Blog: Are your salespeople headed to a knife fight with fingernail clippers? | Strategic Pricing Associates

Salespeople go into negotiations with professional buyers on a daily basis, most without real negotiation training. Further, many sellers and their managers don’t really believe negotiations play a role in their world. But they do. The following article discusses why Distributors need to revisit the lost art of negotiation.

Excerpts of the article authored by Frank E. Hurtte Jr. who has 28 years of distribution industry experience and a lifetime in sales follow.

“As companies worked to reduce their costs, I saw classes full of purchasing and procurement guys.”

Have you ever called on a person with the CPP credential behind their name? This stands for Certified Purchasing Professional. In order to maintain the accreditation, the individual must meet the following minimum continuing education requirements as listed on their website.

For those still wondering, let me throw in another detail. I asked well-known negotiation trainer Tony Perzow of SPASigma, an organization dedicated to improving sales negotiation, to elaborate on the issue. Tony said, “During the years of the Great Recession we saw a change in the mix of our classes. As companies worked to reduce their costs, I saw classes full of purchasing and procurement guys. These companies realized the easiest way to drive cost out of their system was to apply pressure to their suppliers.” Putting ourselves back in the time, sellers were desperate to get sales; at almost any cost. My experience with distributor sales organizations shows many companies are still trying to work some of these poorly negotiated deals back to profitability.

Our customers don’t believe negotiation is a bad word. As a matter of fact, they have made good use of the process. Our sellers were ill equipped to even begin playing the game.

Read complete article here:

Are your salespeople headed to a knife fight with fingernail clippers? « Strategic Pricing Pays.