Gitomer Got My Goat

So the following chunk of negotiation advise  came through in my e mail this past week…I get stuff from Mr. Gitomer each week and usually can glance at it…maybe wince a bit and move on. This time, (as my Gramps would say), he got my goat!

http://www.gitomer.com/articles/ViewPublicArticle.html?key=ajcdMibak3Msi5Eq7k8%2B8Q%3D%3D

So like I say…I can usually shrug his style off as an artifact of our culture these days.

When Chef Ramsey, Jim Cramer and Dr. Phil are the pop culture thought leaders on management and communication styles in their respective fields it is no surprise to see Mr. Gitomer’s style become popular.

What troubles me is that many sales/negotiating scenarios involve a bit more than blasting the theme from Rocky and pumping our fists in the air as we psyke ourselves up in the mirror.

So where he get’s my goat with this post is that he is mostly right…

Where we differ is in the notion of when a negotiation begins…the most dangerous place to be is in a negotiation you don’t know you’re in.

We agree that interrogation and discovery are the keys to the process…as they say…knowledge is power.

Knowing who the decision makers are, how they formulate their decisions and what timing is involved is all part of the negotiation. In complex selling where multiple communication efforts using several team members are involved it is vital to keep in mind that each communication is part of a negotiation. Each communication should be thought out and planned as part of a negotiation.

We “negotiate” each step of the sales process…negotiation as a term should not be limited in our minds to a financial discussion near the end of the process…nor should it be limited to financial terms at all. This is where I depart from the Gitomer in-your-face approach…semantics I suppose but important.

We negotiate for more information, more time, and for position against our competitors. We might even be negotiating within our team for resources such as product enhancements, services, collateral, additional players in the communication scheme.

So you aren’t blowing it “Sparky”… don’t buy into cheap theatrics. Do your homework and treat every interaction as a part of a larger planned negotiation.

Generally I recommend Mr. Gitomer’s stuff for sales beginners and it’s often nice to get back to basics…he and I just disagree on style when it comes to complex, extended cycle, team based selling environments.

© 2009 Burt Hadlock

tags:
Gitomer negotiating,
Gitomer,
selling,
Jeffery Gitomer

All the World’s a Stage…

To borrow from Shakespeare…All the world’s a stage…especially in the world of sales and negotiating…Shakespeare goes on:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…”

 

While it might be fun to go into the seven ages from here I’d rather stop here and comment on the notion of team selling…

All of selling and negotiation is a stage and all are merely players…what part do you play? Who else is in the play?

In most complex sales and negotiation encounters the individual can only play a part…we need others to support our character. In technology sales applications expertise, development teams and executives all to play a role.

The notion of individuals initiating, negotiating and closing out complex or large deals might be compared again to the theater.

One man plays are often  interesting but rarely blockbuster in the crowds and revenue they bring.

On the other hand…when I think of major theatrical successes I think of acting troupes…multiple characters choreographed and staged.

The same has been my experience in sales and negotiating. Many a sales person has done “OK” as a one man act, (perhaps enjoying the bubble reputation)…but the truly successful…the long running multiple big deal stories always involve team selling with a sales person in the lead playing off supporting characters.

Too often has been the case where the lone sales person takes up the act on his own, involving no supporting cast, only to lose a deal or discount unnecessarily from the fear and deal ignorance that going it alone brings.

So put on a production.

Know the story you want to tell.

Pick your players and set your script before the curtain goes up.

 Tell your story in multiple acts too…unless you’re selling cars or cell phones it’s unlikely you can do substantial, repeatable large deals on a single act.

Be sure to share the story ideas with your supporting cast…let them add color….then be sure to rehearse before taking the show on the road!

When it comes to planning and rehearsing in sales and negotiations….there’s such notion as “too much of a good thing”!

 

 

 

The Powerless Negotiator

Negotiate with more confidence…become powerless.

When I negotiate, (or sell), from a perspective that I have great control over people, places and things I typically enjoy neither the process or outcomes. Even if I “win” any satisfaction I may take from the deal is diminished by my perception of a difficult process.

On the occasions that I am mindful  that negotiations are instances that I participate in I am more relaxed about the process and fear the outcome less.

Knowing the current status of a deal…without judgmental commentary …and the immediate next steps I am responsible for…puts me in a position to negotiate without the distraction of controlling the others involved.

