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“How To Negotiate Better By Knowing What Value Is” Negotiation Tip of the Week

“To understand someone better, understand what they value. Then, seek to understand why they have those values.” – Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

 

Click here to get the book!

“How To Negotiate Better By Knowing What Value Is”

 

What do you know about value?

“… I’m so sorry for your inconvenience. I can upgrade you to a better room.” Those were the words spoken by a front desk person at a 5-star hotel. He was informing a guest of what he could do as the result of the patron experiencing a restless night. The patron’s restlessness was due to his loud neighbors in other rooms on the floor. The patron had begun calling the front desk around 12-midnight to complain. Throughout the night, he called several more times – all to no avail to squelch the noise that prevented him from sleeping. He thought to himself, and this yammering is ceaseless.

When he checked out of the hotel the next morning, he told the desk manager of his experience. The manager extended apologies on behalf of the hotel, stated that the night’s stay would be removed from the guest’s bill and asked if there was anything else that he could do. The patron said no. I appreciate the gestures you’ve made. Then he said, “all I wanted was a good night’s sleep. I have an important meeting today. And I just wanted to be fresh and well-rested.” As he left the hotel, he wondered if he’d ever stay at that location again.

Do you see the difference between how the front desk person and the desk manager addressed the situation? It’s slight. But it’s also powerful. The desk manager extended apologies, and he asked the guest if there was anything else that he could do. He was seeking the guest’s perspective of value. In other words, he wanted to know what was essential to the guest. If you don’t know what someone values, you don’t know what to offer them. That means you’re making blind offers when doing so in a negotiation.

When you negotiate, there are five factors to keep in mind about value.

  1. People have a different perspective on what they value and why. Once you know their value perspective, seek to understand it.

 

  1. Don’t assume because someone is like you that they’ll like you. Even when people have similar values, there will be nuances that separate their opinions about value. To assume you share exact ideals as your negotiation counterpart can lead to offers and counteroffers that are not valued. In a worst-case scenario, such offers can be damaging to your negotiation efforts.

 

  1. When you’re unsure of a person’s value, ask what they’d least like to lose. The reply will indicate what is of most importance.

 

  1. To test someone about their value, ask, “if there’s one thing that I could grant you in this negotiation, what would it be?” Once again, that person’s value proposition will reside in their response.

 

  1. This last suggestion may fall into the red herring category. It entails discovering something you possess that’s of great value to the other negotiator. Entice that person to believe that he can acquire it but at a very high cost. The higher he’s willing to pay for the acquisition, the higher the value of possessing it will be. Be cautious when engaging this means of acquiring someone’s value perspective. If you don’t allow them to receive it after getting them to make substantial offers, they could become unwilling to grant you much after that. Then, the negotiation might hit a roadblock.

 

To become a better negotiator, you must always understand what is of value to your negotiation counterpart. Once you do, making better offers will be more comfortable – because you’ll know which offers possess the highest value … and everything will be right with the world.

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here https://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

 

#Value #BodyLanguage #Nonverbal #Negotiate #Business #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #Negotiator #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #BodyLanguageExpert #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions #GregWilliams #success #negotiation examples #Negotiation strategies #negotiation process #negotiation skills training #negotiation types #negotiation psychology #Howtowinmore #self-improvement #howtodealwithdifficultpeople #Self-development #Howtocontrolanegotiation #howtobesuccessful #HowToImproveyourself

 

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Entrepreneurship Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills

Seven Sales Person Cop-Outs

I’ve been helping salespeople and sales leaders become better at their craft for a while.  I’ve seen greatness and, well, less great.  Here are some of the all-time worst things I’ve heard salespeople tell themselves or their managers, actually thinking they were doing well.  (I’m not including anything I’ve heard from salespeople who knew better and were just trying to get away with something.  That’s a whole different set of lessons).

It’s the Company’s Job to Make a Profit at the Price I Sold

Far too many sales forces are divorced from the responsibility of business: to make a profit. This happens regularly in companies compensated only on revenue, not on margins. I don’t care if “it’s hard to measure profit on a given deal because of internal transfer prices” or any other excuse.  If a sales force isn’t compensated on profit, they focus on easy-to-win revenue.

When this is carried to an extreme, sales people feel entitled to sell at discounts…even insane discounts.  I actually heard this from a guy who claimed to be a sales consultant.  I hope his clients survived.

Here’s what sales leaders should coach instead. You need to have conversations about customer value…with customers.  This shouldn’t stop with selling value.  It should carry through toward monetizing value with the customer. Then, pricing – even premium pricing – becomes a comfortable afterthought.  High pricing becomes a bargain.

Great salespeople can sell high volume and high margins.  I know. I’ve seen it. In the mirror.

But I TOLD Him/Her ____

Sales is not one of those jobs where you can get away with simply “telling”, making your listener responsible for understanding what you meant.  Those jobs exist in departments like accounting (and such poor communicators seldom rise to middle management).

The commission for “I did my job, but the customer misunderstood” is zero.  Salespeople are responsible for the picture that forms in the other guy’s head.

Value exists only in a customer’s mind.  If a salesperson simply barfs some “value messaging” they were given by marketing…without having a conversation to confirm that value formed between a prospect’s ears, they are a teller, not a seller.  If that seller doesn’t also confirm how much value formed, they may be the person who thinks “it’s the company’s responsibility to make a profit at the price I sold”.

Our Value is [insert feature here]

The most critical question a sales coach can ask is “what’s our value in this situation?” In fact, if that’s the only question a coach asks, they can learn a lot about how sellers are selling. When sellers have great answers for this question, they probably did everything your methodology teaches them to do. If answers don’t articulate an understanding of customer value, it doesn’t matter how many methodologies they performed; the sale is still in trouble.

