Coaching for Sales Leaders – how coaching drives growth

How do you coach a Sales Manager? – Top question from Google

How do you coach a Sales Manager? – the short answer

To coach a sales manager, you must have an agreed sales strategy and a sales plan with KPI’s. The role of the manager is to execute the plan in line with the KPI’s, which is where they may need sales coaching.

Coaching Sales Leaders – here’s a more detailed look at what you can do to support your sales leaders.

Many sales managers have been promoted based on their sales skills and performance. Whilst these are valuable, the role of a sales manager is very different and thus requires different skills. The simplest example is coaching itself. Most salespeople have never coached another sales rep and the whole process is often new to them.

1. What are the business benefits of sales coaching?

The benefits of sales coaching are an important part of building a business case for your coaching programme, no matter how big or small. Whilst every business is different, we would suggest you take a data led approach to evaluate the “size of the prize” – the potential revenue benefits.

Let’s pretend that our top sales rep generates £500K in revenue per annum in an average year. In bigger teams of 10 plus sales people you should take the average of the top 3. There is no rule to follow here other than it must be truthful.

Next, take the average revenue figure that your B players – the middle sixty percent of your team generate per annum and as an example lets assume as a group they average £400k per annum.

The potential opportunity from sales training and coaching is therefore £100k per sales rep. In most cases the size of the opportunity is circa 10 x the cost of the training and coaching.

We encourage every client to work these figures out for themselves. Once everyone has agreed these figures then the business can work with the Sales Manager to create a coaching plan and set some KPIs.

2. How do you coach effectively in sales?

Effective coaching starts before the coaching itself. As a business we believe that coaching is not for everyone, as not everyone is coachable. This can be for a number of reasons, however, in our experience there are two main reasons as follows:

People are not motivated to learn and improve themselves
People do not believe that they need to learn and improve themselves

Your business will be no different – some people will be interested and respond to training and coaching and some people will only attend because they are told to. From our experience, Sales Leader have to make difficult choices and whilst there is no one size fits all we recommend the following:

Segment your sales team by current performance.

A Group – the top 20% of your sales team that mostly hit target.

B Group – the middle 60% that miss targets but are motivated to improve, want to learn and will respond to coaching and training.

C Group – the bottom 20% of people who never hot their sales target and whilst they may need training and coaching they have no interest in it and won’t respond.

Next, work with the A players to develop a coaching plan based on what they do that makes then A players. Where possible use the A players to co deliver some of the training and coaching to the B players.

The most important part here is to make sure that you hold the B players accountable to what has been agreed and taught.

This just leaves the C-Group. The easiest thing that any sales leader can do is ignore under performance. Some people end up in sales by accident and they are simply a round peg in a square hole. They may not admit it but these C players are unhappy, as no sales rep likes to be unsuccessful. The most difficult task of any sales leader is to let someone go, even under performers but that’s why they are a leader, that’s what drives success.

As a Sales Leader when you retain underperforming sales reps you are subconsciously self-sabotaging your own sales team. You’re a – player salespeople will look around your office and say to themselves “why should I work hard, why should I go the extra mile, when Jonny is still here and never hits a sales target?”. Before you know it they will have resigned and you are left trying to hire there replacement.

The best salespeople want to work with others at the top of their game, they want to train and get better, that’s what makes them the best.

So if you want your coaching to be effective you must first find people who want to be coached.

3. What is the key to coaching a successful sales team?

There are many key components to coaching a successful sales team and from our experience we would suggest:

The best coaching is based on data because data is difficult to argue with
Coaching needs to be regular and consistent to for the business and individual to benefit
You should follow a coaching process such as the GROW Coaching model
Coaching should be a KPI for both the coach and the coachee
Coaching should be based around established best practice and not theory
Each coaching session should be documented so you can demonstrate progress
Each coaching session should have an agreed list of actions as an outcome that are revisited.
Coaching sessions are not opportunities to critique salespeople or performance. They need to be positive and supportive.
Coaching should focus on the lead indicators of success not the lag indicators.

