A lot of things may have changed about sales and managing a sales team in the 21st century. But there’s one thing that definitely hasn’t changed: negotiation skills are so crucial for your sales people because 70% of purchase decisions are now made well before any contact with a salesperson is made.
People are doing their research online, asking friends and family on social media about your products and services, and looking up everything from blogs to video content and forming their own opinions. This hasn’t made sales tactics obsolete. But it’s definitely given sales people new and evolved roles when it comes to outreach and closing that sale. While the digital age has opened up unprecedented possibilities for sales, it’s also made both B2C and B2B prospects really dislike the feeling that they’re being sold to. Sales people are held to a higher standard now.
When deciding how to invest in your sales force, negotiation skills training should be your top priority. Because in a world where prospects have grown more discerning and do their homework before speaking to a sales person, it’s more crucial than ever that your sales people know how to negotiate. Having a deeper knowledge of your organization and what it offers isn’t enough anymore! Given how well-informed prospects are, they’re going to eat your sales team alive if they meet with them or talk just to wind up being poor negotiators walking away empty-handed.
Negotiation skills are more than preparedness and being able to read visual and audio cues like body language and tone of voice. How are both parties going to approach a mutually beneficial deal? Why should they choose you over the competition? When you invest in your sales team’s negotiation skills, you’ll make them capable of confidently closing sales to highly-informed prospects and even brokering major deals well beyond what you thought they were capable of.