When salespeople answer “what’s our value” with a feature or a seller capability, they don’t understand the value. Customers buy outcomes, not products or services. Value forms in the customer’s mind around those outcomes, not your shiny features or stunning capabilities.

Sales coaches who allow value to be described in terms of a seller features or capabilities are failing their salespeople. Value is the desirability of an outcome (hopefully measured in dollars or something just as measurable).  Accept no substitutes.

Customers Don’t Buy Your Product, They Buy You.

Slavery is illegal.  Customers can’t buy you.  As I said above, customers buy outcomes.

This old saying has merit but is meant to communicate how important the seller-customer relationship is.  Specifically, the critical aspect of “relationship” is credibility.  Personal affinity (knowing birthdays, hobbies, expending entertainment budget, etc.) is useful for some buyer-seller relationships, but not for many.

Credibility, though, is foundational to every successful customer relationship.  When a customer is considering some purchase to obtain an outcome, they always consider execution risk. That is, they estimate how likely it is that the purchase will actually result in the desired outcome.  Salesperson credibility forms the foundation of that assessment.  Without credibility, very little buying will actually happen.

Yes, they buy as a result of your credibility while connecting their desired outcome to a purchase, but…they’re buying the outcome.  Always.

Purchasing Says They Like Our ____ Better, but We Have to Meet the Competitor’s Price

I know a number of purchasing people, and they all confirm this truth:

Modern purchasing/procurement professionals are chartered with buying the best total value.

These same purchasing people confirm this truth as well:

Modern purchasing/procurement professionals are not chartered, trained, paid, or given enough time to proactively uncover and evaluate total value.

So…whose job is it to assemble a value picture for them?  That’s right.   A seller’s.  Professionalism and bedside manner counts. Credibility counts even more.  Enlisting the evaluations of experts within the buying organization to validate the value story is often part of the game.

If a seller doesn’t assemble a validated value picture, value doesn’t form in a purchasing person’s mind, and guess what they use to break the tie? Yep. Price.  They like ___ better means they do indeed like it better, but nobody helped monetize that for them…and they aren’t chartered, trained, paid, or have time to do it themselves.

Purchasing Owns the Budget

Purchasing really owns the budget for supplies and equipment used in the purchasing department.  Period.  Salespeople who are led to believe purchasing owns a budget are incorrect.  Sales coaches who let them work under this misconception are damaging careers and losing sales.

Whenever purchasing makes you believe they own the budget, it’s because they believe your offer has no differentiated value. In their minds, there is no need to bother people inside the company with a nonexistent value proposition.  In fairness to purchasing, letting a seller of a non-differentiated product/service shouldn’t happen.  Undue influence, like “whiskey and tickets” shouldn’t shape a commodity purchasing decision.  If your offer’s only differentiation is courtside seats, that shouldn’t be allowed to shape a decision.

As your offer’s differentiation diminishes vs. the next viable choice, the need to analyze value diminishes, and the entire buying organization feels safe in delegating the buying decision to purchasing. Purchasing doesn’t technically own the budget in these cases, but the organization gives de facto authority to purchasing. This only happens, though, when sellers create no value in the customer’s mind. These are the kind of sales environment that is about to be conducted by bots, AI, etc.

I’m Talking to All of the Right People

Complex B2B sales methodologies help sales professionals organize their selling efforts among a multi-person buying ecosystem.  While they’re handy for organizing an approach to an identified set of people, they aren’t that great at identifying all of the appropriate parties.  Most simply tell you “identify everyone, then use our tool”.

When somebody at a customer tells your salesperson the set of people they’ve engaged internally, how does a salesperson – or their coach — know that list wasn’t kept short in order to make somebody’s job easier?  Should you expect anyone at your customer to know how all of your capabilities translate to outcomes throughout their company?

Here’s the reality:  companies silo themselves more narrowly every year. Silos become sub-specialties, then sub-sub-silos, then soda straws. Only one soda straw has budget to buy your offer, but many benefit.  As customer subdivide, more soda straws benefit.  People in your budget-holding soda straw have three things working against them: 1) they no longer have a big-picture view of their own company 2) engaging all the people they really should make decision complexity awful and dysfunctional simply from a committee size standpoint 3) nobody at the buying company has your sellers’ expertise in the domain of possible outcomes.

If your selling organization hasn’t built the business acumen to help customers navigate these challenges, it won’t happen. Customers aren’t equipped – and shouldn’t be.  That’s your job.

Summing Up

I hope you didn’t find any of these hitting home.  If you did, though.  I’m here to talk.  Contact me if you’d like to stop hearing these statements in your sales organization.

To your success!

Categories
Best Practices Investing Marketing Negotiations Sales

Are You Winning Enough Opportunities at the Right Prices?

While many of my Sales Consultants specialize in specific industries, I have defined my niche differently: companies who produce a differentiated product or service, and who want to be fairly compensated for their value. This means selling at a higher price, In alignment withthe customer.

I’ve had the opportunity to work in many industries: electronic components, telecom gear, telecom services, commercial real estate, and banking. I’ve also been the highest priced option in all of those industries: a combination of products and services.

I have always worked for some of the most famously “high-priced” providers in whatever business I was in. The common thread, and the reason I’ve been successful in each role? In a stroke of early-career luck, I learned the fundamentals of selling to full value (much more involved than “value selling”, and much more effective at establishing higher preference at a higher price) at an early stage, and was able to refine that methodology for use in increasingly “commoditized” industries (what can be more commodity than selling money?). Those experiences formed the core of my Full Value Selling™ methodology.