4. What does good sales coaching look like?

In our experience, the best starting point for good sales coaching is capturing and documenting what best practice in sales within the organisation currently looks like. Once documented this provides a baseline that no one can deny is achievable.

By best practice in sales, we mean the entire sales process from opportunity creation through to post sale whereby the customer is completely satisfied and happy to provide referrals.

In most cases lead generation is the biggest obstacle for salespeople, so demonstrating via real life examples of where a new enquiry converted to a sales and a subsequent referral to another client helps break down the “this won’t work mentality”.

Once you have identified this best practice, it’s important to map out the sales activities at each stage of the sales process. Again, in most cases the biggest problems are typically found at the start of the sales process when your team are trying to generate new sales leads.

Next up, document the type and number of activities that the top sales performer within the organisation does in an average week. This then becomes the baseline for sales activity. Be sure to document the lead indicators or KPI’s and not the lag indicators.

For example sales revenue is a lag indicator and if we use this as a KPI in an organisation with a 6 months sales cycle then it will be six months before we know if we have been successful. Look for the lead indicators – the sales behaviours that lead to the revenue.

Now the sales coaching process can start. For example, if the average sales activity of the top performer is 50 dials a day, 5 discovery calls and 2 presentations from which they close one deal, then the role of the sales coach is to bring every other member of your sale team up to this level.

5. What challenges do you face when coaching salespeople?

The majority of challenges when sales managers are coaching salespeople revolves around two main areas:

Sales activity or behaviours – we call this Productivity. These are the actual sales behaviours required to generate new leads, close deals etc. The majority of these sales behaviours have no immediate impact or reward, and in a society that is heavily influenced by the instant gratification of likes and shares, many salespeople struggle with the discipline of constantly prospecting when the reward can be months down the line.

Skills & Knowledge – we call this Performance. Whilst productivity coaching is focussed around getting more done, performance coaching is about increasing conversion. Increasing the number of leads that convert to an opportunity and the number of opportunities that convert to deals can have a dramatic effect on profitability.

Whilst these areas are important there is a much bigger challenge we often find when coaching and it is simply motivation. The top performers are so self-motivated they find their own answers to the points above.

Motivation or rather a lack of it can be caused by a multitude of things, however, unless the sales manager can find a way to help the sales team motivate themselves then they will struggle.

Motivation can come from within and it’s important to tie the business goals to the personal goals of the sales team. Whilst goals are important, what’s more important is to find a “cause”. A cause is self-fuelling, it has an energy all of it’s own that drives people forward.

6. The Impact of Coaching on Sales Performance

Coaching impacts an individual in two different ways. The first is tangible and therefore quite easy to measure, however, the second is intangible and arguably more important, but difficult to measure.

What we mean by the tangible impact are mostly skills based activities such as questioning, telephone, discovery, presentation, negotiation skills and the plethara of other skills that the modern sales person requires to be successful.

There are a number of ways and different tools that can help you measure the impact of skills coaching. However, it’s worth first thinking of the journey that learners go on as they learn new skills.

As demonstrated by the Theory of Learning, learners move through four stages of learning before they reach peak performance.

a) Unconscious Incompetence – the learner is inept at the skill but unaware of this.

b) Conscious Incompetence – the learner is inept but is now aware of this.

c) Conscious Competence – the learner can perform the skill well but needs to think about it

d) Unconscious Incompetence – the learner can perform the skill without thinking about it.

The speed by which learners move through the four stages is dictated by the time invested in learning the new skill, the learning support available.

Unfortunately in sales, sometimes people need to fail first before they understand there might be a different approach that they could benefit from adopting. These people are not coachable and will always resist any form of intervention.

Next up is the intangible impact on the individual which as we said is much more difficult to assess. In sales one of the most important intangible benefits is confidence. Without confidence salespeople will simply never be successful.

