I'm often surprised by company executives that request negotiation training. They mistakenly believe that their salespeople SHOULD be negotiating, which in layman's terms is lowering price or offering some concession in exchange for a promise to buy.

Don't get me wrong, negotiating skills can be very useful for salespeople. But most sales opportunities that come down to the final negotiating exchanges could have been handled differently at an earlier stage to avoid negotiating at the end. Naturally, negotiations that get the most attention from management are those that involve price reductions. Here are some very simple tips to improve your sales conversations at the beginning of sales calls to reduce negotiations at the end:

1. Insure the prospect has a problem that your firm can fix

2. Insure the prospect has a problem they actually want to fix

3. Allow the prospect to explain their willingness and capability of spending specific amounts of money to solve the problem

4. Find out who else will be involved in the decision and their specific criteria for saying "yes" or "no"

Of course, your intent should be to uncover these 4 things BEFORE you quote a price or propose a solution.

Trusted advisors and top salespeople do everything they can to AVOID negotiating. Their job is to uncover the costs of the prospect's problem and then to determine what budget is available to solve it BEFORE they propose a solution to the decision makers. The predominant problem many sales people have is that they simply aren't comfortable talking about cost impacts and budgets with key decision makers until after they've quoted a price or delivered a proposal. So they are forced to negotiate at the end, attempting to close the sale in spite of inadequate information.

As a sales manager, you don't need to wait until your salesperson has a new opportunity to understand if they are acquiring this information before they quote or propose a solution. Even after a successful conclusion to negotiation, the harsh reality is that many salespeople don't even know these 4 key pieces of information even after they get the sale! Get into the habit of going over these 4 basic topics in your discussions with your sales team and sell more, more often.

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