Negotiation: Work with the Customer
Negotiations are not a one-sided affair. You need to involve the customer in the negotiation process. This is something most people tend to forget. They only look at negotiation from their perspective and forget to consider the customer as a party in the negotiation process.
The result is that the negotiation process is lop sided with your offer either being too rich or too weak. Either way, you set the negotiation process up for failure.
Instead of going it alone, involve the customer in your negotiation process. This does not mean you agree to everything the customer says. It means you need to sit down with the customer and establish realistic expectations. Consider what the customer wants and how you can fulfill those requirements.
If the customer is making over the top demands, you will need to tone them down to what is possible. If the customer is requesting for the basic package, trying to negotiate and upsell them to a higher package may not be beneficial as they might not be able to commit to a better package yet.
You will never know any of this until you involve the customer and ask them for information. This will require the customer to be comfortable with you and your company, so they are not reluctant to share information. Creating that bond of trust is vital to the negotiation process.
Once you have established a bond of trust, the customer will be more willing to share information with you and you would be able to get information from them on how you can help them. Your genuine concern to help the customer will also help in easing the negotiation process as the customer will see that your process is aligned to make their business grow through the supply of your products and services.
So working with the customer allows you to ease the negotiation process by getting better information so you can make better decisions and provide a better value offer. The customer will benefit from transparency and trust and the negotiation process will be easier since they are already involved in the fact finding and creation of the offer.
Conversion of offer to business becomes easier and you can close more sales.