my review here Selling or Negotiating - What's the Difference?
In my speaking and training activities, I'm often confronted with the inquire 'what is the contrast in the middle of selling and negotiating?' Well, negotiating covers an very wide field from the relative pettiness of bargaining the price on a trinket at the local jumble sale to the seriousness of negotiating a hostage release, so I guess there is no easy response. However, the inquire did get the great of me, so confining my efforts to the commercial negotiating environment, I set out in hunt of a uncostly acknowledge to merge in my training papers. I very speedily learned that it is as much a inquire of mindset as anyone else, and in the face of some fairly indignant attitudes, soon found myself becoming quite righteous about defending the selling role, as you will see from my notes...
Selling or Negotiating - What's the Difference?
Many company professionals seem reluctant to be categorized 'merely' as salespeople, believing that the highly-prized knowledge complicated in their negotiating role sets them apart. This is true, it does. However, either we are negotiating a multi-million dollar international covenant or the price of new office chair, it is our potential to punctuate that specialist knowledge with sophisticated selling skills that will be the true quantum of our negotiating success. So with no intention to under-classify or over-simplify, I found myself occasionally interposing the terms 'selling' and 'negotiating', particularly when we are considering the personal attributes involved, and the impact they will have on our career. Put simply, to be a successful negotiator, we must, above all, be a competent salesperson.
Even so, the concept of tarring negotiating and selling with the same brush does have its detractors. Despite the fact that selling has come a long way since the bad old high pressure days of the seventies and eighties, some of the scorn seems to linger. In some quarters, the prestige may have been deserved, but has moderately been overcome by the contemporary ethical coming to consultative selling, categorically at the pro level. Maybe this misplaced pride needs to be put into perspective. Here we go!
Many industry observers talk about charisma, charm, magnetism and any number of other seemingly mystical gifts in a way that intimates that if we haven't been blessed with them genetically, we have miniature hope of succeeding at the sales desk or the negotiating table. To some extent, this is so. Some are born with an intuitive advantage, and 'turning on the charm' categorically comes a miniature more naturally to them. However, experience has shown us that, with or without these inherited virtues, selling and negotiating skills can be taught. There is a mean starting point though, and we need to acknowledge it: If you are not naturally comfortable around people, or naturally don't enjoy meeting and mixing with strangers, then a dedicated occupation in the buying and selling arena may not be for you!
Many technically-trained people do successfully enter trade sales in sales engineer roles; many shy and introverted academics do move into company sales and enjoy great success selling into commercial and government environments. It's all a matter of degrees, but it is more usual to find them on the other side, where their less flamboyant coming often sees them in key purchasing roles, and as team players in major contractual negotiations. either way, they are no less exposed to the negotiation role than their dedicated sales and merchandising colleagues.
Some of the more adventurous of these might investment into retail sales, although it is ordinarily the more naturally extroverted and tolerant among us who happily settle for that absorbing and invigorating experience of dealing with the normal public, hour after hour, day after day. Disappointingly, on the other side of the coin, many don't want to, because it's a sad reality that jobs in the retail and services industries, particularly the hospitality sector, are often regarded as a stop-gap - a means of paying the bills on the way to a real career.
Just as well nobody took the time to by comparison that to occupation retailers, the likes of Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart in the Us, who started in retail as a supervision trainee with J C Penney, or even Australia's Gerry Harvey, of Norman Ross and Harvey Norman fame, who started his working life selling vacuum cleaners. I have to say, that dealing with him and his team over the years, I have learned more about the buying and re-selling aspects of large-scale retailing from Gerry Harvey than anyone else. If this is his stop-gap, it's hard to imagine what his real job is going to be! When he travels overseas, you can be sure that in the space for 'occupation' on his departure card, Gerry still proudly writes 'salesman', just as he always has.
To come to be a top performer in the field of selling requires a composition of compassion, tenacity, and commitment that ranks right up there with the most noble of professions. Selling is at the pinnacle of effective communication skills, and is the private to success at all levels of business, even in positions not specifically regarded as selling roles. Remarkably, many people complicated in back office merchandising, even frontline buyer service roles, don't regard themselves as salespeople, sadly overlooking the fact that any communicative attempt to affect another someone does involve a fair degree of selling. Certainly, good selling is the fundamental driver of good negotiation, no matter what side of the table you happen to be sitting on.
