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You’ve heard about negotiation before, perhaps you agree that it’s needed. But how will a negotiation process that’s specific to sales enhance your strategy and help you win deals?

If there’s one thing everybody knows about sales, it’s that serious negotiation starts when you and your customer or prospect sit down together to close a deal. Right? When people hear the word ‘negotiation,’ they think, “Oh, that happens at the end of the sales process”. The best salespeople start thinking about negotiation much earlier — sometimes even before they’ve made the first contact.

Salespeople often complain about their targets so first let’s start with stating some realities.

1. Sales targets should never be easy to achieve but should always be achievable.

2. Sales targets don’t take account of unforeseen events such as sick days etc

3. Sales targets are hit as a result of good planning and doing the correct activities at the right time.

4. Not planning for how you intend to hit your target is planning not to hit target.

So how do you plan to hit your target?

Lets take an example

Mark McCormack is CEO of International Management Group, (IMG) the largest sports marketing and sports agency in the world. He invented the industry. If you saw Jerry MacGuire, McCormack’s firm is like the big agency Tom Cruise was fired from.

Anyway, Mr. McCormack, author of the book “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School,” among others, also writes a syndicated newspaper column called “Success Secrets” In one of his columns, McCormack talks about the use of the phone as a sales tool.

Commission structures are perhaps the best way to motivate employees to sell; they are direct rewards for salespeople. But with so many varied commission structures out there, the big question for retailers remains: What percentage of pay should be commission-based and what percentage should be salary-based?

All too often, commission structures in cellular retail aren’t well conceived. Some retailers use fixed-rate commissions whereby a salesperson receives, for example, $10 each time he/she sells a particular handset. This doesn’t work.

Have you noticed that the old “tried and true” cold calling techniques which were once successful have completely lost their effectiveness over the years? They just don’t work anymore.

But many salespeople are still use them because that’s all they know. They’re working from that old, ineffective cold calling mindset. And they’re making the same mistakes over and over again.

I’d like to talk about 4 classic cold calling mistakes from the old traditional approach that will put you on the wrong path if you’re not careful.

There is no one-thing that makes a sales leader great. But, there is definitely one thing that can make them poor - an inability to coach and develop their employees.

Tell a salesperson to go sell and he will struggle for a day, teach him how to sell and he will sell for life. Ok, so that is not exactly how the quote goes, but you get my point.

At one time sales management started and finished with “this is your desk, this is your phone, this is the yellow pages, go get ‘em”. This may have worked many years ago, but today customers are more sophisticated, markets are more competitive and expectations for ramping-up are shorter.

Most salespeople are strong conversationalists when sitting down and talking with customers. When asked to deliver a presentation standing up, the dynamics can change dramatically for you if you’re not prepared. You can easily make every stand-up presentation a conversation with your audience, regardless of size. Here’s how.

The two most memorable parts of a stand-up presentation are the beginning and the end. The four easiest and most powerful ways to begin and end your presentations include:

1. Start with an exciting quotation that you can link to your presentation.

Mike came to my office one day looking very discouraged. He had been selling for about two months. He was doing significantly above average so his discouraged look surprised me.

I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I don’t understand it. With my last prospect I thought I did a perfect selling job. The greeting went very well. My fact finding told me all the important things he wanted. His response to my product presentation seemed ideal. I over came his objections very effectively. But when it came to getting a commitment from him to buy - nothing I did was successful.”

One word enters the mind of a receptionist (Other commonly used names include assistants, gatekeepers and screeners.) when they ask you their most famous question: “What Is This Call Regarding?” What is this word? The word is telemarketer.

While many of us may identify with this word as a means to making an honest living, others, however, associate this word with negative meanings such as “It’s just another person trying to sell something” or “Here’s another person wasting my time!” Why are these receptionists thinking like this and what can we do about it? Would you like to hear the good or bad news first?

In 2000 a computer distributor hired me to help them build a software specialist sales team. The distributor had more than 100 “generalist” salespeople, but these salespeople were doing a poor job of selling software. The distributor’s management felt a team of specialists could help jump-start growth in software sales.

This was a very interesting project for several reasons. First, the distributor had sixteen software products in its portfolio. Second, they couldn’t afford to hire experienced software salespeople. Instead, we needed to hire good consultative salespeople and train them to sell all sixteen software products. We also needed to write a business plan, get a budget approved, hire six salespeople, train them to sell sixteen software products, and have them working in the field. within 90 days .