Executives are a tough sell and it takes the right sales skills to match them.  One of the toughest skills for me has always been the money topic.  I personally like to buy not negotiate and it shows in my sales role.  But there are ways to handle the negotiation as you will learn in this ManageSmarter.com article – Back to Basics: Think Before You Offer Discounts.

The pull quote (emphasis mine):

However, professional buyers and key decision-makers know that many sellers will drop their price at the first sign of resistance, so they ask everyone for a discount and can be aggressive in their approach. Plus, experienced negotiators lose respect for people who drop their price too quickly. Standing your ground and refusing to cave in right away is also a show of strength and executives respect this type of behaviour.

He is absolutely correct.  Negotiating with a tough executive often turns into a game of chicken…who will blink first.  This approach still allows for some concession if needed, but I have found that most of the time the executive is just fishing to see if there is any flexibility.  When they discover there isn’t, they will usually still move forward.  Some may provide a slightly disgruntled commentary (“It is more than we wanted to pay, but I guess we will still give it a try.”).  My thought is that this move is simply a set up to use in a future negotiation.

The key to any price discussion is to have already established your value.  If you have done your qualifying and established your unique value/solution, you will have the stronger hand in the negotiation.  If you have left critical pieces of information undefined (budget, decision process, need/pain, etc.), you are in for a battle that may ultimately end in a concession, that is, a concession that negatively affects your wallet.

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Peter Drucker is always an interesting read and clearly was way before his time.  BusinessWeek.com provides an article titled Drucker’s Take on Making Mistakes.  The article is filled with many great points so it is difficult to highlight just a handful.  Here is the gist of the article (emphasis mine):

A batting-average mentality, he added, allows for companies to accommodate different kinds of talent. “One man will consistently do well, rarely falling far below a respectable standard, but also rarely excel through brilliance or virtuosity,” Drucker wrote. “Another man will perform only adequately under normal circumstances but will rise to the demands of a crisis or a major challenge and then perform like a true ‘star.’ Both are ‘performers.’ Both need to be recognized. But their performances will look quite different.

“The one man to distrust, however, is the one who never makes a mistake,” Drucker continued, “never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. He is either a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.”

And then there is this one:

“Nobody learns except by making mistakes,” Drucker wrote in his 1954 landmark book, The Practice of Management. “The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make—for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top-level job who has not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise, he is sure to be mediocre. Worse still, not having made mistakes he will not have learned how to spot them early and how to correct them.”

Spot them early, a great point wouldn’t you say?  Read the entire article.

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BusinessWeek.com has an article titled Today’s Top 10 Talent-Management Challenges that provides some interesting tidbits from 3 different talent managers.  One topic leaped off the screen:

6. Stemming the exodus of Gen X’ers from corporate life. A big threat in many firms today is the exodus of mid-career talent—people in whom the organization has invested heavily and in whom it has pinned it hopes for future leadership. For example, developing talent management practices and programs calibrated to leverage technology and create greater work/life balance has been a priority for Mercer over recent years.

The sheer smallness of my generation creates pockets of problems with the marketplace.  This particular problem is one with which I was not familiar.  However, I can attest to the fact that work/life balance is greatly valued among my Gen X friends.  This value has led many of them to pass on management positions in favor of continuing to excel in their current positions.

Now combine the aforementioned quote with this excerpt (my emphasis):

3. Developing a robust leadership pipeline. I believe one of the biggest potential threats to many corporations is a lack of a robust talent pool from which to select future leaders. This is in part a numbers issue—the Gen X cohort is small and therefore, as I like to say, precious. But it’s also an interest issue—many members of Gen X are simply not particularly excited about being considered for these roles. There was wide agreement among the panelists that a lack of individuals ready to move into senior client manager and leadership roles is a critical challenge.

Therein lies the challenge – how to develop leaders from a small (relatively speaking) group.  One possibility is that Gen Y will leapfrog Gen X and take those leadership positions at a young age.  I know this possibility does not sit well with me, but there may be no other solution.

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Another odd line from a sales ad:

make direct fact-to-face sales calls

I did a double-take on that one, “fact-to-face”…is that some new business lingo with which I am not familiar?  I think it is a typing error, but even if it isn’t, ads are better served with common language (i.e. no buzzwords/phrases).

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