Negotiate
SalesAccelerate — Opportunity Planner: Negotiate stage
Preparing for and executing a successful Negotiation
A negotiation is won or lost before it starts. By the time you are sitting across the table, your numbers should already be set, your concessions already held back, and your value proposition already fenced. What follows is the preparation, in the order you need it.
Seller’s objective
Optimize future revenue — for you, for your company, and for the customer.
Buyer’s objective
Establish agreeable financial, legal, technical and operational terms for a potential partnership.
Fix your prices before you deliver the proposal
Not during the negotiation. Not in the room. Before. If you have not written these three numbers down, every concession you make will be improvised.
Make a claim they cannot argue with
Stay at your starting price as long as you can, and anchor it to something factual rather than to your own opinion of your worth. Then stop talking. The goal is to get the client to concede first.
For example: “Our proposed solution is ISO 5980 certified. No other solution meets the stringent security requirements that govern all financial services organizations. That is why we are typically the most expensive — and the most trusted — solution in the market.”
Your hard-to-debate statement
Never concede — trade
Hold your elegant negotiables back. Free training, a customer success resource, an extended pilot — if you name these upfront they become expectations rather than currency. Save them for the moment you would otherwise have to go below your target price.
And remember they have elegant negotiables too: a case study, a reference call, a speaking slot at your user conference, an executive sponsor introduction. Those cost them little and are worth a great deal to you.
Below your target, functionality comes out
Confirm the unique value proposition that addresses their compelling event, then tie the price to it. Going lower is not a discount — it is a smaller solution, and it should be described that way.
For example: “We can move you from our Premium platform to our Standard platform to reach that number — you would lose enterprise real-time reporting and notifications.”
Your UVP, and what they lose without it
Make every give look harder than the last
Reduce the size of your gives as the negotiation goes on, so it is visibly clear you have less and less left. Never concede in the moment they ask. Summarize what you are prepared to take back for their give, then tell them you need a day or two.
Let the approval be the friction. RevOps, the configuration tool, executive leadership — whatever is true for your company, use it so that saying yes to them costs you something visible.
Make demands, and make trades
I want ___. I will ___, if you ___. Work both columns before the meeting: yours, and the one they are preparing.
Ask open questions, empathize, summarize and test
The competitive frame protects your economics. The collaborative frame is what keeps a customer after the ink dries. You need both in the same conversation.
The one sentence to keep in mind
Whoever concedes first sets the ceiling.
Whoever prepared first sets the floor.
You are not negotiating price. You are negotiating what the customer gets to keep.
Contract
SalesAccelerate — Opportunity Planner: Contract stage
Using a Mutual Close Plan to formalize a business relationship
Focus on helping your new customer prepare for the change your solution will bring to their company, processes, etc. The following are suggested questions that you should adapt to your solution
Seller’s objective
Understand who needs to approve, and what each of their processes actually requires.
Buyer’s objective
Obtain final approvals to invest money, change systems and processes, and allocate resources.
Pick the go-live date, then work backwards
The go-live date is the only date the customer genuinely cares about. Everything else — signature, financial approval, legal review, security review — is arithmetic backwards from it, using how long each step really takes at this company rather than how long you wish it took.
Build it right to left. The last date you set is the first thing you have to do.
Target go-live
Legal review takes
IT / security review takes
Financial approval takes
If any of those three answers is a guess, that is your first task — not a detail to sort out later.
Three different approvals, usually three different people
Your prospect needs sign-off to spend money, to change systems and processes, and to allocate people. Those rarely sit with the same person, and the one who is hardest to reach is the one that slips.
Build this with them before you negotiate
A close plan you write alone is a forecast. A close plan you build together is a commitment — and the act of building it is what surfaces the real urgency behind the go-live date, which is how you confirm the compelling event you have been selling to since Qualify.
What building the plan together revealed about the real urgency
Twenty-two steps, four phases, two owners each
Every line gets a date and a name on both sides. A task with only your name on it is not a mutual plan — it is your to-do list.
The plan is a meeting agenda, not an attachment
Open every call with it. Walk the next three lines, confirm the owners, and move the dates in front of them when reality changes. A plan that only updates when you update it stopped being mutual.
What the plan is really testing
A date without an owner is a wish.
An owner without a date is a volunteer.
The deals that slip are almost never the ones where somebody said no. They are the ones where nobody owned the next step.