5 Tips to Becoming a Better Negotiator To Win More Deals

How are your sales negotiation skills? Do you have a structured negotiation process in place that your MSP follows religiously to help you successfully close more deals?

For any sales executive, I don’t think I’m out of line to say that sales negotiations can be a nerve-wrecking experience, as there are so many emotions at play and different paths of execution that can be used. But the end goal is always the same: Get that contract signed as soon as you can.

If you are a regular reader of my blogs, or a regular attendee of my N‑able boot camps or office hours, you know that my journey into sales happened fairly abruptly. One day I was a dedicated Account Manager, taking care of my partners, and a week later I was told my role was changing and I would now have quotas and sales targets that needed to be met each month. I remember telling my manager at the time that I wasn’t a salesperson, and that I had very little experience in sales, and his response back to me was: “Well, you are now, and you better catch up.”

Evolving into a salesperson with quotas and targets was a challenging transition I had to make, as I needed to adjust my mindset to become open to this new reality before me, if I wanted to continue drawing a pay-cheque from N‑able! Fortunately, I am an organized and logical individual that is driven by structure, and I soon discovered that by formulating and implementing a standardized, repeatable sales system for myself, my transition into sales wasn’t as jarring as I thought it would be, as I could rely on my personal sales system to keep me on course.  

So, if there is anyone reading this that is new to the world of sales, I thought I would dedicate this month’s blog to highlight a few sales and negotiation tips that worked well for me as I was developing my sales acumen.

 To learn more, register for my upcoming Boot Camp: Cracking the Code to Successful MSP Sales, Part 3—Overcoming Objections and Winning the Sale on August 27, 2024

• Session 1 08:30-11:00 EDT (14:30-17:00 CEST) Register here
• Session 2 13:00-15:30 EDT (19:00-21:30 CEST) Register here

Top Negotiation Tips to Close More Sales 

Tip #1: Develop a system of sales and a formal negotiation process for your MSP

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to formally document your sales and negotiation processes, and that you establish a systematic approach for moving your qualified leads through your sales funnel. According to a report by sales development specialists Huthwaite International companies with no formal sales and negotiation process in place showed a 63.3% decrease in net income verses companies that prescribe how their employees should handle prospect negotiations. By neglecting to implement a structured negotiation process, companies are leaving money on the table and sacrificing their MSP’s earnings potential because they are giving away concessions much more quickly than they probably need to.  

It can also help identify early on in the sales process, who the necessary stakeholders and influencers are that need to be engaged in the purchasing decision and it can bring clarity as to what the prospect’s overall purchasing process looks like. According to Gartner, the median B2B buying group involves 6-10 different decision makers, so you can imagine that with this many potential stakeholders how the sales process can grind to a slow crawl, without a proper discovery methodology in place. It’s critical to find out up front if your buying group is made up of just one person, a committee, or a Board of Directors. You also need to establish who is actually authorized to sign off on your contract. Because if your initial contact is solely an influencer, then you will need to find out what steps have to happen next before the contract can be signed?

But if you can do this sleuth work well, it will speed up your sales cycle and reduce your average negotiation time, resulting in your ability to sign more deals, more quickly.

TIP #2: Improving Your Closing Rates Starts at the Top

Sales professionals that demonstrate impressive close ratios recognize that successful negotiations start at the very top of the marketing and sales funnel. If you are having difficulties closing deals, then you want to reverse engineer your sales activities to examine the following: 

• What does your target client look like?
• Have you defined your ideal client profile (ICP) or are you chasing any organization that agrees to speak with you? 
• What does your discovery process look like?
• Are you asking the right type of questions at the outset to determine if the prospect is a quality prospect who would be a good fit for your services?  
• Have you uncovered what their most critical business challenges are?
• Businesses will pay for services that will alleviate their pain, but you need to master your discovery process to get them to freely articulate their struggles. So, what does your assessment process look like?
• Do you even conduct pre-sales assessments? The data that you collect during your assessment process is critical in helping you build your case and create a compelling sales proposal that is meant to outline why your MSP is better than the MSP they might be using today.

