How many times it has happened that you have made a perfect presentation gave a flawless demo of your product and was almost there in closing that deal but somehow it did not happen? Many times I guess. Many of the sales and marketing guys put this on their sheer bad luck. But the fact is you can make a customer to be interested in your products through demo and presentation but to sign that dotted line you need a well disciplined Negotiation Skills. Many people lack this highly needed skill set. Few of the essential negotiation skills are mentioned below that when put in practice yields higher chances of winning deals and making customer happy.
1. Show Genuine Interest
Many of the sales and marketing executive out there lack this first and most fundamental part of negotiation skills. Those who want to sell their products and services are always concerned about the deal they are least bothered about what customer wants to convey. Sitting like a statue and occasionally nodding to their suggestions. It doesn’t benefit much either to the customer or you. So one of the best ways to negotiate a deal is to show real interest in what they want to say. Simple words like “yes”, “sure” or “OK” can do wonders. It shows you are attentive and the customer offers you more information giving you chance to better prepare yourself for the further discussion.
2. Paraphrase
When you listen to them you can see them stretching on certain key points, you can tell the customer what they said by summarizing or quoting what they said a moment back. This will indeed give then assurance that you are right into the conversation.
3. Mirroring
This is common technique but very effective in the overall negotiation deal. Repeat often the main idea or last word of your customer. This helps them to know that you are getting the point what he or she wants say. It also helps to build an initial rapport with the customer and putting you in a commanding position. For example, if your customer says “We want to centralize our communication systems,” to which the executive can reply “Centralize communication, great initiative”.
4. Emotion Labeling
Sometime customer attaches an emotional significance to its business needs, you can use this to your advantage by naming that emotion, it creates a personal trust and gives your comfortable lead in the dialogue. For example if the customer looks tense and talk about the decline of sales of his products you can say, “You look worried about the sales” if he continues it with “Yes” you can add “It really is something that even I would have been concerned about”. But if he says no then you can steer away from that topic.
5. Strategic pause
“Speech is silver, silence is golden” we have heard this thousand of times but seldom have given it a thought. But a true negotiator has this knack of giving an effective pause in his talk. It may seem void but this gives him time to contemplate on his next move at the same time it gives time to customer to offer additional information regarding his needs.
6. Open-Ended questions
This is another tool of an ace negotiator, he uses open-ended question instead of simple “Why”. For many customers it feels more of an interrogation and less of conversation. Some of the example of open-ended questions includes "Can you tell me more about your requirements?" Could you help me better understand by explaining that further?" etc. This gives customer to talk more and reveal more about their needs.
This easy to read and understand what equally important is to put all these things in practice to get the results. The true negotiator never underestimates the value of training and he knows a successful business deal requires continuous training and learning.
