Tag: Sales

The Starting Price

One of the unwritten ‘rules’
in negotiations
is
the person who states a firm number
first
loses in negotiations.

They supply the anchor,
the starting price
(or salary).
And it is difficult for them
to move their price/salary
from that anchor
to benefit them.

As Seth Godin
shares

“The asking price
is a signal,
a way to message expectations
and begin a negotiation.
It’s simply a guess
about the future,
made by the person
who goes first.

It can anchor our thinking,
but if we’re not careful,
it can be an anchor
that also drags us down.”

One of the ways
to work around
sharing the starting price
is to state a range.

That provides a starting place
for discussions
but gives the negotiator
some flexibility.

State ranges,
not absolute numbers.

Power By Connection

I recently attended
a live presentation held by
a certain online bookstore
given to writers.

The presentation was billed as important,
as being a means
to make a connection
with people in that organization,
to learn things
few other people knew.

The presentation could
have been recorded.
Everything said
was taken directly from
their website.
There were no ‘insider secrets’
or revolutionary tips.

During the question and answer time,
the presenters
looked up data on the website
and relayed it.

They weren’t powerful.
They merely worked
for a powerful company.

Seth Godin
shares

“Google and Amazon used to invite
authors to come speak,
at the author’s expense.

The implied promise was that
they’re so powerful,
access to their people
was priceless.

But the algorithm writers
weren’t in the room.

You ended up spending time
with people
who pretended they had influence,
but were more like weatherpeople,
not weather makers.”

Merely working for a powerful company
doesn’t mean that person
is powerful.

Ensure you’re connecting
with the right people.

The Wishy-Washy No

I asked a dear friend
if she wanted to
have lunch.

She must have given me
a dozen reasons
why she couldn’t do that.

I tried to accommodate her,
at first,
offering different dates,
different restaurants
until I realized…

She wasn’t yet ready
to eat in a restaurant.

She merely didn’t want to
or couldn’t
communicate that
likely because
it was an emotional reason.

There’s no combatting
emotional reasons
with logic.

Her mind was made up.
She wasn’t listening
to my pushback.
I accepted her decision
and moved on.

Seth Godin
shares

“A meandering no
doesn’t turn into
a yes
because someone with a good idea
listened very carefully
to every spoken objection
and rationally and clearly countered it.

Because the objections aren’t real,
and the naysayer isn’t listening
very hard to the responses.”

Often a wishy-washy no
isn’t a no
for the reasons stated.
It is often emotional.

Logic won’t sway that decision.

Reheating A Now Cold Call

A writer friend and I
hadn’t communicated
for a couple years.

She had to ask another friend
for my email.
That was how long it had been.

Then she contacted me,
asking for help
promoting her new book.

There was no “How have you been?”
or
“What have you been doing?”
or
“I’ve missed talking with you.”

It was direct to the ask.

If she had done this
a couple years ago,
that would have been okay.
I would have been a warm lead.

But I was now a cold lead
and I said no without hesitation.

If it has been
more than a year
since we’ve interacted
with a prospect or former customer,
that first renewed contact
is a cold call.

The relationship should
warm up quicker
than a brand new contact
but we still have
to do that intro work.

Treat it like a cold call.

Don’t Ask Why

In
Ed Brodow’s
Negotiation Boot Camp,
he advises
avoiding the word ‘why.’
Instead use ‘how come.’

Why?

“If I ask you,
‘Why do you feel this way?’
you may interpret my question
as an attack.
or a value judgment.
What you may hear is,
‘You must be out of your mind
to feel this way.’
Using the more neutral
‘how come’
softens the impact of the question.
It is no longer a question,
it’s just a simple question.”