world does not exist,
Speaker 1: and so we can hope that the company will give
Speaker 1: us that guidance. But more often than not, we find
Speaker 1: individual sellers are operating in an environment where, without saying it,
Speaker 1: they're just kind of supposed to know what a great
Speaker 1: outcome would look like, which, of course, when I work
Speaker 1: with senior leaders, I say, why are you surprised that
Speaker 1: people come back with all kinds of crazy things in
Speaker 1: your opinion? But so what do you do in the
Speaker 1: absence of guidance from your organization what a great outcome
Speaker 1: could look like. You've got to start capturing it with
Speaker 1: the customer and then start socializing back inside that's the
Speaker 1: external internal sale that you talked about, and probably the
Speaker 1: biggest key to all that is exactly what you said, Rachel,
Speaker 1: start early. One of the biggest things that gets in
Speaker 1: the way us being able to effectively manage both sides
Speaker 1: of trying to achieve a great outcome is we wait
Speaker 1: too late to get started externally with the customer. We drive, drive, drive,
Speaker 1: to go through maybe a technical proof of concept, We
Speaker 1: work with the project team, and it's not till we
Speaker 1: get to the end that we start finding out well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, they're legal has some requirements. Wait a minute.
Speaker 1: Their IT team has some requirements. Wait a minute, their
Speaker 1: security team has some requirements. So we're waiting too late
Speaker 1: to capture information from the customer. Slows things down, creates
Speaker 1: challenge same thing internally, Rachel. We wait to the end,
Speaker 1: and by the way, most of our organizations are set
Speaker 1: up to push us to the end. Don't get our
Speaker 1: legal involved until you get most of the business terms
Speaker 1: all laid out. Don't go to the product team unless
Speaker 1: you really have this kind of need. Don't go to
Speaker 1: the services team. Don't go So what ends up happening
Speaker 1: is if we wait too late to start socializing what
Speaker 1: we're hearing and what we believe is going to be required.
Speaker 1: Guess what you get the fire drill at the end,
Speaker 1: and then you're putting yourself into the worst kind of environment.
Speaker 1: Think about it. I know the world has changed a lot,
Speaker 1: but some things have not really changed that much. I've
Speaker 1: managed worldwide sales for several organizations and almost every single
Speaker 1: one that was tied to technology. Guess when we did
Speaker 1: most of our business the last couple weeks of a quarter.
Speaker 1: So you wait to the end to start socializing internally,
Speaker 1: the approvals you might need, the support you might need.
Speaker 1: You're trying to do all that in an environment where
Speaker 1: everybody else is trying to do the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: and resources are scarce, Attention is scarce, and it's just
Speaker 1: the perfect storm for delays, problems, fire drills. And I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but when we're doing all that,
Speaker 1: there's about fifty other suppliers that our customers are dealing
Speaker 1: with that are doing the exact same thing, which creates
Speaker 1: those bottlenecks on their side. So I think the more
Speaker 1: you socialize that early and start getting out in front
Speaker 1: of all this is really helpful because then it allows
Speaker 1: you to drive it's time to allow you to drive
Speaker 1: discovery that make some of those items higher in relevance
Speaker 1: lower in relevance, must haves, nice to haves. You can
Speaker 1: start organizing that and start getting closer to determining where's
Speaker 1: that sweet spot that sits between the customer's view of
Speaker 1: a great outcome and our view of a great outcome.
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately the individual seller's job is to try
Speaker 1: and merge those two together to come up with something
Speaker 1: that is not only acceptable to both sides, but highly
Speaker 1: motivating both sides. And you can't do that as a
Speaker 1: fire drill at the end. It's such a challenge, Right.
