Procurement negotiations can be some of the biggest challenges a sales team can face. In most of these negotiations, the seller holds the most leverage; sellers generally have deeper industry knowledge, more connections, and overall better bargaining positions than those attempting to secure their wares for the best possible prices.
If your sales team seems to be fluent in customer-facing sales but tends to balk when it comes to procurement negotiation, training them to overcome these interactions can enhance their overall negotiation skills and make them stronger assets to your organization. Contract negotiation training can also help your sales team negotiate better internally when they need to convince stakeholders of a proposition’s value before acting.
Procurement negotiation training from Shapiro Negotiations helps sales professionals understand their available maneuvers in procurement negotiations. Instead of leaving your sales team to the mercy of their own wits in these discussions, you can help them identify their weaknesses and learn to turn contract negotiations with suppliers and vendors to the advantage of your organization. If you notice any of the following issues with your sales team, it’s time to consider contract negotiation training to help them improve their outcomes.
1. Your Team Always Seems to Feel Rushed
Sales professionals may tend to get ahead of themselves, so focused on reaching a favorable result with their negotiations that they rush and make mistakes. A solid procurement negotiation training program can help them slow down and consider the active variables in a negotiation more carefully. Learning to slow down is a more critical skill than many sales team leaders realize.
When sales teams rush through procurement negotiations, they fail to account for the variable in play and the seller’s motivations. When it comes to negotiations with stakeholders, rushing leads to miscommunications, misinterpretations, and assumptions that can inevitably strain the cohesion within the organization. If you think your team needs to learn how and when to pump the brakes, contract negotiation training is probably a great solution.
2. Your Team Needs to Polish Their Communication Skills
Speaking is only one facet of communication. Body language, intonation, and many other factors play into how others perceive one’s negotiation position. Part of being a successful negotiator is learning how to differentiate between the other side’s competitive and collaborative potential. When it comes to contract negotiation, training your team to negotiate more effectively means helping them refine their communication skills. Your team can learn to read the other party, adapting their responses more skillfully, and reaching more positive outcomes more easily in their procurement negotiations.
3. Your Team Needs to Be More Flexible
It’s common for sales professionals to situate themselves within comfortable niches. A sales representative may find success with one aspect of sales and struggle with others, ultimately preferring to stick with what he or she knows best and feels most comfortable handling. Sales is a dynamic field, and change is virtually constant. Complacency has no place on a successful sales team, and procurement negotiation training can help your sales team members break out of their comfort zones with confidence. Even if you have sales team members who dread the thought of contract negotiations with internal stakeholders and sellers alike, they can learn new skills that make them more confident in handling a greater variety of sales challenges.
4. Your Team Struggles With Preparation
Contract negotiation can be some of the most difficult negotiations your team faces, whether it’s convincing stakeholders to offer their support for a proposed contract or extracting the best possible deal out of a seller. Preparation is key for any successful negotiation, so procurement negotiation training can be a tremendous asset if your team members need to learn how to properly arm themselves with information prior to engaging in negotiations.
Research is critical to successful negotiation. With contract negotiation training from Shapiro Negotiations, your sales team will learn how to thoroughly research their value propositions and present them more effectively to internal stakeholders for approval. They’ll also learn how to thoroughly investigate sellers and figure out ways to neutralize many of their inherent bargaining advantages.
5. Your Sales Reps Overthink Power Dynamics
There’s no denying that closing a sale with a great deal for your organization is a great feeling, but for many individuals, the draw of the sales field is the desire to win. While competition can be healthy and often a great motivator for salespeople in various markets, the desire to “win” a negotiation can easily lead to a breakdown of communication and a failed sale. Procurement negotiation training from Shapiro Negotiations hinges on the concept of principled negotiation. Rather than remaining focused on winning, your team members can learn how to strive for “win-win” scenarios, explaining to their opposition how their terms are beneficial to both parties.
6. Your Team Tends to Use Short-Term Tactics With Long-Term Contract Negotiations
Sticking with a formula can sometimes prove successful in sales negotiations, but contract negotiation training will teach your sales team how to adapt their strategies for different types of interactions. If you notice that your sales team seems too focused on the present without considering the future, procurement negotiation training can help them develop a more forward-thinking approach to their negotiations.
Learning how to negotiate effectively is not learning a series of steps to be completed to succeed with a negotiation. Effective negotiation hinges on the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, evaluate the opposition and their values and goals, and respond accordingly to sudden unexpected changes. Procurement negotiation training can help a sales team meet challenging negotiation scenarios more skillfully and help members refine their strategies for many other types of negotiations. Contract negotiation can be some of the most challenging scenarios your team encounters, but they are incredible opportunities for not only moving your business forward but also as learning experiences for your team.
Contract negotiation training from Shapiro Negotiations helps your team identify the bad habits they’ve developed and replace them with more agile, more adaptable, and ultimately more effective negotiation strategies. Contact Shapiro Negotiations today to learn more about our procurement negotiation training program and how it can benefit your sales team.
