The dan­ger on this step is that with some business’s pur­chas­ing process, at the nego­ti­at­ing stage you may be fac­ing an entirely new cast of play­ers. You’ve con­vinced the peo­ple on the shop floor that you have a solu­tion, they’ve rec­om­mended your solu­tion up the chain, you’ve got a cham­pion pro­mot­ing your solu­tion within their com­pany and sud­denly a few bean coun­ters you haven’t even met enter the pic­ture. Their mis­sion is to make sure their com­pany gets the best deal pos­si­ble, period. They are not impressed by your glossy brochures.

On the vendor’s side, depend­ing on how com­plex the sale is and what’s at stake, the sales team may also intro­duce new play­ers like a national sales man­ager or some­one with the author­ity to cut the deal as it approaches the final step.

With the intro­duc­tion of new play­ers on either side, there comes a pos­si­bil­ity that some­one will “drop the baton” and some or all of the work that has been done to get the sale to this step is undone.

If you find your­self being played off a com­peti­tor at this stage, you will need to ask some very good ques­tions to deter­mine exactly who will make the final deci­sion and what is impor­tant to them, if you don’t already know. If you are hit­ting up against objec­tions, that’s not a bad thing, but don’t fall for try­ing to answer every objec­tion at face value. Often the first, sec­ond or third objec­tion is not the real issue. I know this from many expe­ri­ences I have had.

My ear­li­est intro­duc­tion to the rough and tum­ble world of con­vinc­ing some­one that I was sell­ing what they needed was a sum­mer job in col­lege – sell­ing vac­uum clean­ers. We had a boiler room where ‘the girls’ cold-called peo­ple and offered them some token gift in exchange for set­ting up an appoint­ment for a sales­per­son to come call­ing. They got paid for every suc­cess­ful appoint­ment (demo com­pleted) they made, and the sales peo­ple were on com­mis­sion for every vac­uum cleaner (“home san­i­ta­tion sys­tem” as the com­pany called them) they sold.

I quickly learned two things in my first week: if the prospect was not rais­ing any objec­tions dur­ing my sales pre­sen­ta­tion, I was wast­ing my time because they would not buy. Objec­tions show that they have some inter­est in what you are pre­sent­ing. No objec­tions = no real interest.

The sec­ond les­son I learned was that those first few objec­tions were not the real issue hold­ing them back from mak­ing a deci­sion in my favour. I later found this to be true in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent career, when I was medi­at­ing con­flicts between stu­dents, instruc­tors, staff and/or par­ents. You have to ask the right ques­tions and hear what’s behind the answers to really get at the issue that’s block­ing progress. The real nego­ti­a­tions only begin when you arrive at the real issue.

After the buyer moves from Nego­ti­ate to Buy, there’s still more work to do, and I’ll talk about that next time.


Biography / Resume : Karl joined Mediative’s service delivery team in 2008. A year later, he moved to the company’s research department where he conducted online surveys, eye-tracking studies, one-on-one interviews and usability testing. Most recently, he transitioned to the marketing department. Before Mediative, Karl worked in sales and marketing. In 1997, he caught the digital bug and became the original “webmaster” for Roland Canada Music. Around the same time, he began teaching the relatively new topic of Internet marketing to college and university students. Karl’s insatiable curiosity and drive to get to the core and substance of every situation has served him well in his various roles at Mediative.