How do successful selling and selling at the right price interact? Let’s take a look at some research.

Differentiation Gets Valued. 

Look down the left hand side of the graphic below, produced by CSO Insights. Noel Capon describes similar levels of relationship shown in his benchmark work, Key Account Management and Planning. The higher up a customer places a supplier on the vertical axis of this scale, the more value they find in the buy-sell relationship.
No alt text provided for this image

CSO Insights has found that higher levels on the vertical axis correspond to higher win rates, which is awesome. Curiously, they have not even thought to study pricing power.  That is apparently my lonely corner of the selling performance market.

Value CAN Get Compensated.

Many sales methodologies can be used to help selling organizations progress up the scale – at least as far as your customer wants you to go. Far fewer methodologies teach how to get a customer to want you higher on the scale.  The higher a supplier is able to achieve relationship-wise on this scale, the more leverage the supplier has to price.  Again, having leverage doesn’t automatically guarantee successfully using that leverage.

The difference between “winning more reliably” and “winning more reliably at the optimum price” is where I specialize. Full-Value Selling™ helps sellers consistently and smoothly help customers quantify the value received, and more acutely see the bargain they are obtaining – even at a higher price than competitors offer.

When customers are more rigorous at analyzing your value, they see price more clearly in relation to that value. Consumer behavior research shows that people only analyze value until they “get over the hump” to justify a purchase. What this means is that they won’t fully appreciate your entire value on their own; to appreciate your full value to them, customers need to be taken beyond that “make the sale” minimum. Sellers who want to reliably win premium-priced deals can do a little more: help the customer think through FULL value. This makes the seller not only able to win at more advantageous prices but resist discounting more effectively.

Relationship vs. Process Rigor vs. Sales Performance.

CSO Insights has extensively studied companies on not only the level of customer relationship achieved but on how rigorous their salespeople follow a selling process. The horizontal axis on the matrix represents four major categories of selling methodology/process rigor. “Random” means that every rep uses their own personal process. In “informal”, sellers go through process training, but none is enforced. “Formal” is the designation for ongoing process reinforcement and enforcement. “Dynamic” process processes are systematically revisited and updated in response to internal and external changes.

How does selling rigor interact with relationship quality? I’ll discuss results in a moment, but think about how much easier it might be to consistently achieve better customer relationships if sellers know how to perform best practices? The key to progressing to the right on the matrix is how well organizational support manifests itself in effective front-line sales manager (FSM) coaching and mentorship. Teaching a methodology gets you only so far; following it long-term, and making it part of your corporate culture is a huge differentiator.

What are the performance outcomes associated with your position on this matrix? Take a look at the color-coded outcomes corresponding to the matrix above:

No alt text provided for this image

Notice that these outcomes, while highly compelling, are deafeningly silent on pricing achieved. Any sales consultant, myself included, want to help you move up and to the right. I want to help you do more…by filling the void in that deafening silence.

Selling Well vs. Selling Well Consistently vs. Selling Well, Consistently, and Profitably

I also do work throughout our company’s clientele on improving how sales managers coach sellers.  This is key to helping my clients achieve consistently great sales results, but also consistently optimum pricing. I can’t help my clients consistently achieve more profitable pricing for the long term without their commitment to long-term adoption.

Selling value consistently yields higher sales performance, but pricing those reliable sales results yields higher profit performance…think of it as a third dimension of sales performance. I help clients add a third axis to this matrix: doing it all profitably, by achieving optimum win-win pricing. This doesn’t replace any methodology; it complements those tools seamlessly with another: a relentless focus on value delivered.

If you want to move upward and to the right on the Sales Relationship Process matrix, we might need to talk. If you want to do that while achieving higher pricing that your customers love, we are kindred spirits, and I invite a deeper discussion of your goals.

To your success!

Categories
Culture Investing Marketing Personal Development Sales Technology

Brick and Mortar Stores Are Dead? Not So Fast!

The Younger Generation That Chooses Brick and Mortar Stores

You’re a part of Generation Z if you were born between 1997 and 2012. (If Z is the last letter of the alphabet… then what’s next?) This generation actually prefers shopping at old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores. Why? Simply put—because it’s fun and entertaining! Does this mean we’ve all exaggerated the death of retail? We think so.

According to a recent Morning Consult study, “(They) will be the largest, most ethnically diverse, best educated, and most financially powerful generation ever.” When Gen Z-ers started spending their own money, two-day delivery was becoming the norm. They made their first purchases when the convenience of online ordering and home delivery was the trend. So why didn’t they keep it up and hop onto the online bandwagon? Is ecommerce missing something? Or was it that, when looking at these different shopping experiences side by side, they found that neither was shiny and new? Why did they choose brick-and-mortar shopping over online?

We think it’s the spontaneity that comes with retail. There’s also a tactile experience that online shopping can’t provide. And we think shopping brick-and-mortar satisfies a social need, whether it’s just being out of the house, dressing up, or investing in “retail therapy”. They might find exactly what they were looking for, or they could discover something brand-new! Either way, they’re going out to interact with real people instead of clicking around online from the comfort of home.

The Beauty of Brick and Mortar Shopping

As producers who have built a major retail brand, we appreciate the power behind brick-and-mortar. We were lucky enough to offer our products in a large territory to retailers’ existing customers. Unlike the direct-to-consumer business where only a few items are sold at a time, we received one check for one big shipment of many different products. Our brand had the opportunity to be discovered on retail shelves and floor displays. When people buy online, they’re likely to repeat the same purchase of the same brand over and over again. There’s barely any chance of discovering something new! Convenience and time-saving triumph over discovery!

