What does “Negotiation Training” Really Mean?

two people each holding a mug

We hear this request a lot when speaking with folks looking to train their inside sales or field sales team. We are also hearing it more and more when it comes to training customer success teams.

While simplistic in concept it’s a bit more complex than many folks think. This is because “negotiation training has become a buzz word. And in many cases its used incorrectly.

Negotiation training can have a ridiculous amount of meaning. When you are thinking about hiring a sales trainer for negotiating training here are some things to keep in mind.

  1. Is “negotiating training” what you really need?
    1. Often times people say “negotiation training” but when we dive in deeper it’s not the negotiation skills that are bad, its the discovery skills that simply suck.
  2. Define the type of negotiation you want help with.
    1. Negotiation at an SMB, MM, or ENT level?
    2. Negotiating with a procurement team?
    3. Negotiation legal terms and definitions.
    4. How to prevent being “unbundled”
    5. Get real specific, or this training will look good on paper but execute poorly in your world.
  3. Negotiations start at the moment of the first “hello”
    1. Does your sales process address this?
    2. How does your trainer approach this concept specifically?
  4. The value of any negotiator is their willingness to walk away.
    1. Which then leads to the single most important part of the training. Does the trainer spend time with the team exploring their own personal struggles of negotiating? Do they understand how to rebuild the mindset of the human? And note, each human is different.
  5. Negotiation starts internally first, not externally with your prospect.
  6. Negotiation skills will be thrown out the window of Founders and CEOs keep cutting deals at the end of the month or quarter.
  7. Define your specific use cases of negotiations
    1. negotiating next steps
    2. negotiating introductions
    3. negotiating demos
    4. negotiating commercial terms
  8. Then confirm with your trainer
    1. Tactics, tactics, tactics,
    2. Roleplay, Roleplay, role play,
  9. Balance – 60% time on tactics, 40% time on role plays

Hopefully, this provides you with a strong idea and some guidelines for improving your sales teams negotiating skills.

Need help teaching your team to negotiate better? Contact us here.

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