Speaker 3: You talked about what's motivating for both sides, and that's
Speaker 3: a critical piece of this because you want to make
Speaker 3: sure your customer has what they need in that final contract,
Speaker 3: in those final terms, and at the obvious level, right,
Speaker 3: that means a solution that aligns with their outcomes they're
Speaker 3: trying to drive.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We say that all the time, and we have a
Speaker 3: lot of content on that you can check out and
Speaker 3: I'll put it in the show notes. But sometimes, like
Speaker 3: what the customer needs can get very granular. It might
Speaker 3: team really in the weeds for us, but it's also
Speaker 3: very important for them and sometimes those little things can
Speaker 3: make or break the final deal. Tim, So what kind
Speaker 3: of questions are you asking to ensure that you create
Speaker 3: a proposal that hits the mark here on some of
Speaker 3: those seemingly minor things for the customer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So back to in the spirit of starting the
Speaker 1: external selling and the internal selling early, Rachel, I know
Speaker 1: what a great outcome looks like for my company, or
Speaker 1: at least I've said I need to understand that more
Speaker 1: start shaping and influencing that. But with the customer, let's
Speaker 1: go back to an old friend decision criteria. I think
Speaker 1: what has up happened a lot of time we start
Speaker 1: and we do a great job in early stage discovery
Speaker 1: on the outcomes the customers trying to achieve, but we
Speaker 1: have sometimes a tendency to stop there and what we
Speaker 1: miss are what are some of the requirements or the
Speaker 1: decision criteria that they need to put in place to
Speaker 1: help them achieve those outcomes. Given the unique organization they are,
Speaker 1: their unique workflows, tech stack, organization, regulatory issues, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: what are their decision criteria? So I'm driving early stay
Speaker 1: age discovery to say, here's where you're at and the
Speaker 1: challenges it creates on this issue you have, here's where
Speaker 1: you'd like to be and the outcomes great. We all
Speaker 1: get that. We recommend going a step further, dig into
Speaker 1: those requirements or decision criteria and start getting my preference.
Speaker 1: I like to have a written, prioritized, and confirmed set
Speaker 1: of decision criteria that I'm starting to socialize early in
Speaker 1: a complex environment, maybe across multiple contacts on the customer side.
Speaker 1: And guess what I'm doing. I'm not waiting to the end.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing some of that back inside to my own organization.
Speaker 1: Give me some guidance on some additional decision criteria to
Speaker 1: achieve that outcome. What are some other things we'd be
Speaker 1: looking for? So I'm working both sides, but I'm not
Speaker 1: just aimed at the outcomes, because outcomes are subject to interpretation, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how do we get there? I want to get it
Speaker 1: to customer my three magic words. Rachel have used this before, Customer,
Speaker 1: It's time for me to give me my proposal. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you what I'm recommending, because you told me,
Speaker 1: you told me these were the twelve decision criteria you're
Speaker 1: looking at, and I'm going to demonstrate for you right now,
Speaker 1: how my proposal maps to every single one of those.
Speaker 1: When we just stop at outcomes, Rachel, it leaves the
Speaker 1: door open for our competitors to say, well, we can
Speaker 1: achieve those outcomes in a different way. I'm going to
Speaker 1: work well upstream from that to really try and drive
Speaker 1: discovery to help the customer understand, Yeah, I get the outcome.
Speaker 1: You want to reduce costs, or I get the outcome
Speaker 1: you want to have access to data no matter where
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, I get you want to be more
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I understand that. But let's back it
Speaker 1: up to say, given where you're at right now, what
Speaker 1: do you have to put in place to move from
Speaker 1: where you're at the challenge to where you want to
Speaker 1: be in the good things? And I think when we
Speaker 1: do that, we're actually helping the customers, our friend John
Speaker 1: Kaplan says all the time participate in their own rescue.
Speaker 1: We're helping them map out what their requirements are so
Speaker 1: they'll be more informed buyers when they go out in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. And the more we do that upfront, by
Speaker 1: the time we get to the end, we're not introducing
Speaker 1: something surprising to the customer. We're just saying, I'm just
Speaker 1: responding to what you told me you wanted. Now here's
Speaker 1: the little nuance to this, Rachel. Along the way, I've
Speaker 1: also been hearing from my company, what are some things
Speaker 1: we might want, multi year agreement, the ability to track impact,
Speaker 1: we want success metrics, maybe we want access to your
Speaker 1: team that sells into the government. Whatever that definition of
Speaker 1: a great outcome would be. We are starting to infuse
Speaker 1: that into some of our conversation on what a great
Speaker 1: outcome would look like, not just for you, customer, but
Speaker 1: what we need. I ask and tell customers all the
Speaker 1: time for me is what I tell them for me
Speaker 1: to get you more of what you're looking for. You
Speaker 1: got to help me get my company what we're looking for.