Price-wise, ecommerce is a race to the bottom. Price is always the determining factor online, rather than quality. Both the customer and the producer know that quality is hard to fake in a physical retail store.

Going Shopping—For Fun!

According to the report we mentioned earlier, two-thirds of Gen Z-ers shop for fun at least once per month. Among the list of their top “brands” were Wal-Mart and Target—two of the world’s largest brick-and-mortar stores.

“Free delivery” is a peculiar misconception that has boosted ecommerce as we know it. If everyone working for the USPS, UPS, and FedEx still gets paid to ship “for free”, where does the money come from? Either the online merchants factored shipping into their prices, or they “invested” in delivery costs to compete with brick-and-mortar stores. The customer ends up paying for delivery one way or another in the end. But a brick-and-mortar store will meet you halfway—You drive to them. They offer you prices that don’t include the cost of getting the product in your hands.

It’s been interesting to see Generation Z rediscovering what the Boomers knew all along about brick-and-mortar shopping. But don’t let them have all the fun—let’s go on a shopping trip! We’ll discover something new and meet people along the way!

 For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

 

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Best Practices Culture Economics Entrepreneurship Industries Investing Management Personal Development Technology

5G Entrepreneurs Creating Billion-Dollar Businesses

Within the next five years…

New multibillion-dollar businesses will appear that didn’t exist before due to 5G wireless technology. Because of this, many industries will either be agile, reacting to an ever-increasing number of 5G innovators disrupting their industry, or they will be anticipatory innovators and use the predictability of 5G capabilities to become the disruptor.

The first generation (1G) of wireless came with the introduction of cell phones constrained to phone calls and high-level executives. The second-generation (2G) gave us better call quality for wireless phones and offered a new capability for text messaging via SMS. The third-generation (3G) facilitated mobile internet browsing and early video calling.

Most recently, 4G brought us useful multimedia networked computers with media-rich streaming applications like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, and more.

Up next is 5G.

This generation of wireless technology is already being deployed in major cities in the U.S. and other countries. Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Broadcom, as well as network providers AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, are all putting in maximum effort, with mobile device manufacturers starting to launch their first 5G-enabled devices.

While consumers have become jaded to the 5G terms as seen in commercials, there are many consumer and business implementations of 5G to be excited about. Once deployed and fully operational, 5G would essentially be the solution to deliver complete digital connectivity from the tip of the carrier network and essentially be the death of cables in homes and offices alike.

As it stands today, 5G would function as a set of simultaneous revolutions, all of which must function without any trouble whatsoever, in order to provide the speed and connectivity it boasts. Some hiccups actually go beyond technological functionality and spill into business and social conflicts:

  • Unified Carriers. 5G wireless would essentially place companies like AT&T, Verizon, and the combined T-Mobile and Sprint in competition against Comcast and Charter Communications for services. 
  • Remade Landscapes. 5G allows for smaller transmitters that consume lower power, with smaller 5G transmitters covering much smaller service areas than those typical 4G towers. A carrier would need about four hundred times more than we currently have, camouflaged in urban areas. 
  • Restructured Global Technology Economy. Upon implementing 5G, areas such as Scandinavia where Nokia and Ericsson reside would become the primary hub for telecommunications, and China Mobile and Huawei are jointly responsible for the architecture of 5G, making China more powerful in the data world than the U.S.

The cost is of most concern in many cases. Prices for service would most likely start out pretty high compared to where we are now, covering the costs to implement the technology.

In several articles of mine, I’ve called on anticipatory businesses and individuals to pay attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future both inside and outside of their industries, and the digital disruptors that may affect them directly or indirectly. Implementation of 5G would certainly jump-start those disruptions.

The following are perfect examples of technology-driven changes I’ve discussed in previous articles and their correlation to 5G technology:

  • Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications and Driverless Automobiles. 5G will enable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication, using the low latency of 5G wireless networking, allowing each vehicle to know exactly what all the other vehicles are doing around it.
  • Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Ultra-fast connectivity and synchronicity are important for the user experience, as video communication within corporations will be meshing with VR as remote employees take virtual tours of a manufacturing plant with individuals who are physically there. In the AR world, the very infrastructure of AR glasses and other AR technology is contingent on high-speed connectivity with the amount of data present.
  • Cloud Computing. 5G wireless has the potential for distributed cloud computing services, creating near real-time experiences with edge computing that are much more engaging to users than Amazon, Google, or Microsoft are today.
  • Internet of Things (IoT). Everything from kitchen appliances to parking meters can all be made easier to produce, easier to control, and more connected than ever before. 5G transmitters will become IoT hubs, acting as real-time service hubs for all the households in their specific coverage areas.
  • Healthcare. The availability of low-latency connectivity in extremely remote locations such as Mississippi, where trials of 5G connectivity are implemented, would connect individuals to remote medical professionals for information.

By being anticipatory, many telecommunication providers are pre-solving problems with 5G before they occur by way of moving customers into a 5G business track before most true 5G services exist. It is the perfect time for you and your organization to anticipate what’s to come, and more importantly, what is to be affected by 5G in your industry. By paying attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future, you can stay ahead of the curve to avoid falling behind.

To be certain of the Hard Trends shaping your future, get a copy of my latest book The Anticipatory Organization – I have a special offer for you!

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Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Investing Management Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“Here Is What You Need To Know To Win More Negotiations” – Negotiation Tip of the Week

 

 

“To win more, you must know more about how to win.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

 

 

Click here to get the book!

