Negotiation Isn't About Price

When I started in sales, I thought negotiation was about price.

You sit at a table, you go high, they go low. And somehow through it all - you all come up with a number and then sign the paperwork. That’s the version we’ve seen at the movies and have heard of when we talk to someone that works in this space. At the enterprise level - it’s almost the total opposite.

I spent a year on a single deal with a global resources company. We’d agreed on the commercials early on. What the rest of the year looked like to close the deal I classified as ‘admin’.

The architectural review board had engineers and solution architects asking how they could ensure that the solution worked elegantly within the existing IT landscape. The infosec team spent time defining how people data should be handled from privacy standards in Australia to GDPR in far corners of Europe. The partners needed to know how they’d implement the solution to solve current and future state requirements.

All different parts of the business that had multiple ways to kill the deal. Not a single discussion about money came up. I received the signed order on a mid-six-figure contract.

Signing is the end of the deal. The year is where you win it.