Speaker 1: And there's more of those things that actually are in
Speaker 1: common and we share than are a post. So let's
Speaker 1: work with that upstream to really start socializing. And I
Speaker 1: owe it to my customer to give them some guidance
Speaker 1: what would make a great outcome for my company that
Speaker 1: we might be able to weave into this discussion that
Speaker 1: would help me get them some things they want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then when you go back, you have some things. Hey,
Speaker 3: I was able to get this and this, you have
Speaker 3: some demonstration of getting the company's interests into your customers
Speaker 3: deal and I know you've mentioned working with countless sales teams, Tim,
Speaker 3: and I know there's some repetition to this process. And
Speaker 3: talk to some of those common internal bottlenecks that a
Speaker 3: lot of companies deal with that kind of derail that
Speaker 3: success and what can a REP do to work around
Speaker 3: those that they can.
Speaker 1: One I'll say is the most common is a process
Speaker 1: issue and one is a behavior issue. You know, the
Speaker 1: process issue is the company a lot of times and
Speaker 1: I'll call this the one off approval approach. So some
Speaker 1: organizations don't have deal desk, they don't have an internal
Speaker 1: function that brings all the approvals required to finalize an
Speaker 1: agreement with a customer, especially a complex one together kind
Speaker 1: of managed by one group. We work with several organizations
Speaker 1: that before we got involved. I remember one an individual
Speaker 1: rep had to go out and get up to twelve
Speaker 1: individual approvals from different functional areas finance, legal services, product,
Speaker 1: this regional lead or that regional leader. It required a
Speaker 1: lot of one offs. And what would happen is it
Speaker 1: would happen at the end of the quarter, right, Rachel.
Speaker 1: So what goes on, well, I need a discount level,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to go to finance and we're going
Speaker 1: to see if we could get exception beyond the pre
Speaker 1: approved level that I could take the discount to. The
Speaker 1: finance team says, h let me look at it, and
Speaker 1: they make a one off decision relative to the discount,
Speaker 1: and then the rep gets a and goes over to
Speaker 1: the product team. We need to do some customization on this,
Speaker 1: and they're really busy. The product team says, can't you
Speaker 1: just sell them you are off the shelf, No, we can't.
Speaker 1: We have to have this level of integration. Well, let
Speaker 1: me see, and they give a one off approval on
Speaker 1: that for that one customer, Rachel, that had up to
Speaker 1: twelve individual one of us, they would give twelve concessions.
Speaker 1: And then when it was time to go finalize the deal,
Speaker 1: someone say, we gave twelve different things. What did we
Speaker 1: get back? I can return because it was all isolated
Speaker 1: one off approvals and that really slows things down. And Rachel,
Speaker 1: I pity the poor fool whose customer says, yeah, eleven
Speaker 1: of these look good, but I want to change this one,
Speaker 1: and they got to go back through the whole process. Again,
Speaker 1: So the one off approval process. If that's a reality
Speaker 1: for your company, you need some help with that. But
Speaker 1: at a minimum, you likely know it's there. You got
Speaker 1: to get out in front of it. And if you don't,
Speaker 1: then that comes to the behavior problem. It doesn't happen
Speaker 1: as much today because we've put process improvements in place,
Speaker 1: but I'll say, Rachel, back in the day, every once
Speaker 1: in a while, some reps knew that there was this problem,
Speaker 1: and in fact they found the approval process went a
Speaker 1: lot faster if I just kind of kept the company
Speaker 1: a little blind to some of these special issues that
Speaker 1: were coming up until the last couple weeks of a quarter,
Speaker 1: whenever one was so rushed, and it would be much
Speaker 1: more likely I'd get a quick approval. Right, those days
Speaker 1: are long long gone. And so when we don't bring
Speaker 1: back the internal sale or the internal negotiation, Rachel, we
Speaker 1: actually contribute to our own challenge. We're the architects of
Speaker 1: some of our own demise. Right. We wait, we wait,
Speaker 1: and then when we go want to move fast, the
Speaker 1: internal machine isn't ready for it. So those two things
Speaker 1: create undoe bottlenecks that really get in the way. So
Speaker 1: what do you do as an individual, I think you
Speaker 1: got to be mindful of what's the environment you're working in.
Speaker 1: On the customer side, that's your job, right, but you
Speaker 1: also have to be mindful of what you're dealing with
Speaker 1: on the internal side. Some of our listeners work in
Speaker 1: very closely held organizations where the approvals required might come
Speaker 1: down to one or two people. Great, good for you, right,
Speaker 1: but there might be complexity on the customer side. You
Speaker 1: still have to manage others of us work in that environment,
Speaker 1: like our one customer that had twelve different functions they
Speaker 1: had to deal with to get a deal done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got to know upfront what you're dealing with and weave
Speaker 1: that into your plan. We don't often keep in mind, Rachel,
Speaker 1: the internal selling, the internal negotiation, and we've lived to
Speaker 1: learn with the frustration why is it so hard internally?