“Here Is What You Need To Know To Win More Negotiations”

He entered the negotiation completely unprepared. And he jumped at the first offer the other negotiator made. After they departed the negotiator that had extended the offer said to a cohort, I wish all of my negotiations were that easy. That guy had no negotiation skills.

Hopefully, no one will ever say that about you. Implement the following steps in your negotiations, and you’ll decrease that probability.

 

Planning Stage:

  • Identify what a winning outcome is for you and the other negotiator.
  • Take into account the resources you and the other negotiator will have to enhance your efforts. Those resources might consist of other people at the negotiation table and some that are not.
  • Determine what either of you might do to achieve that outcome.
  • Assess what might hamper the outcome you’d like.
  • Identify the body language gestures you’ll note to assess when the other negotiator is becoming exasperated. Set the baseline for those gestures by observing how he acts when he’s calm.

 

Other Influencing Factors:

  • Know the outside sources of power that might influence the other negotiator.
  • For more considerable influence, understand the way he thinks and the motives that drive his actions.
  • Know your pressure points and those of your opponent. You can gain influence by applying pressure on those not at the negotiation table – leverage that. Remember, the other negotiator can do the same to you. To decrease that probability, minimize those that may expose your vulnerabilities. Doing so will make you less susceptible to pressure.
  • Know how many phases there may be in the negotiation. If the other negotiator is the first of many that you’ll be negotiating against, he may be attempting to gain insight into your strategy. Then, when you think you’ve reached an agreeable outcome, he’s removed. And his team installs someone else. That’s the beginning of the next phase of the talks. That can occur throughout many stages. Be prepared for it.
  • Recognize when you’re in a zone – everything is going right. Also, be aware when things are misaligned. When that occurs, stop the negotiation. Take a break an assess what’s happening. Once refreshed, re-engage.

 

Read Body Language:

  • Gather nonverbal queues that reveal hidden thoughts.
  • Eyes – What can you glean from someone’s eyes? You can gain insight into their demeanor, the degree of respect they have for you and themselves. And you can note when they become uneasy about an offer. To record such occurrences, observe the eye movement when engaged in regular exchanges. Then, as things intensify, note the quickening pace of the eye movement, the direction up or down in which is glanced. Those movements will signal uncomfortableness. Take note when sensing that and be prepared to take action.
  • Hands – When people speak, it’s natural to use hand gestures. As you progress in the negotiation, note the degree your opponent alters those gestures. There’s value in noting the difference between him saying, and we’re this close to a successful deal while holding his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart, versus two inches. He’s displaying his measurement to how close he thinks you are to closing the deal.
  • Speech patterns – Words convey thoughts. And specific words have more meaning than others. Thus, lend attention to the words used and their pronouncement when someone extends an offer. As an example, if someone were to say in a robust intonation, that’s my best deal, take it or leave it. They’d sound more convincing than if they stated it in a weaker tone and with their head bowed. Gain additional information by listening and observing.

 

Exit Strategies:

  • Have clearly defined points indicating when it’s time to exit the negotiation. Establish them during your planning session.
  • Allow the other negotiator points to exit without losing face.
  • Assess the degree a winning outcome has changed as you’ve negotiated. If it’s altered drastically, consider postponing it.

 

Many factors influence the flow and outcome of a negotiation. The better prepared you are for what might occur, the better your chances to control the factors that determine the outcome. Having more control means, you should be able to keep the other negotiator happy with what he receives, while you obtain what you seek. The strategies mentioned will help you do just that. They’ll assist you in achieving your goals … and everything will be right with the world.

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

 

#Negotiate #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #Negotiator #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #BodyLanguageExpert #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions #GregWilliams #success

 

 

 

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Investing Leadership Technology

Auto Insurance Industry: Disrupted or Disruptor?

Today, we have fully electric vehicles with AI-enabled semi-autonomous features, as well as fully autonomous vehicle applications. But how has this affected insurance premiums, and will those changes deter you from buying a specific “vehicle of the future”?

Presently, most vehicles still put you in the driver’s seat and in control, leaving your insurance unaffected. But now that we have more autonomous features than ever to make the roads safer, insurance is changing.

Disruptive innovator Elon Musk and Tesla have been in the limelight for good and bad reasons in this space. The good being a computerized system more adept and attentive than human beings, but the bad is that initial versions of these features have been limited. Couple that with the fact that there are currently fewer Tesla automobiles on highways than Fords or Chevys, many buying a Tesla will quickly notice their insurance premiums skyrocket.

Auto Insurance Is Changing

For example, entrepreneur Dan Peate, who founded the group health insurance provider Hixme, was deterred from getting himself a Tesla Model X after he discovered that his premiums would accelerate to roughly $10,000 a year. Why should the price vary so much, especially since semi-autonomous features are specifically manufactured to be safer on the roads? If you find yourself pondering this as well, you are definitely identifying the Hard Trend that more semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles will emerge every year.

Dan Peate identified this Hard Trend and became more anticipatory in his thinking, moving to start a wave of disruption from within the insurance industry. He founded Avinew, a new insurance company that monitors drivers’ use of autonomous features on cars and determines insurance premium discounts based on how and when autonomous features are used.

Avinew has agreements with most manufacturers and customers, allowing it to access driving data in real time and utilizing the data gathered to cut insurance premiums, rather than after accidents occur.

Underwriters and actuaries base insurance prices on the type of risk, and oftentimes they charge more due to not having enough data, as the risk is the unknown and not that the vehicle puts you in danger.

