When it comes to sales messaging, the power of asking the right questions is your strongest asset. And while matching the sales messaging of your buyer and asking the right questions can be tough, you can always uncover your prospects’ pain points and objectives with the right discovery strategy.
When you close a sale, it’s the most gratifying moment in the process for any salesperson. The Sales Development Rep feels great knowing that the prospect they pre-qualified was a quality lead, and the Account Executive finally follows through on a successful appointment. But to get to that point, you have to make sure you have a sales operation process that works.
Today on SDR TV, we have Salesloft Account Executive Milena Flament to talk you through her best sales messaging practices when negotiating to close a deal. Check out the video below to learn more:
Video Transcript on Milena’s Best Sales Messaging Practices:
Hey guys, Milena here at Salesloft. I’m here to talk to you guys today about best practices when negotiating to close a deal and I’m going to share with you three tips about negotiating that I like to compare to a game of cards.
For the first tip, what I like to do is really understand the rules of the game. What is even possible in this negotiation? So, as salespeople, what we really like to do is close a deal as soon as possible. We like to win, and we like to win fast.
However, that’s not really possible in certain context. For example, when you’re talking to mid-market companies or even enterprise companies, once they’ve made the decision to go forward with your solution, that’s probably not the end of the game. You have to go through other hoops. For example: procurement or legal review.
For my second tip, what I like to understand also is what cards are valuable in this particular game or in this particular negotiation’s context?
For example, if you’re talking to a startup where cash flow can be king and/or flexibility can also be super important for them, the ability for them to commit to shorter terms or to pay monthly or quarterly can be extremely valuable to them.
So in that context, you know that that card is very valuable. However, when you’re talking to a bigger company, a multi-national corporation, for example, the ability to pay quarterly or have a shorter term, might not resonate with them very well because they’re used to committing to annual terms or even two year terms. So, with them, you know that that card, you can probably just throw it away because that’s not going to move the needle forward either way.
For tip number three, I’m just going to say do not show your best cards too early. This can happen when we don’t understand the buying process thoroughly so we assume that talking to the VP or the decision maker is the last stage and we’ve shown all of our cards to this one person.
But then we get blindsided when procurement calls us asking for a bigger discount or better terms, we have no other cards to give. So make sure that when you’re negotiating, before you even get to the negotiations table, understand exactly how the buying process works for your prospect.
So as we wrap up today’s video, I hope that these tips are useful when negotiating with your potential client so you can get to yes as soon as possible and as successfully as possible. If you guys need any help whatsoever, please feel free to reach out to us and thank you so much for watching today.
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