Speaker 1: And I frequently tell people it's because you're not planning
Speaker 1: for it upfront and you've pushed it off to the
Speaker 1: end and you kind of get what you deserve. I
Speaker 1: wish it was different for you as well, but it's not.
Speaker 1: And that's bigger than what you can control. Control what
Speaker 1: you can control and get out in front of it early.
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's such a good point because it's easy to
Speaker 3: stay here and say, oh, this company's messed up. They
Speaker 3: should be able to work this better for us. But
Speaker 3: it is what it is, and you still have a
Speaker 3: quoted ahead. So let's talk first, like the good strategies
Speaker 3: that you've seen to ensure the teams are instinct during
Speaker 3: complex deals like sales, legal, finance. I know that that
Speaker 3: can represent a big headache for REP.
Speaker 1: Well. One of the things is I'm either relying on
Speaker 1: my experience in my own company, or I'm leveraging the
Speaker 1: experience of some mentors or my manager that kind of
Speaker 1: know maybe some of the ways to get things done
Speaker 1: in this company. And Rachel, all our listeners know. The
Speaker 1: way you get things done varies from company company. There's
Speaker 1: the formal and then there's the what we all really know,
Speaker 1: and you've got to try and manage those. But here's
Speaker 1: a best practice I learned years ago from the number
Speaker 1: one seller in my organization at the time, and our
Speaker 1: organization in those days, Rachel looked more like the one
Speaker 1: off approval process kind of company, And he said, you
Speaker 1: know what I do, Tim, once I start getting an
Speaker 1: idea of what the customer is looking for and I
Speaker 1: kind of have an idea the things that would matter
Speaker 1: for us. I sponsor a call. I sponsor a call,
Speaker 1: and I'll bring in someone from finance. I'll bring in
Speaker 1: someone from legal. I'll bring in someone from the product team.
Speaker 1: I'll bring in someone from the services team. I'll bring
Speaker 1: it whoever is going to be from the product team.
Speaker 1: And I actually sponsor a call. Now, it was really
Speaker 1: easy for him because he had the biggest deals in
Speaker 1: the company every single time, and so people knew, if
Speaker 1: he makes the request for this call, we should have
Speaker 1: representation on that call. And a funny thing happened when
Speaker 1: I started practicing that and then did it in subsequent organizations.
Speaker 1: I did it one time, and the inevitably all those
Speaker 1: people I invited would say, this is a really good idea.
Speaker 1: We should do this more often. Maybe we shouldn't depend
Speaker 1: on an individual contributor like Tim to pull it together.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the kind of thing we should have
Speaker 1: our deal desk do. So. I think getting people in
Speaker 1: line from the beginning, starting to socialize. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this is what I'm asking to prove on You're saying
Speaker 1: this is what I'm hearing. The customer's interests are if
Speaker 1: we can achieve those, what can I ask for back
Speaker 1: in return? Start getting that guidance early. Because here's the thing, Rachel,
Speaker 1: we aloys often forget as an individual contributor. You see
Speaker 1: your opportunities, You've got your history of experience. You don't
Speaker 1: understand all the wild, crazy ones that people dealt with
Speaker 1: and odds are there are people in your organization that
Speaker 1: dealt with some really wild complex situations and found a
Speaker 1: way through that. They decided not to socialize because they
Speaker 1: didn't want everybody on it, but they've dealt with it before,
Speaker 1: and getting out in front they help you understand how
Speaker 1: can I just it while I still have runway left
Speaker 1: in the opportunity to be able to stick the landing.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's get out in front, socialize across
Speaker 1: from amultiple groups, maybe sponsor. Let's all come together and
Speaker 1: create a crazy idea, Rachel. Our negotiation strategy.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have to wait till the end to form that.
Speaker 1: What if I started doing it up front that allowed
Speaker 1: me to start executing with the customer. I got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people aligned with me on my side.
