Sales staff face many challenges en route to closing a deal, but one of the most difficult can be handling those tricky price negotiations. In many cases, a buyer will look to try and squeeze a discount out of a sales rep, forcing a negotiation to take place. So how should a sales team approach this?

Negotiate From the Beginning

Too many sales reps think of negotiation as something that takes place at the end of a sales process, after all of the other work has been done. In reality, your sales team needs to be negotiating throughout the process. However, early negotiation should be framed in terms of trying to find a mutually beneficial solution.

A common tactic from buyers is something known as ‘anchoring’, where they attempt to establish their own maximum price early. When this is attempted, sales reps should enquire as to how they arrived at that figure, and try to learn about the buyer’s needs. Ideally, sales staff should also be the first to state a figure.

Sell Value Rather Than Price

One of the best ways to improve negotiating is to sell value rather than price, and this should be emphasized in sales management training and become a part of the sales culture. Your product may be more expensive than a competitor’s because it is better. Selling value means staff can approach negotiations from a position of strength.

“The reality is, there are solutions customers will pay a premium for,” MHI Global writes in their document, The Problem With Price Discussions. “Ultimately, customers decide to buy from you because they believe you brought to the table something that has value to them that they can’t get elsewhere.”

Know When to Walk Away

Finally, a sales team should know that there will be times when a mutually beneficial solution cannot be reached. This is unfortunate, but staff should have a clearly defined breaking point and should not be afraid to walk away from sales opportunities that have no real potential.

Where possible, sales training should try to teach staff to recognize early warning signs that a negotiation will fail, so that as little time is wasted as possible. However, this can be difficult. The most important thing is to remember that other sales opportunities will exist if this one isn’t right for either party.

This Article was originally posted to the EyeOnSales Blog on December 2, 2016