Although I have this listed as a separate ‘tip’, it really circles back to reinforce what I outlined in TIP #1… it is important to build out what your standardized marketing and sales systems will look like, and what activities are included in each stage. Then ensue you’re continually working to refine those steps with each successful sale or with each loss.

TIP #3: Anticipate the Questions and Objections You Will Hear and Master Your Responses  

Although objections from your prospect can create an uncomfortable situation for you, they shouldn’t be something that is feared. Rather, top salespeople welcome objections from their prospects, and see them as opportunities to educate and continue the conversation. Objection handling is just a normal part of the sales process—you can’t get to the close without first dealing with the prospect’s questions and overcoming their objections. To help with this inevitable component of your sales process, it is best to anticipate the questions you COULD be asked by the prospect during these final negotiations and role play how you will answer and address their concerns.

TIP #4: Park Pricing Negotiations to the End 

Generally, in negotiations, your prospect will likely request a number of concessions from you, with pricing topping their list of asks.

When I used to work in the banking industry, helping clients secure their loans and mortgages, one piece of sales negotiation advice that I vividly remember receiving was to ‘always park the price discussion until the client has confirmed that you are their bank of choice’. Because there is no use even talking about a possible reduction in their mortgage rate until you know that you have beat out the rest of the competition, and you completely understand what their other concerns and requests are. We were taught to ask two questions:

1. “Assuming we can agree on this particular mortgage rate you are asking for, does that mean you have selected our bank to move forward with?”
2. “And if so, what else do we need to talk about and come to an agreement on before you feel comfortable bringing your mortgage over to us?”

Although it has been over 20 years since I was a banker, these two questions continue to be invaluable, especially as you begin your negotiation discussions. Because depending on the answers provided, it will give you a good understanding as to where you stand currently with the prospect, and what work still needs to be done to become their MSP of choice.

And as you begin to compile a list of the prospect’s concessions, don’t be too quick to say YES to each of their asks. For each ask that you agree to be sure to get ‘something’ in return from your prospect. Remember, a successful negotiation should always be a give and take where it benefits both parties. But this involves knowing your boundaries before going into your negotiation session and understanding where you will stop in terms of the concessions you will provide—before it becomes an unfavorable deal for you. You never want to negotiate yourself into a bad deal and defining your limits before starting negotiations will let you know when it might be time to call it and walk away.

TIP #5: Conduct a Win/Loss Analysis After EVERY Sales Outcome  

Despite all of your best efforts, the unfortunate reality is that you won’t win every deal. Even the best salespeople in the world don’t have a 100% close ratio. To increase the odds that next time you will have better success, it is important to implement a Win/Loss Analysis as part of your overall sales process. This involves interviewing your prospect to find out the real reasons why you either won or lost that particular deal.  

The goal is to uncover what aspects of your sales engagement worked well and what aspects didn’t? This is a critical step because the micro-lessons that are revealed during this customer debrief can then be incorporated back into your sales process so that you can continually work to improve it. Almost three quarters (74%) of organizations surveyed in the Pragmatic Institute’s State of Win-Loss Analysis 2023 indicated that they do not perform a formal win-loss analysis, but out of those organizations that do, 68% rate the exercise as a ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important activity in helping to increase sales and drive more revenue. 

With an increasingly crowded market for MSP services, that is progressively becoming more and more competitive, this under-utilized, but highly effective exercise will help to sharpen your axe so you can secure more deals.

If you are struggling at hitting your customer and revenue growth targets for 2024, then conduct an honest assessment as to what your existing sales process looks like currently. If it is unstructured, ad-hoc, and seems to vary based on the customer or who is doing the selling, then consider spending the back half of 2024 developing and refining your ‘sales systems’, and building a repeatable sales negotiation process for your MSP.   

To learn more, register for my upcoming Boot Camp: Cracking the Code to Successful MSP Sales, Part 3—Overcoming Objections and Winning the Sale on August 27, 2024

• Session 1 08:30-11:00 EDT (14:30-17:00 CEST) Register here
• Session 2 13:00-15:30 EDT (19:00-21:30 CEST) Register here

Stefanie Hammond is Head Sales and Marketing Nerd at N‑able. You can follow her on LinkedIn