Speaker 1: It tends to go a lot better that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, when you're classing these deals and
Speaker 3: you're having these communication, you're talking internal and managing that
Speaker 3: internal process. It's really important that everybody involved have the
Speaker 3: context because if the customer is asking for something, there's
Speaker 3: typically a reason. And I'll just say from my own experience,
Speaker 3: I'm in marketing, and even when I'm bringing a contract,
Speaker 3: a vendor contract to our internal team, they'll push back
Speaker 3: on things like, well, why do they need the money upfront?
Speaker 3: We should do net thirty and at sixty whatever, And
Speaker 3: I'll say, well, they're asking for the money upfront because
Speaker 3: they have to put all the resources against it now out.
Speaker 3: Or they'll say, let's say in the contract, we'll say
Speaker 3: we'll get twenty CROs at this dinner, and they said, well,
Speaker 3: we should actually have more than that to make the
Speaker 3: numbers work. And I'm like, well, I don't want them
Speaker 3: to just pad the room with people that don't matter, right,
Speaker 3: I want quality over quantity. And as you have those conversations,
Speaker 3: then everybody starts to see why there's the ask there
Speaker 3: or why it's that way. So it's important, I think
Speaker 3: to have contacts and that perhaps might be some advice
Speaker 3: for reps who are trying to articulate customer needs internally
Speaker 3: is to really help others have that context so they
Speaker 3: can help you move the deal forward.
Speaker 1: And Rachel, you know me on the negotiation wunk. What
Speaker 1: you just described. We covered in great detail on one
Speaker 1: of our podcasts on negotiation called the difference between positions
Speaker 1: and interest. Like you just said, we want the money
Speaker 1: up front, that's the position. What's the interest? We got
Speaker 1: to think a lot of upfront costs into this. So
Speaker 1: when we socialize that, you know, what it allows us
Speaker 1: to do is maybe come at the position from a
Speaker 1: different way. Maybe we can help bring some of the
Speaker 1: resources so you don't have to invest in much as
Speaker 1: much of front, or we can come up with creative solutions.
Speaker 1: Really difficult when you're trying to finalize a deal. At
Speaker 1: the end, finalize the negotiation and you're still dealing with positions.
Speaker 1: People have a tendency to dig in and what they
Speaker 1: do is they start fighting for the win on their position.
Speaker 1: As opposed to when we do it early, people are
Speaker 1: much more inclined to talk about the underlying interests and
Speaker 1: there might be many ways to get those interests addressed.
Speaker 1: The classic one we deal with all the time. You
Speaker 1: got to lower your price. You got to lower your price.
Speaker 1: And then we get, well, what's the underlying interest while
Speaker 1: we're trying to you know, lower our overall costs. Oh,
Speaker 1: lower overall costs. See when it's lower your price. This
Speaker 1: is only know two things I could do, say yes
Speaker 1: or say no. But if your interest is to lower cost,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of things we can do on
Speaker 1: our side. Consolidate your spending a one vendor, be able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of the efficiencies of our new AI
Speaker 1: tools that allow you to have less people on your side.
Speaker 1: So hey, guess what, I actually might raise my price,
Speaker 1: but if I can shift the conversation to lowering your costs,
Speaker 1: I might lower your cost ten percent. That's just the
Speaker 1: example of the difference between positions and interest. And let
Speaker 1: me tell you back to my main point here, Rachel.
Speaker 1: That is really hard to do at the end when
Speaker 1: you're trying to finalize an agreement, people can't get off
Speaker 1: the position. You socialize it early. It helps them understand yeah,
Speaker 1: actually there's a lot we might be able to do
Speaker 1: to help lower our costs. Thanks for bringing that up.
Speaker 1: And now we start to look like that trusted advisor
Speaker 1: as opposed to someone that's just trying to get the
Speaker 1: deal done right.
Speaker 3: And and that's why you work early, work early, all right, Tim,
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Hey Rachel, it's always a pleasure to talk about the
Speaker 1: realities our listeners deal with every time. This doesn't have
Speaker 1: a video, but I will assure them all the gray
Speaker 1: hairs that are behind the stories all have a lot
Speaker 1: of learning behind them over the years. So good luck
Speaker 1: to everyone.
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, Thank you, Tim, and thank you to
Speaker 3: all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast.
Speaker 4: At Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into
Speaker 4: elite teams. Our proven methodologies deliver programs that build company
Speaker 4: alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the
Speaker 4: ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale.
Speaker 4: Our strength is our experience. The proof is in our results.
Speaker 4: Let's get started. Visit us at forcemanagement dot com.
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