Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value

by Reed Holden

Overview

Sales professionals now confront the most serious threat to their success. Regardless of their size, industry, country, customer type, nature of the relationship or amount of value they provide, sales professionals are finding that purchasing decisions are increasingly being limited by procurement. The modern procurement function is purchasing on steroids. Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials attempt to dictate. Procurement deploys a variety of tactics designed to do one thing: gain unprecedented discounts and concessions out of even the most sophisticated sales professionals. This book is a strategy guide for salespeople to help them level the procurement playing field by showing readers how to assess the game procurement plays, describing proven ways to resist discounting and protect margins, demonstrating ways to keep value at the forefront of negotiations, offering targeted tactics to protect hard-earned profits from mindless discounting, and detailing eight strategies effective in any type of pricing negotiation. This book will be an invaluable resource for B2B sales professionals, customer-facing professionals, and executives responsible for leading successful sales organizations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780134268088
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	05/18/2012
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Reed K. Holden, CEO and Founder of Holden Advisors, is a world-class pricing expert who has spent the past 20 some years helping clients build go-to-market strategies to drive price leadership and profitable growth. His firm has been consulting with clients for 10 years to improve and sustain pricing power in highly competitive markets. His latest work with salespeople focuses on successfully dealing with high pressure procurement departments through more effective value positioning, selling, and negotiation. With Mark Burton, he wrote Pricing with Confidence: Ten Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table. He is also coauthor of the second and third editions of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I THE GREAT GAME OF PROCUREMENT 15

Chapter 1 Tough Selling—The New Normal 17

Company-Supported Sales Traps to Avoid 20

Encouraging Desperation Pricing 20

Succumbing to the “White Horse Syndrome” 21

There Is Hope if You Play the Game Right 24

Chapter 2 The Tells of the Game 27

Recognizing “Tells” 28

Evaluating Procurement’s Position 31

Dealing with Procurement Styles 33

Chapter 3 Stacking the Deck in Your Favor 37

Understanding Your Customer’s Game 39

Finding Your Hidden Power 41

Limiting Exposure of Senior Executives 42

Firing the Customer 44

Avoiding the Endowment Effect 46

Customer Games 49

Chapter 4 Getting the Tactics Right the First Time 51

Qualify, Qualify, Qualify 52

Understand Your Foundation of Value 56

Develop Give-Get Options 59

Try Give-Get Bluffs 63

Provide Value-Added Services 64

Use the Concepts of Scarcity and Availability 65

Provide Choices 66

Map the Buying Center 67

Where Appropriate, Build Trust 70

Use the Policy Ploy 72

Delay, Delay, Delay 73

Redefine Risk 75

Dealing with Reverse Auctions 78

Do Your Homework 81

Part II EIGHT KNOCK-’EM-DEAD SCENARIOS FOR WINNING THE GAME 83

Chapter 5 Negotiating with Price Buyers 89

Price Buyers 90

Scenario 1: The Penny Pincher 93

Considerations for How to Price the Deal and the Negotiation for Penny Pinchers 94

Planning the Negotiation for Penny Pinchers 94

Scenario 2: The Scout 99

Assessing the Price Buyer Position and Tactics for Scouts 101

Considerations for How to Price the Deal and the Negotiation for Scouts 101

Planning the Scout Negotiation 101

Chapter 6 Negotiating with Relationship Buyers 105

Relationship Buyers 106

Scenario 3: In the Pack 108

Assessing the Buyer Position and Tactics if You Are in the Pack 109

Considerations for How to Price the Deal and the Negotiation if You Are in the Pack 110

Planning the “in the Pack” Negotiation 110

Scenario 4: The Patient Outsider 112

Assessing the Buyer Position and Tactics for the Patient Outsider 115

Considerations for How to Price the Deal and the Negotiation 116

Planning the Patient Outsider Negotiation 116

Chapter 7 Negotiating with Value Buyers 119

Value Buyers 120

Scenario 5: The Player 122

Assessing the Buyer Position and Tactics of the Value Buyer 123

Considerations for How Price Plays in the Deal and the Negotiation 123

Planning the Player Negotiation 124

Scenario 6: The Crafty Outsider 126

Planning the Crafty Outsider Negotiation 128

Chapter 8 Negotiating with Poker Players 131

Poker Players 132

Scenario 7: The Advantaged Player 135

Assessing Buyer Position and Tactics for the Advantaged Player 138

Considerations for How Price Plays in the Deal and the Negotiation for the Advantaged Player 138

Planning the Advantaged Player Negotiation 138

Scenario 8: The Rabbit 141

Assessing the Buyer Position and Tactics for Rabbits 141

Considerations for How Price Plays in the Deal and the Negotiation 142

Planning the Rabbit Negotiation 142

Advanced Gamesmanship 143

Part III IT’S A NEGOTIATION, NOT A SURRENDER 147

Chapter 9 Beware the Signs of a Losing Game 149

Don’t Kid Yourself 150

Get a Devil’s Advocate 153

Beware Red Flags 154

Customers Have No Experience with You or Your Firm 154

Procurement Runs the Process Tightly 155

The Process Is Controlled at the Manager Level 155

Buyer Has a Well-Established Incumbent 156

Sales Is Unable to Get to the Decision Maker 157

Buyer’s Focus Is Only on Price and Says That All Products Are Commodities 158

Chapter 10 The Realities of the Game 161

Sometimes You Have to Discount 161

Remember a Simple Checklist 164

Develop Your Playbook 165

Don’t Be a Victim 166

Get Some Backbone 167

Index 175

Editorial Reviews

Defeat the “Procurement Buzzsaw”…and get the margins you deserve

“Negotiating with Backbone is part of our culture. We now truly understand the value of our services and know how to turn the negotiations table to our favor, regardless of the type of buyer we are facing. And the icing on the cake is access to Reed for the most difficult negotiations.”

-Rudy Ploder, President, U.S. Information Solutions, Equifax

“Our customer-facing teams can confidently communicate and demonstrate our value to multiple buyer types. The Backbone strategies and tools drive real change in sales execution because they have a true understanding of value to the customer.”

-Lynn Guinn, Global Strategic Pricing Leader, Food Ingredient & Systems, Cargill

“I have been reading Reed’s works for over two decades now. Negotiating with Backbone, 2^nd edition, comes with more fine-tuned insights – engaging, pragmatic, lucid and devoid of management jargon. It will take your thinking forward, help you craft winning pricing strategies, and arm you with negotiation tactics to better suit today’s highly competitive B2B settings. Procurement teams are getting more trained, competition is becoming incredible fierce, while brand and customer loyalty are plummeting. Emerging as well as developed markets are grappling with longer recession cycles that trigger pricing issues and dominate minds of company’s top management.’

-Vishal Kimar, CEO & Entrepreneur, ACMECAST, New Delhi India

“Procurement relief! Salespeople can unlock the mystery of procurement price pressure and bidding wars for less than the price of a dinner. Negotiating with Backbone is the first negotiation book of its kind that doesn’t teach ‘manipulative tricks’–rather it focuses on winning strategies that turn into orders. Buy it, read it, bank it.”

–Jeffrey Gitomer, author, Little Red Book of Selling

The Second Edition is Even Better

· Prepare for the procurement gauntlet

· Counter procurement’s cutting-edge models and analytics

· Use “Give-Gets” to restore the link between price and value

From the Publisher