With the interconnectivity of the world today, change is in motion. Policyholders have a more dynamic and interactive relationship with insurers, and much like decentralized currency, have more accurate accounts of transactions. In this case, the frequency of usage of autonomous and semi-autonomous features eliminates frivolous insurance costs.

Some insurers call this an existential crisis, but it is actually a chance for entrepreneurs to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage by learning to be anticipatory.

Research conducted at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey indicates that premiums could drop 12.5 percent by 2035 with this new wave of auto disruption, and that product lines centered around autonomous features will offset some of the loss, but the gains will remain far behind.

Forecasts like this might make the insurance industry feel like it has plenty of time. After all, that same research above estimates that by 2035, there will still only be 23 million autonomous vehicles on American roads, which is less than 10 percent of today’s total. The problem is they fail to use the Both/And principle, one I have taught for decades that aided me in maintaining a high level of forecasting accuracy. Researchers in the auto industry fall into the trap of thinking future vehicles will either be fully autonomous or not autonomous at all (Either/Or thinking).

Higher Risk?

The future fact is that fully autonomous vehicles will be higher risk due to potential hacking and technology failure issues than semi-autonomous vehicles, so we will see rapid growth in semi-autonomous cars as well as older cars being fitted with semi-autonomous crash-avoidance systems. Fully autonomous vehicles will increase in areas where their use is less risky. At any rate, the numbers of vehicles with semi-autonomous and fully autonomous capabilities will grow far faster than most are projecting.

The insurance industry must move on this faster than projected or be disrupted by anticipatory outsiders. Insurance is needed, but the risk is shifting to vehicle manufacturers, software providers, and tech component system providers. Following this shift to find opportunity will be a key to growth in the years ahead. If the risk is less human and more systemic, said risk becomes systematic and more predictable and preventable.

One way an entrepreneur could look at this and anticipate what is to come is by paying less attention to what Dan Peate and Avinew are currently doing, and focus on what will disrupt them in the coming years. There are individual opportunities for existing insurance companies to anticipate, adapt and grow, or stagnate and fail. The good news is that by using the Hard Trend Methodology, you have a choice.

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Body Language Entrepreneurship Investing Management Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“Do You Know How To Avoid Negotiation Manipulation Mistakes” – Negotiation Tip of the Week

“To avoid misperceived mistakes in manipulation, state your intent clearly.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

 

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“Do You Know How To Avoid Negotiation Manipulation Mistakes”

 

Before they began the negotiation, he heaped constant prays on her. She blushed and wondered if he had a deeper affinity. Finally, she said, “okay, enough with the manipulation efforts – let’s get down to business.” To which he replied, “I’ve been discussing business all along.” That’s when she said in a snarky tone, “the way you were carrying on, I thought you wanted to date me.” At that, he became a little crestfallen. That’s when he realized his prays had been perceived as manipulation. He had made a big mistake! Do you know how to avoid negotiation manipulation mistakes?

Continue reading and you’ll discover how to avoid and use manipulation in your negotiations.

 

Manipulations – good – bad – it depends:

Whether someone feels manipulated depends on their perspective. If you ask most people what the definition of manipulation is, they’ll state that it’s a negative act. It can mean to advantage oneself based on the skill applied to do so. It can also mean to address with skill a process or treatment – in that case, it’s neutral – neither negative or positive.

Before engaging someone in a negotiation, understand their perspective of prays, deference, and appreciation of one’s achievements. And be mindful not to be perceived as effusive. You don’t want your intent to be misperceived.

 

Manipulation Mistakes:

Some negotiators begin a negotiation unaware of how their actions are being perceived. Those individuals should acquire greater negotiation skills.

Smart negotiators are aware that every action may be scrutinized to disclose hidden intents. They look for body language signals to indicate indifference to offers and counteroffers.

Being unobservant opens the door to misperception. When you observe signals that indicate you’re being perceived as brownnosing or deceitful, those may be signs that you’ve wandered into the realm of making manipulation mistakes. Seek feedback as to how you’re being perceived and if necessary, clarify your intent.

 

Body Language Observance:

When detecting perceived manipulation through someone’s body language, there are a few signs to observe.

  1. Head-cock to either side – This gesture indicates interest. It may be saying, where’s this going? Take note of the number of times the head moves from one side of the body to the other. That’ll indicate a greater intent to gain more insight about what’s being said. Look for other signs to add deeper meaning to head-cocking gestures. Smiles, along with interruptions, can lend to that insight.

 

  1. Smiles – A smile doesn’t necessarily mean agreement. With perceived manipulation, a smile may indicate, let’s see how far he’ll go. Or, I don’t believe he’s saying that. If you have doubt about a gesture’s significance, inquire about how it’s perceived. Some people find themselves on a slippery slope because they don’t recognize the first step. Don’t let that happen to you.

 

  1. Interruptions – When someone interrupts you, they want to alter what they’re hearing. They may be asking you to cite your case differently for greater clarity. The point is, they’re seeking more information. Take heed. They may be signaling hidden thoughts that states they’ve become more attuned to what you’re saying. Understand why that’s so.

 

Using Manipulation:

Manipulation can be an effective tool if it’s used correctly. To do so, understand the mindset of the other individual – and his boundaries about perceived effusiveness and lack of respect. Those boundaries will be the sweet spot to place your praise. Skirt those boundaries and you’ll venture into murky waters.

The best time to manipulate someone is when you slightly alter what they already believe to be true. It’s even better if you’ve established trust first. Thus, the more they see themselves in your reflection, the greater the opportunity for manipulation.

