“Mr. Schmooze” (Cody Lowry) is back to explain what Schmooze is and why you need it in sales, procurement, and negotiations. It comes down to three simple factors that make you indispensable to the people you serve. 1 – Build relationships. 2 – Be trustworthy. 3 – Never let them down. Listen to this Flashback episode to find out how Cody develops relationships with clients that last 30+ years, when the average is five.
Becoming effective as a negotiator is simply a process of developing skills. But that doesn’t mean it’s a simple process. It requires dedication and diligence to maximize your ability to achieve your desired outcomes in your negotiations. This is a skill set that can and should be developed by every salesperson, procurement professional, and of course, negotiator. It consists of many things, tools if you will, that must become second nature to you so that they are available at a moment’s notice. Negotiation and sales trainer Julia Ewert calls this skills development “negotiation muscle memory” and believes that the more you can develop it, the more proficient and successful you’ll become. We also address the power of open questions, how to defuse tension using negotiation skills, and how negotiation skills can help businesses convert more sales. Enjoy! Don’t miss this fascinating conversation.
Negotiations are fluid interactions and often regarding high-stakes issues. As a negotiator, you want to bring your “A” game every time. You can’t expect sloppy preparation or skills you learned once upon a time to serve you well. You’re taking a huge gamble on an important interaction if you do. It deserves more attention than that.
You’ve got to become a student of negotiation so that you can learn and hone proven negotiation skills through application. As you put in the work, your skills become more natural, automated over time, and you find that you’ve developed the “muscle memory” Julia refers to in this conversation. But beware, once you’ve mastered the skills, you’ll need to apply ongoing practice and diligent attention to keep your negotiation muscle memory active and available.
One of the most practical areas to begin your focus on developing negotiating muscle memory is in the type of questions you ask. Most people ask closed questions (questions that can be answered with “yes” or “no”) simply because they are easy to come up with. But they aren’t worth much when it comes to eliciting much-needed information. This form of question also tends to shut down a conversation instead of opening it up. In a negotiation, you want to get the parties across the table talking, sharing, revealing their reasons for entering into the negotiation in the first place and what they really want out of it. You do this by asking open-ended questions. Julia says it’s not hard to learn the skill but it’s terribly hard to make it a muscle memory-type habit. But it’s essential that you do if you want to be successful as a negotiator.
Emotion is present in every negotiation, but often it’s under the surface. It becomes more evident when the stakes in a negotiation rise or disagreement become apparent. In those moments, it’s easy to fall into a default response or reaction rather than leaning on the negotiation skills you’ve practiced. This is why the muscle memory Julia mentions is so important. When the heat is on, you must know how to diffuse the situation, move the conversation forward, and do so without hesitation and with skill.
What do you do when a negotiation becomes heated, tense, or touchy? Julia says that negotiation done right sets the stage for people to tell the truth. Believe it or not, drawing attention to the existence of the emotion in the room can often elevate the conversation. That’s because everyone feels the emotion in the room, and the person who calls it what it is in a non-accusatory and honest way opens the door for everyone to be more honest. Again, your “muscle memory” comes into play in similar situations. Negotiations tools you should pull from your arsenal in a case like this are:
There is a lot more to learn from Julia so be sure you take the time to listen. You’ll gain more insight into how you can develop the muscle memory needed to be effective in negotiations.
Influence can seem like a mysterious thing until you have someone who understands it explain it to you in easy-to-understand terms. That’s what Phil Jones does in his book, Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact. Consider it to be a “how-to” manual for influence. The good news is that Phil unpacks that goodness for you on this “throwback” episode from our Negotiations Ninja archives. Listen. Get Phil’s book. Carry it with you on your sales calls or keep it at your desk for those virtual meetings. It’s a powerful tool for your arsenal.
Selling has changed over the last few years. No longer can we depend on the face to face opportunities to build rapport and gain trust. Virtual is the new thing and we have to adapt if we are going to survive as sales professionals. My guest on this episode is Steve Brossman, a former National Professional Track Champion, so he knows what it takes to compete and win and he applies that experience and knowledge to his role as a leading Sales Coach.
This conversation is aimed at helping you take your sales game virtual with effectiveness. There is an art to it as well as a science and Steve unpacks both. He shares how to increase buying energy before a sales call and the DNQC conversation flow, which Steve explains during our conversation.
For the last 10 years, Steve has been working with people to develop their authority positioning and personal branding. But he’s been told that his training is the best “sales training” they’ve ever seen. That took Steve by surprise because he didn’t see himself as a sales trainer. What those people are talking about is his focus on developing “buying energy,” an intangible sense of value that you communicate to prospects or those you’re connecting with, from the moment they lay eyes on you. This is especially helpful in a virtual context because the in-person dynamic that provides space for “energy” in the room is not possible. Said another way, Steve is talking about unique positioning, of yourself, within your industry or profession. You need to be seen as a leader or authority people not only trust, but are excited to work with. Steve wants every sales professional to ask themselves, “How can you start the conversation in a way that makes you out to be the leader and authority in your sphere?”