It takes a certain level of confidence to prospect, to present, to negotiate etc, however in sales confidence is fragile, it gets shipped away with every unsuccessful call, every no from a prospect and every failed negotiation.

The biggest killer of confidence is often the empty sales pipeline. Once it’s empty is usually much harder to refill your sales funnel as your confidence becomes overwhelmed with desperation and you enter a vicious cycle of decline.

In addition to confidence, another important intangible impact from coaching comes in the form of Emotional Intelligence. In short Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the art of identifying and managing emotions both in ourselves and those around us.

Sales can be a rollercoaster of emotions and controlling these is never easy but also managing the emotions of the people around you is hugely important. At a presentation, a negotiation or a simple sales conversation the emotions of your prospect and how you respond can be the difference between winning the sale or not.

7. Talk to us

Klozers provide Exec Sales Coaching and Sales Performance Coaching services across four time zones. Our sweetspot is working with small and medium size businesses to help them take on the big brands within their industry and win.

Our team a have a wealth of experience and are happy to provide an initial consultation at no charge.

Fractional Sales Management – what is it & why you should care

by Iain Swanston

Lire plus

Sales Training and Consulting for B2B Companies

by Iain Swanston

Why invest in Sales Training and Consulting?

There are normally two reasons companies invest in our Sales Training and Consulting services. Firstly, they are often in a hurry to find sales growth and are looking for a short cut, a growth hack.

Often these companies would eventually find the right strategies and tactics themselves, but they may be keen to capitalise on their first mover advantage or satisfy the needs of external investors.

For these companies we provide a shortcut, we help them avoid the pitfalls and roadblocks that every growing business experiences.

When you engage with Klozers your team has access to over 70 years experience in B2B sales and marketing.

Our sales training can help you get the best out of your team, alongside our consultancy services that will help you deploy the changes identified by our consultancy

Let’s take a closer look at why it makes so much sense to use sales training and consulting services together.

1. Why sales consulting compliments your sales training?

Many companies make the mistake of rushing into training as the solution to improving sales performance.

Indeed, training may be part of the solution, but it is never the whole solution. Before any training takes place it’s important to understand the root causes of the challenges within the sales department and only when we truly understand the problems can we prescribe the best possible solution.

By rushing into training we would be assuming that everything else that affects sales is 100% perfect, and that is simply never the case.

As with anything, the greater the investment upfront in terms of the diagnosis, the more effective the training will be.

This is because the training can then be customised to meet the exact needs of the business which makes it much more impactful.

2. Why is Sales Training so effective?

Sales training builds both skills and confidence, and those are simply unbeatable in front of a customer.

The best salespeople are like athletes and they are hungry to learn more and stay at the top of their game.

The reason they are so good is that they are constantly looking for an edge, an advantage, and this keeps driving them forward.

These are small but important things that make the difference and gets more deals over the line. Our training is designed to keep your team at the top of their game and help them benefit from the very latest insights and industry best practice.

Our sales trainers work hard to keep your team engaged and motivated during training sessions, using a range of mediums to maintain their attention and inspire them.

Your sales trainer will help your team sell more effectively whether that be over the phone, in-person or online.

They can help them improve their lead generation, closing and account management skills, and provide indispensable mentoring services.

3. What happens before training takes place?

Before your training sessions begin, it’s important to identify what you want to get from them. As a sales training provider we offer bespoke services that are based on your specific needs and challenges.

We can provide a full sales consultancy service in advance of any training. This would typically include an evaluation of your current sales unit in relation to sales maturity and best practice.

We can also provide full training needs analysis so you can gain a better understanding of your requirements before staring any training course.

For sales training to be effective, they need to be delivered in a way that maintains your teams’ attention, which means your sessions will include a great deal of interactivity.

Our sales training sessions include a range of demonstrations, exercises, games and roleplay.

4. What is the aim of Sales Training

Our goal as a provider is not to deliver sales training, but to deliver results.