Please be aware not to abuse this technique. It can have deadly consequences in a negotiation. Always treat your opponent with the utmost respect. If you don’t intentionally manipulate someone towards harm, you’ll have greater negotiation outcomes … and everything will be right with the world.

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

 

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Disruptor Watch — How Disruptors Can Learn From Their Forebears

In today’s economic landscape, many companies look to be the “disruptor” instead of the “disrupted.” They want to identify a new niche in their industries or solve a problem people are unaware of, introducing next-gen technology and unprecedented business methods.

However, with every disruptive tech company, there are obvious caveats and pitfalls to note, and it behooves would-be entrepreneurs and innovators to observe and learn from both the successes and the mistakes of their recent forebears.

Disruptive Photo Technology 

Focal Media Group is the creator and producer of the StyleShoots photography machine. StyleShoots puts more power in the hands of major fashion retailers and the creative agencies they work with. Essentially, the machine automates much of the work associated with photo editing, such as basic Photoshopping. Its interface is extremely user-friendly, enabling someone with very little photography experience to create consistent, high-quality imagery, allowing major fashion retailers and brands to cut down on production costs and time to market. For creative agencies, StyleShoots turns around quality content much quicker than before, freeing agencies up to compete for more business and putting them ahead of their competition.

While this technology could have wide applications in the photography world, fashion product photography is already seeking to carve out a niche for itself before expanding. By relegating itself to the world of fashion product photography, Focal Media Group has already gained a slew of high-profile brands as clients, such as Macy’s, Triumph, Forever 21, Zalando, Woolworths, and Scotch & Soda. It has also sold StyleShoots machines to major creative agencies, such as Pure Red and Undefeated Creative.

However, it would still behoove the Focal Media Group to pay attention to its recent forebears and to take close note of their respective successes and shortcomings. Here are some things Focal Media Group should be willing to address:

Lowering the Barrier of Entry

While the StyleShoots machine is being adopted by major fashion retailers, very few people in the industry are aware of the savings and added revenue it could provide. This means Focal Media Group could stand to use both social and traditional media to expand its marketing campaign in order to create awareness. If the only thing preventing a product from turning its target industry upside down is awareness, a solid marketing campaign will prove invaluable, as other recent successes have discovered.

Learning from Airbnb

I’ve written extensively about companies like Airbnb — how they’ve disrupted their respective industries and succeeded at creating enormous, widely acclaimed brands and user experiences. However, these organizations have succeeded hugely in some areas of business and failed spectacularly in others.

Let’s look at how a company like Focal Media Group can benefit from paying attention to what Airbnb’s been doing these past few years.

In the documentary Design Disruptors, Airbnb Head of Experience Design Katie Dill provides insight into what makes the company so effective from a design standpoint. Essentially, Airbnb leverages design and aesthetics to facilitate a better overall user experience, which has clearly proved successful.

In Design Disruptors, Dill explains that the design team is not a “design” team but an “experience” team, considering everything a user explores in Airbnb’s platform as an overarching brand experience. Airbnb includes its community in its experience design processes, effectively touting design as a means to create a more comprehensive, friendlier, and beautiful user experience, which is key to the success of any startup.

Focal Media Group would do well to focus on creating a user experience that makes prospective clients feel at ease, like they can easily operate the StyleShoots machine or teach their colleagues how to use it. The experience should also explicitly illustrate how brands, retailers, and agencies stand to benefit from using StyleShoots and its related products for their photography.

Pay attention to what people are saying about you in real-time. Pay closer attention to both the quality of your product, user experience, and how you can keep it as high as possible. If you have an amazing product and a friendly, inviting user experience with an easy-to-use interface, you likely won’t have to worry about a PR blowback or unhappy customers.

Focal Media Group and its StyleShoots machine is only one pertinent example out of thousands of startups seeking to disrupt their respective industries. But if you’re a company on the verge of disrupting a major industry, you would do well to observe your more successful and noteworthy predecessors, to mark both their successes and their failures to better your own company and more effectively facilitate the disruption you seek to implement.

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The Seven “Power Components” of Elite Funnel Management

Companies must excel in managing their sales funnel at all levels, from salesperson self-diagnosis, to sales management one-on-ones, to executive funnel reviews. Funnel management is key to understanding the health of any business.  Ultimately, high-performing sales organizations are great funnel management organizations.

In this article, I’ll go over some of the principles I share with my clients. We build a regular cadence around the aspects below.

  • Some indicate sales behavior gaps. That is, the areas below identify gaps in how sellers manage their businesses, and point sales managers to productive coaching conversations.
  • Some indicate dysfunctional management behavior.  Yes, some problems come about because management puts inappropriate incentives in place.

1.    Does the Funnel Reflect Your Business?

Your process probably doesn’t reflect your business if it’s the process that came with your CRM “out of the box”. Instead, take the time to make your funnel yours, instead of your CRM vendor’s.

Does your funnel reflect how your customers buy, and align your sales process to that?Simple process steps or full-on playbooks which incorporate all selling resources and roles are all fine, depending on your business, but:

One simple guideline: build your process around your typical customer journey. Remember, as process detail builds, make sure nothing clouds the view of your customer’s buying process.

2.    Does Your Funnel Give Full Visibility?

Basically, if a seller spends time on an opportunity, it should appear on the funnel. Sellers can’t work effectively “maintaining two sets of books”, especially when one is in their heads.  Worse, companies can’t resource properly.