Knowing that I can only really control my attitude and actions…and keeping those actions within the current instance gives me greater confidence in those actions and the overall process.

 

© 2009 Burt Hadlock

 

 

 

 

tags:

powerlessness,

negotiate,

Negotiating,

Non Financial Compensation

Often discussed in this space is the notion of carefully defining “compensation” in your personal preferences and needs when negotiating a position or job offer.

This from today’s CCN web site:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/10/06/cb.negotiate.at.work/index.html

 

Enjoy!

From the Hiring Manager’s Perspective…

This link was pointed out to me today…much of what’s been discussed here and in my talks on negotiating offers and compensation are pointed out from the hiring manager’s perspective.

 

http://www.hrworld.com/features/negotiate-effectively-candidates-090808/

Merging negotiation techniques with your opportunity pipeline to maximize offers

Merging negotiation techniques with your opportunity pipeline to maximize offers. 

When you should you begin the negotiation process when you are job hunting?

Before you even identify a potential employer!

Having determined that a pipeline approach to the job search is your plan you are off to a great start in your future compensation negotiation.

As you build your categories and begin to develop discovery questions the negotiation process can be embedded within the pipeline. 

As an example an early priority should be to determine your compensation requirements before investigating any leads.  Make sure your discovery and research are set up in such a way as to learn if the position has the potential to meet your compensation requirements. Disqualify early any leads that are obvious and profound financial mismatches. The key here is to use a fairly rough gauge and look for positions within a range. This range is of your choosing and in the early stages can be optimistic.

As you progress a lead through the pipeline your questions and tactics should comprehend that you are in a negotiation from the start. Most of your questions will not be of a make or break yes/no variety but rather design to help you learn as much as possible about the situation as possible before an offer is formed. Your ultimate objective is to have an employer you’d be delighted to work for write you an offer you’d be delighted to accept. Only through a thorough discovery process with questions devised to help form that offer can you get there.

Formulate a list of compensation components that matter to you and place questions designed to discover how the employer might provide meet your needs. Use great interrogation techniques and don’t be afraid to ask questions you feel you already know the answer to.

Remember to work from broad brush queries to finer strokes as a position migrates from lead to offer.  A generality such as “What can you tell me about the company’s financial condition?” will soon enough become a specific such as “How can we finalize this offer by adding two weeks of vacation time?”

Designing and Managing a Job Opportunity “Pipeline”

Pipelines serve as a simple means to track each job lead you are working. Pipelines also helps us stay focused on moving job opportunities along by identifying for us what we know, (and don’s know!), about potential jobs.

Simply put, a pipeline is a collection of the job leads and opportunities you are working organized by their progress in a manner that helps us clearly see what next steps are necessary to promote a lead to a job offer. The pipeline stages might look like this:

 LEADS à   OPPORTUNITIES à   PROSPECTS à   OBJECTIVES à   OFFERS 

These categories could be defined as:

LEADS: Virtually every possible form of employment you would consider could be a lead. Likewise, any information as yet unverified regarding potential available positions would be placed in the lead category.

OPPORTUNITIES:  As we learn more about a lead, perhaps verifying a position once rumored as available as true, we promote those leads to opportunities. We are willing to invest more time and energy in the application and discovery process.

PROSPECTS: The discovery process will yield valuable information about the opportunity and help us determine if there is the potential for a “fit”.  These leads, having been promoted twice are deserving of more constant attention and the extra effort required digging deep in discovery to determine our ultimate interest and the quality of the fit.

OBJECTIVE: Following discovery we are able to sum up with the status of a prospect with an affirmation that, given an acceptable negotiation outcome: “I would like to work for this organization”. It is your OBJECTIVE for the employer produce an OFFER. Your research and tactics are very specific at this point.

You see now that as leads progress the discovery and specific activities you are involved in will become less superficial and more targeted as leads progress.  An example correlation:

LEAD à	OPPORTUNITYà	PROSPECTà	OBJECTIVE à	OFFER
2nd Hand info à	Resume/Query submittal à	Telephone screen à	Formal Interview	Offer negotiation

Likewise the information you gather evolves from vague to very specific. In order to progress to an OBJECTIVE from a lead a significant amount of information must be gathered and understood about a prospective position. Most of your leads will drop out of the pipeline as the information comes in and your disqualify leads. Consequently you should constantly be adding leads to the pipeline since only a fraction of your leads will progress through the pipeline to OBJECTIVE status.