Therefore we believe the goal of Sales training is to help you meet a range of sales goals faster than you would if you were to continue without any intervention.

Not every company’s needs are the same, but businesses often invest in sales training because they want to improve their staff’s sales skills, close more deals, create more conversions, make their staff feel more supported, improve morale and boost the average value of their sales.

However, ultimately all of these lead to one overall benefit – an improvement in results. Some companies invest in training because they have identified a particular problem that needs addressing which is being caused by a skills gaps within their businesses.

Training may also benefit your team if they seem to be lacking direction, or are feeling unmotivated. A lack of motivation can often occur because staff are unclear on what their roles are, or because the current strategies they are using are not working.

In many occasions this is why Sales consultancy is a perfect fit alongside sales training as it can also help you identify and deal with additional challenges.

5. How can a Sales Consultant help our business?

A sales consultant will help your business by taking a close look at your current situation, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and helping you make positive changes to drive revenue growth.

If you are not currently meeting your sales targets, our sales consultants can help you find out why this is happening and develop strategies to address the issues.

Our experienced consultants can help with optimising your sales processes and ensuring you get the maximum conversion ratios from the leads you are generating.

With our years of experience in B2B sales our sales consultants can introduce you to specific resources that will support your business.

These can include lead generation, marketing, sales tracking, and training programmes and software that will give you a better insight into how your sales team are performing.

6. Adding Sales Experience to your Leadership Team

When you are immersed in the day-to-day running of your company, it can be hard to assess your situation objectively.

It’s often impossible to find anyone around you who is not objective as your team all have a role which in some way will make them subjective.

Our sales consultants aren’t just there to identify problems that you weren’t previously aware of, we are completely hands on and happy to work alongside your team to implement any solutions.

Where applicable we will highlight your strengths and help you make the most of the resources that you currently have. In most cases this revolves around the creation of a sales plan, which we work with you to develop and if required are happy to help with executing against the plan.

Our consultants will work with you to help you improve relationships between departments and colleagues. For instance, we are often called upon for detailed advice on aligning sales and marketing departments so you’re delivering coherent messages to your customers.

Indeed aligning sales and marketing is one of our most popular services.

7. Which Companies benefit the most from Consulting Services

We typically have two types of customers of our consulting services. The first are larger organisations who already have a Sales Plan in place.

They need help executing and delivering against the plan as they simply lack the internal resources to do this themselves.

The second group are those looking for external and objective advice. In some cases they have seen a substantial decline in sales recently or aren’t meeting their targets they need to reach and hence are reaching out for support.

These businesses hire us because we have a track record of turning companies around. Alternately you may need external support if you have experienced changes in your industry and you’re struggling to keep up with your competitors.

Companies also may hire us because they feel missed sales targets are starting to affect morale and staff retention rates.

By investing in training and consultancy services, you can show your team you’re determined to improve and start achieving more.

8. Build a Selling System

It’s also common for companies to invest in sales consultancy services because their sales processes are confused and unclear, with team members pulling in different directions.

We are a huge advocate of having a selling system. Finance has a system, operations have a system so why not sales. Building a repeatable scalable selling system is simply a must for any business.

By mapping this out we can help your salespeople to understand how and where they can influence buyers and sell to people on different parts of their journey, helping you secure more sales.

Our consultants can also help you gain a richer understanding of the data available to you, from both your marketing automation and CRM platforms.

In many cases our clients either don’t have enough data or they are overwhelmed by data, and miss out on the most important parts. Either way we can help.

In Conclusion

Sales is an ever changing environment and more and more businesses are improving their performance, staff retention rates and workplace morale.

For most of use this means competition is tough and by investing in our sales training and consultancy services we can give you that edge you need to not just compete, but win.

Sales consultants and trainers can provide invaluable mentorship, help you identify and eradicate weaknesses, and help you make the changes that you need to not only survive but prosper.