It doesn't come as a surprise then, to see the steady infiltration of sales and marketing executives into senior supervision positions within the larger corporations, as the world of industry more openly acknowledges that, while counting and measuring increase may well be one thing, selling the concepts, the strategy, and the goods and services which lead to that increase is another.
Despite this growing recognition, a stigma still exists in some quarters. either driven by misunderstanding, a bad experience, or maybe even jealousy, there seems to be a misconception that the stereotypical salesperson is a noisy, selfish, boisterous, show-off with the gift of the gab. Believe it or not, I have categorically heard it said in those words. Fortunately, I have also heard the true story summed up like this: The contrast in the middle of an effective and an ineffective salesperson is ordinarily a matter of sensitivity, sincerity, attitude, and listening skills - all of which can be learned.
In light of this, it is absorbing to note that some of the best salespeople around are categorically quite shy by nature. The power of their conviction comes from their attentiveness, honesty, and sincerity. This is substantiated by the tasteless buyer perceptions of salespeople, which have been widely researched, and are well-documented.
Here are the top six negatives among the 'good, the bad, and the ugly' findings:
- come across as sleazy or pushy
- don't listen
- don't know their stuff
- don't take time to understand what you want
- can't find them when you want them
- too categorically distracted by other things
Here are the positives:
- amiable smile and greeting
- made me feel comfortable
- listened attentively
- helpful, but not pushy
- didn't show off excellent knowledge
- took the time to understand what I wanted
Not surprisingly, trust and integrity underpins everything and while knowing what you are talking about is an important positive, showing off excellent knowledge with largely irrelevant data is a very strong negative. Basic good manners and a willingness to listen attentively outweigh all else. Often, I hear salespeople talking about the 'customer from hell'; it seems that 'the salesperson from hell' is even more widely maligned. Let's be sure we are not one of them!
Good marketing managers never underestimate the real worth of these interpersonal selling qualities within the marketing mix. Despite the changing face of marketing and the relentless pursuit of cost efficiencies, it is still recognised that no corporation ever cost-saved or down-sized its way to extreme success. Even the accounting profession accepts that almost any company qoute can be fixed by 'more sales'. Yes, it takes good marketing to deliver prospects, but at every stage of the contribute chain, it takes even great selling to convert those prospects to customers.
Peter Drucker, carefully by many the doyen of contemporary management, once observed 'the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous'. But, with due respect to Peter, it hasn't happened yet, and probably never will. Selling is often carefully just a part of the marketing function, but I like to rock the boat - my contention is that, at least for carefully purchases, marketing is naturally part of the sales preparation.
In my training workshops, I consistently find specialist buying and merchandising staff just as keen as their floor sales colleagues to gawk the very roots of the sales process. For one, they are keen to dissect just how they themselves are being sold to, and to write their countermands into the script of their supplier interview. Second, they concede that they are often selling even harder than the supplier, as they assertively convince their suppliers of the benefits of gift them the right deal.
So anyone our role in the contribute chain, the important thing is to proudly cast aside that negative stereotype of a salesperson, and proudly accept that selling, in one form or another, will form part of our job description. The selling and negotiating functions should not be carefully interchangeable, but in the trading environment, they are 'peas in a pod"... For, just as today's selling is not about inflicting your concept on some unsuspecting customer, negotiation is not about always emerging the winner. In both cases, it is about courteously and conscientiously identifying the needs and wants of the other party and helping them select the accepted products, services, and conditions to meet their expectations.
Just like good salespeople, specialist negotiators must not only win the battle, they need to win the war. The extreme scorecard for us is the contentment and confidence of knowing that there will always be a sure acknowledge to two easy questions: 'have I achieved an accepted outcome?'... And, 'will the other party be eager to do company with me again in the future?' If we are sure of getting the nod to both, our success as a negotiator is assured. While negotiation may not necessarily be a occupation in itself, it is the pivotal role in most pro pursuits, and is clearly one of the most rewarding, particularly if we apply all those passionate selling skills of ours!
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