The number of unanswered questions about the position should be virtually zero once the lead progresses all the way through to OFFER. Of course, LEADS will have an inverse relationship. By their nature there is more unknown than known about a LEAD. The process of discovery answers those questions and ultimately promotes or disqualifies LEADs. The pipeline is discovery completion rather than time based. As the information comes in, LEADs are evaluated and promoted along the pipeline if appropriate. This could be a matter of minutes or days.

Spend some time developing your categories and subsequent discovery questions early in your search. Be flexible and willing to learn from the process and to add or delete questions as you learn more about yourself, the market and the process.

The actual questions and their relative importance is a matter of personal choice and vocation dependent. Likewise where the categories appear in your pipeline may differ as a function of your priorities.

 Some very basic discovery question categories:

LEADS à	OPPORTUNITIES à	PROSPECTS à	OBJECTIVES à	OFFERS
Location	Relocation	Hiring Manager	Telecommute	Hire Bonus
Title	Compensation	Co-workers	Peer interviews	Stock Options
Job Descr.	Education required	Training	Continuing Ed.	Review cycle
Company	Reputation	Co. Financials	Customer Ref.	Retirement

As discussed previously, use your “team” to aid in the discovery necessary to answer your questions.

Dedicate specific time, perhaps weekly or more, to review each lead status and update your pipeline.

Hold yourself accountable; ask your support team to do so as well.

Up next:  Merging negotiation techniques with your opportunity pipeline to maximize offers.

Sales Manage Your Job Search and Offer Negotiation

Are you in a job search or career change?

Sales manage your efforts to find and develop more opportunities

Sales managing your job search?

Why not? Sales managers build, train, motivate and drive sales teams to deliver the number.

For your career search why not use a “sales team” developed and led with sales management techniques to deliver your next job? This is a great way to multiplex your message across many sales “channels”!

How does this pertain to negotiations? Clearly one of the most important negotiations we participate in is about employment. Successful negotiating involves being hyper-informed about the circumstances.

Good sales managers use their teams to not only find and develop leads but to set the table for best outcome negotiations by doing the early discovery work that is guaranteed to sane time and maximize your negotiation. So if you’re starting a job search may I suggest that you…

Hire a team!

“Hiring” a team doesn’t mean to hire in the traditional, financially compensated manner. It simply involves asking people that care about you and who may benefit in some way from your new employment to get involved with your search.

You are surrounded by people that will help you find and win your next job.

“Hire” them to provide information, spread the word about your talents and availability and to serve as references.

·         A family member could be assigned the task of checking certain job boards or newspaper ads.

·         Another friend might be responsible for putting the word of your availability out to a specific employer, professional organization or networking group.

·         Got a friend in the industry that you’re targeting? Hire them to search for leads via their company postings, industry associations and networks.

·         Recruiters, though usually paid by the hiring firm can be “hired” by you…put to work in promoting your availability.

·         Join a job seeking support group and put members on your team. An associate there may be following up a lead of their own and can check potential opportunities that fit your particular skill set or discline.

The “team” will need training. Spend time with each team member to help them understand what their “job” is. A quick bio summary such you may already have produced for Linked-In is an invaluable tool in helping them understand your skills and background at a high level.

Infuse the team with a positive attitude. Go to each one with excitement and enthusiasm…they’ll make sure others catch it too!

Most importantly be certain to arrange for an ongoing dialogue. Maybe it’s a weekly phone call or perhaps getting together over a cup of coffee. Keep notes of who is on the team and what actions they are assigned.

You are more likely to get the help you hope for if your “team” knows you’ll be following up like a good sales manager would.

But then, who is managing you?

Are you in a job seeking support group? A Success Team? Hire them to be your sales manager! Ask them to hold you accountable for your sales management activities and pipeline management.

Ask them to review your activity by sharing your pipeline summary report.

The next post will provide greater detail on the pipeline and how managing one can profoundly improve the productivity of your “team” and subsequently your career search.

© 2007 Burt Hadlock

tags:
sales manage,
sales pipeline,
Negotiating,
job search

Book Review: The Power of a Positive No: How to say NO and still get to YES

Author: William Ury                                 www.williamury.com  

Some time ago I promised a review of Mr. Ury’s latest book…so here we go.