Our team can breathe new life into your organisation and inspire people throughout your company. Whether you’ve been missing your targets or are simply ready to build upon recent success and take your business to the next level, there are many great reasons for hiring sales training and consultancy professionals.

If you are ready to hire a sales trainer, sales consultant or both, come and talk with us.

Sales and Service Training Courses

by Iain Swanston

If your business is typical, up to 80% of next years revenues will come from this years customers. Despite this many organisations give little or no thought to customer service, viewing it merely as a cost to the business.

In many cases customer service is a cost to the business, however, survey after survey shows customer service as a core component of your brand. In certain cases some brands who understand the commercial value of great customer service, use it as an opportunity to cross sell and upsell, thus driving additional revenue into the business.

There are so many great statistics for investing in sales and service training once you look into it, it’s difficult to ignore. As an example studies show that 82% of customers leave because of a poor experience and of those 73% leave because of a reaction to rude staff.

Structured and well supported training can help your team meet your customers expectations and even exceed them. The right sales and service training can make your team more adept at winning customers’ trust, whilst boosting your teams confidence.

The best sales and service training programmes are designed to help companies move away from customer service and towards customer experiences.

How can Sales and Service Training help my team?

Often the biggest challenge in business is winning new customers. Given that’s the case it surely makes sense to do everything possible to not only keep those customers, but to maximise the revenue from them.

Most service issues have a simple root problem, for example, 55% of customers are leaving because of delays in resolving a dispute and 51% are leaving because of poor staff training. What’s possibly most important to note, is that all these problems can be easily remedied.

Sales and service training can give your team a system to measure, track and consistently improve your customer service and sales. This will help change the mindset of your team, enabling them to make a real impact by being able to identify what matters most and take action to improve.

When done correctly training can enhance your workplace culture substantially and provide your sales team with additional skills that can benefit them personally throughout their careers.

Why Sales and Service Training is Important — Sales and Service Training

Close More Deals and Learn New Skills

Most companies are unaware of the potential sales opportunities they have with existing customers. With repeat customer spending up to 67% more, sales and service training is more than just handling complaints and returns.

A big part of resolving customers problems should be finding new solutions to the problems customers encounter. In most cases the problems that customers experience are actually the best opportunities for cross selling and upselling.

Training can introduce your team to new strategies and tactics that they may simply never come across before. In addition to external input, there are often great lessons that can be shared internally, and these should be captured and documented for the benefit of others.

Training will help your team become more familiar with your own company’s best practices. In a well structured sales and service training programme, your staff will not only learn new techniques, but also find out why they are so effective and which situations they should be deployed in.

Benefit from External Sales Specialists

Often a key benefit of sales and service training is that it gives your team a chance to take onboard new ideas and strategies from outside the business. In many cases they are more open to learning from external facilitators with an in-depth knowledge than from internal colleagues.

Sales and service specialists can give your team more than just the skills they need to engage potential customers in meaningful conversations. They can help you explain on your customers terms why your products and service may be a good fit for them.

Sales and service training will help your team use the product knowledge and information that they have about your products and services, and turn this into powerful questions that make the buyer want to buy rather than them having to sell to them.

Retain the Best Staff

Many companies are now switched on to the fact that it’s easier to retain quality staff when you invest in training courses for them.

If your team members feel you aren’t investing in them, there’s a high possibility that they will move to a company that will. Investing in training shows your employees that you are eager to help them improve.

When staff receive quality training, they tend to feel more supported, which in turn boosts their confidence. Recruitment costs to replace team members can be incredibly expensive and take up an inordinate amount of management time.

It’s therefore important to try and keep hold of the employees that you have already invested in and continue to develop them.

benefits of sales and service training — Sales and Service Training

Should Managers attend Sales and Service Training?

Sales Managers are responsible for the day to day activities and performance of those activities for members in their team.

Your Managers set the bar in terms of what is acceptable performance and what is not. With this in mind, it’s important that sales managers attend every sales and service training along with their staff so they can hear the information first-hand.