Selling virtually has its challenges, one of the biggest being that people who are a part of your digital sales calls are typically much less engaged than they would be if they were present in the room with you. The latest statistics show that 83% of people on virtual calls are multi-tasking. Steve points out that if you are presenting “at” them (using slides, video, etc.) then they will multitask. But if you can engage them in the process through collaboration, you’ll keep them focused and attentive.
Focusing his entire call around a “blueprint” system he’s developed, Steve does this in a number of ways, including asking questions about their scenario and then getting them to connect the dots of your solution with their problem. As the conversation progresses, Steve annotates their responses on-screen. He says this is crucial, the movement on the screen keeps them focused, but more importantly, it makes each call an individual experience, customized for them. Add to that the fact that they are involved in the process and you’ve got them invested in the sales call.
Steve’s sales approach is not anecdotal or rooted in so-called best practices, he’s done research into the cognitive and brain-science data to ensure that what he’s doing is going to be effective. From that study he’s developed his DNQC conversation sequencing method that takes him through every sales call. Here are the basics, which Steve describes in more detail during our conversation…
D – Data/Demonstrate: Give the information needed to address the prospect’s needs
N – Narrative: Connect the prospect’s needs with a story, case study, or client success)
Q – Quantify: Guide the prospect to discover the value of your system in their scenario
C – Confirm: Through properly phrased questions, you confirm that your solution provides the right value and to close the sale, you confirm the priority of your solution based on the impact the prospect has revealed your system will have.
This brief overview doesn’t do the approach justice. Listen to hear Steve outline how and why the approach works.
Jeanette Nyden is back to talk about indemnities. She is an attorney and has spent 15 years practicing law — which is why she can talk at a high level about what indemnities are and how they apply to the world of contract professionals. She’s spent 18 years teaching people how to negotiate complex contracts. It’s where her passion for making boilerplate language accessible for the contract professional has come from. She wants contract professionals to understand what lawyers are trying to do so they can help internal stakeholders understand the risk profile and create effective indemnity clauses.
NOTE: This is NOT legal advice. For adequate legal advice, please seek out adequate legal counsel — inside or outside your organization.
We are looking at business-to-business indemnification. When we’re talking about indemnity, you see three words/phrases: indemnify, hold harmless, and defend. Those are three important words with slightly different meanings.
Companies have indemnity clauses because people can screw up in really big ways. Jeanette was talking with Lawrence Kane — the co-author of one of her books — giggling at the expense of someone who used their password to get into a company portal somewhere offsite. That password was stolen through a data breach.
Through the breach, the password was used to access the customer’s portal and the hacker did some damage. When you go back and try to find who to blame, indemnification clauses, holding harmless, and defending come into play. It doesn’t always have to be malicious but there are criminal organizations who conspire to hack into companies and hold data for ransom. For this reason, parties in a transaction have to be able to protect one another. These claims initiate a court action for your defense. It’s why companies fight so hard over indemnity boilerplates.
We all get what it might mean to do injury to property or injury to a person. But what about “other interests?” Depending on the situation and the contracts involved, this could mean that rights could extend to any third party that could be working with ABC company or on ABC property. Injury to property or other interests could include a data breach. So you have to understand the risk profile. The legal team understands what this means but it’s all based on the risk profile.
What’s a risk profile? It’s an assessment, based on the facts of the relationship and contract, of where liability could exist. For example, if you, as a contractor, are never on-site with the people you work with and you do everything virtually, it may not make sense to indemnify for injury or death to a person. Therefore, that may not be part of the risk profile. Most companies have insurance to cover all sorts of things like this.
A risk profile is again, the assessment of risk in a given relationship or situation. A legal team is the best bet for creating a helpful and effective risk profile. They are going to look at the contract, work to understand who is doing what for whom, and under what terms, and then make sure the agreement covers the risks that could realistically be faced in that scenario.
If an agreement in question is in any way different from what your organization usually enters into, those differences have to be communicated to the legal department. You don’t just send over the clauses marked up. The reason you must send it to your legal department is that you want to ensure that the changes or differences reflected in the new agreement are analyzed in light of potential risks. Your role as a contract professional is to clearly explain to the legal team what the working relationship, the scope of work, resources and methods used, etc. will be like in the engagement. From this, the legal team can identify the potential risks involved and come up with the risk profile.
Risk profiles can be pretty expansive and should always be tied to the limitation of liability and to the insurance profile — what coverage do you have, what are my per-occurrence and aggregate amounts? If you have too little coverage then there is greater exposure to risk.
Your role in a situation like this is to ensure that your legal team has everything they need to understand the job, the risks involved, and how they can mitigate risk in the scenario.
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