Unfortunately, dysfunctional incentives often drive lack of visibility. Sellers sandbag when management harangues indiscriminately on early stage deals. Sellers logically avoid busywork when documentation/data entry burden on early stage deals is excessive (as judged by the sales person). Leaders, if you want full visibility, you need to welcome it…and minimize the pain of disclosure.

  • For example, I recently worked with a sales force whose standard operating procedure was to “enter-into-CRM-when-won”. The company’s close rate was 90+%, but opportunities appeared in the CRM minutes to days before being won (actual sales cycle could be 5 quarters). As a manufacturing company, lead times stretched because operations had no advance notice, and couldn’t order materials. While sales people hated dealing with long lead times, they obviously hated dysfunctional funnel conversations even more.

3.    Is There Enough Business In Your Funnel? 

The bigger the funnel, the better, right? Unfortunately, this area spawns unintended consequences.  Some sales leaders gravitate toward oversized funnels. Predictably, mere minutes after an edict for 3x or 5x the sales goal goes out, sales people begin entering “manager repellant” deals into their funnels. Then, everyone from sellers to managers, CRM admins, executives, operations leaders, etc. gets sucked into the extra work of touching, monitoring and handling hundreds of “dead man walking” opportunities. While a funnel must contain sufficient volume of opportunities to retire sales goal, “multiples” aren’t fixed, but depend on individual seller ratios, seasonality, fit, industry, and more.

Whenever I work with clients on “funnel sufficiency”, we combine volume with quality scoring for fit/winnability. Removing low-probability opportunities from the funnel increases predictability.  More importantly, clients de-resource time-wasting opportunities, reallocating effort more productively.

Bottom line: put only good deals into your funnel.  If there aren’t enough of those, the cure isn’t adding garbage opportunities.

4.    Is the Funnel a Healthy Shape?

One level deeper than overall funnel sufficiency is volume at each stage.  I refer to this as funnel shape.  A healthy funnel is shaped like…well…a funnel.  A variety of selling behavior problems show up simply by examining volume in each stage.  For instance, if a seller’s funnel is dominated by top-of-funnel deals (with almost no opportunities in the middle and late stages), that seller is either a new rep or might have a hard time qualifying opportunities.  Similarly, different deformations signal a need for a helpful coaching interaction.  These conversations are targeted; guided by the funnel shape.  Even better, coaching interventions occur in time to rescue opportunities…and sales careers.

5.     Are Opportunities Progressing Well?

By itself, how quickly opportunities progress is an indicator of winnability.  “Time kills all deals” is a truism.  Once funnel stages corresponding to a customer’s buying processare identified and incorporated in your system, we develop an expected time for each stage.  CRM systems can easily measure time-in-stage, which doesn’t have to trigger panic, but should trigger an alert to sales people and front-line managers to diagnose the reason for the holdup.

The metrics-savvy manager could deduce that a higher number of sales stages might yield shorter stage durations, and thus a faster trouble indicator.  Maybe; it depends on a couple things.  1) The precision of defined customer actions for advancing to the following stage; poor definitions lead to lots of false triggering, which causes everyone to ignore alarms.  2) Your sales team’s willingness to put up with the workload of more frequent updates; the more detail a CRM asks for, the less accurate the CRM tends to be.

6.    Can You Immediately See Opportunity Quality? 

What would you think about a funnel view that shows deal size and expected close date, but also displays quality/fit/winnability?  Your view of your business would go from a flat, two-dimensional representation to a full-depth view.  You would have greater confidence and could make better decisions, couldn’t you? This is true for the salesperson looking at their own business all the way to the CEO preparing for an investor call.

In my practice, I see a good-better-best continuum of opportunity quality:

  • Basic level: Stages are assigned a standard win probablility, perhaps validated historically. Alternately, sellers can override standard probabilities, using personal estimates (or some overall guidelines).
  • High Level: when sales stages incorporate customer actions (item 5 above), zombie deals (no customer buying activity happening, but opportunities keep walking along) are excluded. Additionally, opportunities get scored with criteria specific to the business and customer fit.
  • Elite Level: Sales forces quantify customer-perceived value throughout an opportunity pursuit. When incorporated into the opportunity scoring system above, sellers and executives alike have a direct line-of-sight into the customer’s case for change and preference for the seller’s solution. Forecasts with this level of customer insight are highly reliable. Won-lost reviews are precision events. This also builds a foundation for profitable, win-win pricing.

7.    Does the Funnel Show a Desirable Business Mix?

Does the funnel show healthy prospecting and early qualification activity? Looking at new opportunity entries, is there enough, and is initial qualification activity taking place?  Are quality value conversations taking place from the outset?  That is, is value quantified early and widely?

Is the right emphasis given to large opportunities? Big numbers attract disproportionate resources. Is there a solid value assessment in place to justify those resources?  When appropriate, is there a co-created customer “plan-to-go-live” (the customer-centric twin of the “win plan”) in place?

Are stuck deals – those languishing too long in a given stage — identified in timely manner and are interventions compelling?  Looking at customer-perceived value assessments gives insight into the customer motivation/internal case for change.

Is the right product-mix represented?  If not, is a seller gravitating toward a certain kind of business, leaving other opportunities untended?  This could point to a product training issue, a misaligned incentives issue, or a seller issue.  Figure out which and intervene accordingly.

Rinse. Repeat. Have Regular Cadence

None of these guidelines matter if they stay on the shelf.  Hold your leaders accountable for a regular cadence.  Make it a priority.  Incentivize cadence properly and track it, because sales leaders aren’t any different than anyone else.

I hope this helps.  Contact me or ask questions below if I can add any more detail.  If you’d like to go into more detail on your specific situation, reach out.

To your success!