When managers know exactly what’s covered and agreed during training, they can ensure their staff apply this knowledge to real-life scenarios and coach them if they are struggling.

Sales training often includes an element of goal-setting, which is yet another reason why it’s so important for managers to attend. It’s important for the managers to set realistic, yet achievable goals, rather than targets that are out of your team’s reach.

Failure to do this will simply harm the confidence of the team and demotivate them.

Increase your Customer Satisfaction Ratings

Training like everything else in your business needs to deliver a return on your investment. Whilst not everything should be judged by customer service scores, any service training should ultimately improve your customer satisfaction ratings.

Customer expectations are arguably higher than they have ever been and today’s customers expect to receive high-quality service more than ever before.

If they have a bad experience with a member of your team, they’re likely to make their opinions public and Social Media can amplify bad news like never before.

Customer Service training will not only teach your team to deliver the best customer experiences possible, but also turn your happy customers into advocates for your brand, thus generating new business referrals.

Omnichannel Customer Support

Modern customer service training often starts before your customers have even made a purchase. In most cases your customers first interaction with your brand is either your website or social media pages.

It’s important to include these as part of your wider customer experience strategy. This is supported by many statistics for example, using three channels instead of one for marketing campaigns results in a 287% higher purchase rate.

Providing Omnichannel customer support helps your team keep your clients happy across a range of channels and mediums. It can help them communicate with your customers better not only over traditional channels like the phone, but also via live chat, email, social media, SMS and other platforms.

The most successful customer service teams around today adopt an omnichannel approach with research showing that companies with an omnichannel approach experience a 23 fold increase in customer satisfaction.

We believe it’s really important to include these areas in your service programme. Many companies are failing to meet their customers’ expectations which makes it easier for you and your team to stand out from the crowd and win business from them.

Sales and Service Training Course — Sales and Service Training

Build Expert Product Knowledge

No matter the industry customers want to deal with experts and not agents who are simply following a call centre script.

Sales and service training encourages your team to get to know your products inside out so they can answer any and every relevant question they might be faced with.

If sales reps don’t have the knowledge that they require, they are more likely to leave customers feeling frustrated, with the customer going on to air their feedback publicly.

The more your reps know about your products and services, the better they can address customer pain points and explain why your solutions are the answer to their problems.

Enhance Customer Loyalty

Repeated studies show that customers tend to be much more loyal to companies that offer outstanding customer service. Many of today’s customers say that customer service is more important than price when they’re deciding who to do business with.

By investing in sales and service training, you can attract and retain more customers and gain a real edge over your competitors. Part of your overall programme should include how you plan to collect and share customer reviews.

With 70% of people taking action based on customer reviews this is an essential component of every sales and customer service training.

Resolve Disputes Quickly

Delays when resolving complaints can often be the straw that breaks the camels back with 55% of people leaving a brand because of delays in resolution.

Sales and service training can help your reps resolve complaints quickly which is important when dealing with angry and frustrated customers.

Training can help them show tactical empathy when they are dealing with an angry customer and enable them to steer the conversation in the right direction, no matter which medium they are communicating on.

Understanding active listening skills can turn your team into better, more helpful listeners that pay close attention to what your customers have to say and then use the skills and information they have to deliver the best outcome possible.

Why Customers stay after sales and service training — Sales and Service Training

Customer Service Training

Unlike traditional customer service training courses, Klozers provides the latest in business simulation software, that allows your team to experience a 2 year customer experience transformation program in 1 day.

Our state of the art business simulation goes way beyond basic communication skills and helps your sales team understand customer expectations, sales process, and what truly drives sales performance across the organisation.

Designed specifically as a holistic cross departmental our customer service courses are designed to engage everyone from your front line sales team, product and services teams and company management.

The customer service training includes two options as follows:

Enterprise Customer Service Training

SaaS Customer Success Training

Please contact us for further information.

