From the Buyer’s Perspective: Getting the “Best Deal”

January 20, 2012 by Scott Olsen

Have you ever thought you had a agreement, then ran into a negotiating buzz saw? You probably ran into a strategic purchasing professional or someone they trained. In this economy, more and more organizations are engaging strategic purchasing professionals to:

  1. help evaluate and recommend the best products and services to satisfy their needs
  2. ensure their clients pay as little as possible on each purchase
  3. minimize short and long term risks

Just like the sales person has incentives to hit revenue targets, strategic purchasing professionals are likely to have MBOs for cost savings with bonuses tied to them. How do they create these huge cost savings? Initially, by doing extensive research, cost benefit analysis and networking to determine which vendors they should talk with in the first place. Second, by being the best negotiator in the room. When negotiating, they leverage power where ever possible. Here are a few examples of the types of power they leverage:

  • Creativity
  • Vested Interest (the ability to get you to invest in them and their company)
  • Legal
  • Relationship
  • Endurance
  • Expertise

In addition to leveraging power, strategic purchasing professionals may use tactics to test their counterpart’s (the sales person’s) negotiation skills. Negotiation tactics are defined as games or tricks used to expose weaknesses within the sales person and his/her organization. For example, some of the most common tactics include:

  • competition
  • violins
  • intimidating language or tone of voice
  • foggy memory
  • ultimatum
  • inside information

Strategic purchasing professionals always do their homework. As a business to business salesperson you may walk away from the agreement with your commission and then you’re off to the next opportunity. The strategic purchasing professional has to live with your product for years. They never want to make a mistake.

My advise to business to business sales professionals. Take the time to become a skilled negotiator and prepare for each negotiation. The idea that anyone is a “natural negotiator” is a contradiction in terms. The skilled and prepared negotiator gets the best deals on average. Recently, a sales managers told me “I have a really good sales person, unfortunately he’s a poor negotiator. As a result of the discounts his customers get away with, he has to close twice as many deals as his colleagues.”

I recently interviewed a group of strategic purchasing professionals to get their opinion on two topics: what would they list as fatal flaws for a sales person and what’s a compelling approach a sales person can make to be more effective?

Fatal flaws included:

  1. arrogance
  2. poor presentations/demonstrations that aren’t tailored to the audience
  3. poor follow up
  4. trying to go around the strategic purchasing professional

What approach works with strategic purchasing professions? They need to believe, at the very least, they are paying no more than anyone else for your product or service. By letting the purchaser know that you need to be and are fair to the market you are serving by keeping pricing consistent for like products and service offerings you’re likely to have a smoother and productive negotiation.

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