INKED

When negotiating, most salespeople let emotion dominate over reason.

Many salespeople are terrible negotiators. Often they have not learned to think logically or control their emotions during negotiations. Many salespeople are anxious when negotiating, and fearful of the possible negative consequences of saying or doing something ineffective.

Most salespeople receive little or no negotiation training. And, the scant negotiation training companies provide often is about negotiating in a vacuum, not about sales negotiations, and it has nothing to do with the overall sales process. However, your sales process and your negotiating strategy are tightly aligned, so treating negotiations as separate from sales doesn’t help the seller.

Often, negotiation instructors have no sales background, so they can’t relate what they’re teaching to the circumstances salespeople encounter in the field. As a result, such training usually does not help people close sales. The biggest reason salespeople often find themselves at a disadvantage during negotiations is because...