In Summary

How important is retaining your existing customers?

How valuable would the extra revenue be if your customer service team were actively cross selling and upselling throughout their day?

Investing in sales and service training will make your staff and customers much happier. If you look after your staff they will in turn look after your customers.

If you feel you need to make improvements in these areas, please give us a call. We would love to work with you and make the sales and service goals you have in mind a reality.

Sales Negotiation Training

by Iain Swanston

Key Negotiation Skills – Introduction

There is a common misconception that sales negotiation skills are only required towards the end of the sales process. The part in every sales process where costs and terms are agreed. Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it’s also true that the best salespeople are negotiating all the way through the sales process. In fact every Professional salesperson negotiates, every single day which is why it’s an important part of any training programme.

From negotiating with their children on what to have for breakfast, to negotiating with a Partner on where to go for dinner. In between times they will negotiate workloads with their line managers, negotiate meeting times with co-workers, negotiate dates & times for appointments with prospects and lastly negotiating sales contracts, project delivery and aftercare contracts. In short, Negotiation is actually unavoidable, and the ability to Negotiate is a core skill for every Salesperson.

Planning for Sales Negotiations

Like most things in life when it comes to Negotiation knowledge is power. The more information you have and better prepared you are then the more likely you will achieve a successful negotiation. Follow the information below to discover how to research and plan your next negotiation.

Sales Negotiation Goals

These are the needs, wants and desires of the parties involved in the negotiation. In business this can be complicated as not only may both sides have differing goals, but parties within each side may have differing and even conflicting Goals.

Goals can be subjective for example “We need to increase the confidence of our people.” or they can be more objective like “We need to reduce our overheads by 10 this quarter”. Either way it’s important to know both your own Goals and that of the other side. Important questions you must ask are:

Have we identified all the Goals?
What are the Prioritised Goals?
What are the Business Goals?
What are the Personal Goals?
Are there conflicting Goals?

Business Goals Examples	Personal Goals Examples
Strategic	Security
Change	Satisfaction
Growth	Peer Pressure
Improvement	Financial Gain

Please note Goals are NOT the same as outcomes.

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.

The Outcome is the Negotiated agreement that they come to.

Negotiation Options

These are all the possible solutions that satisfy the goals of both parties. They are all possibilities that both parties agree or say Yes to.

By investing time to explore all the Options then you are more likely to find:

Alternative solutions
Enable both parties to achieve their goals
Reach the Best Possible Agreement (BPA)

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.

Criteria for Negotiation

Criteria are the “terms” of any possible Option

Example:

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.

Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.

Get expert Sales Negotiation Training from our Sales Coaches

Sales Negotiation Coaching — Sales Negotiation Training

CNA – Cost of No Agreement

Not all Negotiations end in an agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiation that you first work out what the Cost of No Agreement is for both parties. The costs of no agreement can be both Objective and Subjective.

Example:

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.

CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (Objective) however he has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate (Subjective) for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business (Objective) but knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed (Subjective) if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.

The Subjective Cost of No Agreement can be more powerful than the Objective ones as people make decisions emotionally and then justify their position intellectually afterwards.

BATNA – Best Alternative to No Agreement

Not all Negotiations end in an Agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiations that you first work out what the Best Alternative to No Agreement is. In some cases you may well experience that the other party is so entrenched in their position that they have no desire to Negotiate. BATNA is typically but not always, an alternative course of action that can be taken if no agreement is reached.

BATNA helps you prepare for a Negotiation by:

Helps prevent you from agreeing to something you will regret
Defining your Minimum Possible Agreement (MPA)
Provides you with a Plan B
Helps prevent you from over or underestimating the your own and the other party’s position
Helps you understand where the leverage is
Identifying alternative Options

Example:

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.

CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company.

BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business. Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.

