Psychologists Sydney Siegel and Lawrence Fouraker conducted a now famous negotiation experiment: They promised ‘test negotiators’ a bonus round where everyone could double their profit. But only those negotiators above a certain profit level would be allowed to participate in this bonus negotiation round. One group was told that the minimum profit was $ 6.10, the other that it was $ 2.10. So now everyone had a concrete target in mind. Lo and behold, those in the $ 6.10 group achieved an average profit of $ 6.25. Those in the 2.10 dollar group, on the other hand, achieved $ 3.35.
The importance for the sales negotiation
The clear result: The more optimistic your goals arethe better your negotiation result will be. Because with a specific negotiation goal in mind, you are now more likely to see facts that support your goals and you have a completely different Expectation. Low negotiation targets prevent fears of failure, but lead to clearly lead to worse results. “Let’s see how it goes” is the motto of beginners heading into a sales negotiation.
The main mistake: focus on the minimum
Imagine you are in a Sales Negotiation for your old cell phone and tell yourself that you are at least € 100 want to have. Now someone offers you € 95 — what happens? You are now immediately relatively relaxed, because you are very close to the number in your head. But what does your negotiating partner do? He notices it — consciously or unconsciously — and will now hardly go up. It would be completely different, however, if you had prepared in advance a Target from € 150 set. At your counterpart’s first offer, you would flinch and move on.
Most people focus on their minimum in sales negotiations with the result that they almost always get a price that is very close to it.
What to do in the sales negotiation?
Studies have shown that it is important for the Negotiation success harmful to focus on the minimum, because then the minimum becomes the guideline. With a perfect sales negotiation but instead, always direct your focus to your maximum.
Set the highest possible targetthat still has to be justified in some way. Of course, the following applies: A goal should ambitious but still realistic be: Your Ford Fiesta is not worth as much as a Ferrari but just as much as the most expensive Fiesta you can find! When you focus on this desired goal, we perceive everything else as a loss and are highly motivated.
Sales negotiations in organizations
It is not at all easy to be clear about your goal, especially when you are operating within an organization. Whether it is Goals for a sales negotiation or very general goals: a young manager had her first day in a large company and was supposed to work on the Corporate strategy work. To do this, in your first meeting, she asked the twelve other leaders to share their respective Goal for the company to note down. Everyone was visibly annoyed why this newcomer was wasting their time with something so obvious. Shortly afterwards, everyone was all the more amazed: it wasn’t a few different goals that emerged — rather, every single manager had a completely different one. If you are negotiating in a team, it is therefore even more important to formulate a crystal-clear goal — especially in a sales negotiation where a number is at stake!
At NASHER Seminar learn how to use the respective right target find it with ‘objective criteria’ justify this goal for the psychological technique of ‘anchoring’ to use with each Sales negotiation with the maximum to go out! Sign up now.
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