First things first. If you are serious about becoming a better negotiator at anything in life, read this book.

You might remember that Mr. Ury is the author of “Getting to Yes”, which is arguably the standard in negotiation texts. He leads the highly regarded Global Negotiating Project at Harvard University and has a outstanding collection of experiences that he shares liberally with us in his new book. For me the great benefit of that experience is that Mr. Ury walks the walk. Too many negotiating “gurus” out there rely on slickness and the repackaging of ancient wisdom, (often without attribution), to shout their negotiating “product” at us.

Mr. Ury offers sound and thoughtful advice throughout the book. Perhaps one of the most redeeming values of the book may be that he applies his techniques to everyday and personal situations as well as the boardroom or global conflicts. He helps us to understand that the tools for improving our negotiating skills are often very basic and are available for everyone. Not to mix reviews here but I am reminded of the animated movie “Ratatouille”, where a famous chef has a cookbook “Anyone can Cook” . With Mr. Ury’s book in hand the argument can be made that anyone can negotiate. He offers tips and tools that are easily aimed at our everyday lives. Much of it is ancient wisdom indeed but presented rather than packaged.

Starting with a definition about our basic, fundamental beliefs, he helps us to build a “NO” to certain demands and proposals. By building upon a strongly and comfortably  held core belief we are able to say Yes to we then understand what we are willing to say No to and are available to build the skills he suggests in order to do so.

From that basic Yes ->No,  Ury then helps us move the negotiation along anyways…with a proposal we can say Yes to. He defines it as: YesàNoàYes?

Mr. Ury offers excellent and comfortably presented tips for communicating and interacting with others at any level in virtually any type of negotiation…from your Kindergartener to the CEO.  His promotion of saying Yes to yourself, (and your core beliefs), as a precursor to saying No in a negotiation, helps the negotiator reduce the edginess and confrontational aspect of the “No”. Too often a “No” can seem like a confrontational and yet coy approach to the negotiation process. Arrogance creeps in. The core belief is in winning and maximization. Read Mr. Ury’s book, take his advice and discover that how you play the negotiating game can matter more than the outcome.

© 2007 Burt Hadlock

tags:
positve no,
getting to yes,
Negotiating,
william ury

Good Negotiating? Great Customer Service? Both?

The car needed to go in to the shop for a while. It was not a very urgent repair operationally…just an intermittent window failure. More an irritant than anything else since the window only seem to refuse to go down at maddening times such as toll booths or parking garage exits.

Finally we get around to scheduling it in to the shop and got a less than $150 repair estimate.

A couple hours later we get the call. Seems the repair was more involved than originally thought. We’re now looking at a window motor replacement rather than repair and talking $600!

When my wife took the call she repeated the information back to the service agent for both clarity and for my benefit. Her reaction was perfect.

“Wow, that’s an unpleasant surprise and much more than your original estimate.” This was done in a calm and moderate volume. The service agent of course reiterated the unfortunate circumstances after which my wife calmly told him that the expense had now grown to a value that we felt obliged to research and get other bids for. We would call him in a few hours.

 A couple hours later and before we actually did any research or made any calls the service agent called back. Having researched the amount of time that we had been customers and making notice that we seemed to bring all our service to the dealer they had arranged to have the car repair done at no expense to us.  He went on o explain that the dealership and the repair center would split the cost.

Not a bad example of everday negotiating. We didn’t blindly accept the change in price nor did she lose her cool and blast the agent and make a series of loud threats and escalations. Her demeanor and patience surely contributed to the outcome.

It is important to note that the only part of this situation that she could control was her actions and her attitude.  Another time we may have had to go elsewhere or may have found the estimate to be legit and have paid what was necessary.

It was an example of pretty great customer service too. The dealer wanted to keep a long time customer and build more loyalty so they did their research. While it is tempting to cast a cynical eye on this one and spend brain cycles on how they may have been trying to hustle us or imagine if the replacement was even necessary we ought not.

Thanks to a cool head and patient negotiating we won’t spend brain cycles wondering what might have been had we not paused before saying yes.

 

 

© 2007 Burt Hadlock

tags:
car repair,
estimate,
calm,
customer service