Concessions for Negotiation

A concession is something given to the other party in furtherance of the agreement. These concessions should be identified in advance and segmented for both parties in terms of:

High Value – High Cost

High Value – Low Cost

Remember – Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.

Example:

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.

Concessions – George is prepared to spend 3 months of his time ensuring during the handover period which is Low Cost to him as he will be retired but High Value to Mike as he is new to the industry and recognises the benefit of George’s experience.

Mike is prepared to move quickly which has no cost to him however this is High Value to George as the last thing he wants is a long protracted sale.

Negotiation Strategies

Aggressive Tactics

Shoot the hostage
- This strategy is extremely aggressive as it involves an immediate offer to walk away with no deal which is designed to throw and unsettle the other party. This is often delivered in a reluctant tone “we don’t want to do this but…”,
Delaying tactics
- When time is clearly on one parties side the process can often be deliberately slowed which is extremely effective when there are cost implications if talks over run. This tactic also applies if the other party has another meeting or needs to leave. The negotiator deliberately talks around the subject to delay the real conversation and then uses time to put pressure on the other party to come to an agreement.
Poor Me
- This strategy is used to play the false victim that needs rescued by the other party.
Last Minute.com
- As the name suggests this strategy involves the Negotiator agreeing to a solution right up until they are required to sign and then withdrawing. The withdrawal is usually followed up quickly with a counter offer at dramatically reduced terms.
Misleading/lying
- Often Negotiators will make exaggerated claims or even lie so without hard data to support them you should discount these. They may also issue warnings and threats or make matters personal to unbalance you.
Missing People
- Everyone knows the importance of having all the Decision Makers in the room but Negotiators may even turn up with complete strangers. In sales some companies will remove Sales People from the final negotiations. If the Sales People have a relationship with the other party they could be more empathetic and weaker negotiators. Turning up without warning with complete strangers also unbalances the other party.

Co-operative Tactics

Agree on the Process
- Spend time up front agreeing the process and format of the Negotiations including what’s in scope and what’s not.
Win Win Agreements
- Most professional Negotiators accept that any final agreement must be fair and sustainable for the life of the time period. In most business scenarios it should never be win at all costs as this destroys relationships.
Matching Rights
- Offer the other party the right to match any solution that you receive. For example if one of two business partners decides to sell their shares to another party they may have the agreement that the other party gets first refusal if they match the offer.
Contingent Agreements
- These are simply agreements based on future events. Financial Bonus may be tied to Performance. Football transfer fees can be include Contingent Agreements that provides the selling club additional revenue if a player is sold on and or if a player is capped by their country or simply makes a certain number of appearances.
Multiple Offers
- When multiple offers are placed on the table this allows both parties to indicate preferences and encourages creativity as a winning hybrid offer can be formed. Placing one offer on the table often leads to a refusal and a stall in the process.

Sales Negotiation Checklist

1. Be prepared to walk away. Sales Negotiation is 70% Mindset and 30% Strategy and unless you are prepared to walk away, no strategy will help you.

2. It’s not what you charge it’s what your worth. Thoroughly research the market and discuss with the buyer the Value you bring to the table?

3. Take council from colleagues and external advisors and agree a pre-meeting strategy for the negotiations then PRACTICE.

4. Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.

5. Never enter a Negotiation without first providing your price and outline terms in advance, to anchor the prospect to a higher number and terms.

6. Where possible in high value deals do not include your sales people in Negotiations, as they will be emotionally involved in the sale and not objective.

7. Ensure everyone in your team have agreed in advance your trade-offs, your concessions, and your best alternative to a negotiated settlement.

8. You must be comfortable with silence and at most only talk 30% of the time, as the more you talk the more information you are giving away.

9. If it’s not Win Win then you run the danger of the prospect backing out or failing to implement your agreement, then the lawyers are the only winners.

10. Negotiation is between human beings, you must therefore be familiar with Human Psychology, DiSC, Neuro Linguistic and Programming.

9 Key Selling Skills for Sales Success

by Iain Swanston

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