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Tag: controversy

  • Negotiation – the Spirit of Give and Take

    Negotiation – the Spirit of Give and Take

    Everyone negotiates, almost every day, on some level, even with themselves in some cases. The idea is to weigh two opposing ideas against each other and give up something one side needs to get something they want from them – simple, right?

    Lawsuits are negotiations, divorce settlements, business contracts, even social gatherings (ever try to decide on a restaurant with a group of six people?). Everyday situations require at least some skill at negotiation, and really that’s a good thing. It forces you to define your position on a given situation, to clarify your personal dividing line between “need” and “want”, and forces you to devise rationale to defend your choices. Is it any wonder that decisive people are often the best negotiators?

    One helpful hint in successful negotiation is to remove any emotion from the equation. This is difficult to completely accomplish, but the better you are at it, the more likely you are to get what you want. Emotion tends to cloud judgment, makes us do things for reasons other than logic or material gain, and to give in out of pity or caring for the others’ well-being, even at risk to our own.

    That doesn’t mean that you can’t be nice about it – nice isn’t an emotion, it’s a social convention. You can be civil and still not back off of your position and get what you want without emotionally wounding the other party. No need to be mean, just be firm and accommodating and civil, but stand your ground.

    Above all, to be a negotiation, there has to be a spirit of give and take on both sides, some accommodation to the other side’s position, some give in order to get. Without that willingness to cooperate, to lead the proceedings down a path to mutual agreement, then it’s not a negotiation, it’s an ultimatum. A this-is-it, take-it-or-leave-it approach will not produce the results either side wants. It engenders ill will between the parties and creates a very adversarial atmosphere that is counter productive.

    Sometimes, the situation just isn’t conducive to negotiation. When one side holds all the power, all the cards, leaving the other side no real room to get and has little to give, negotiations will be strained and of limited value. Job interviews or evaluations for a pay increase are like this – the employee has little leverage in most cases, unless they are absolutely irreplaceable. The best they can hope for is to make a good case, show their value in a persuasive way, and hope the boss is feeling generous or sees potential in keeping the employee happy and productive. The one time where the employee has the whip hand in this relationship is during the initial salary negotiation after the offer is made. Market forces create variance in how much power the employer has, but the odds are always in their favor.

    Successful negotiation requires knowledge – knowledge of self, knowledge of the opposition’s position and wants, needs and desires. The better you know your own position, the more strongly you can negotiate it, because you have the surety of knowing where you draw the line, you have a picture of what you can live with, and anything above that is a bonus.If the other side’s line is somewhere near yours, everybody wins at the end. A smart man once said “If both sides feel like they lost a little bit, it’s a good deal” remarking to the spirit of willingness to give up something to get something else.

    As you go through your week, take special note of situations that require you to negotiate – you might be surprised how many of them there are – and try to gauge how you might have used knowledge to improve your own position and get a better outcome . . .

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  • The Battle Between Sales and Marketing Rages On . . .

    The Battle Between Sales and Marketing Rages On . . .

    There are many areas of ongoing controversy in the world – Alien v. Predator, King Kong v. Godzilla, Greece v. Turkey, Israel v. (Pick one) and Sales v. Marketing.

    I’m not going to come down on a side for most of the above, but the Sales v. Marketing one intrigues me, because the two combatants should be best friends. They share a common goal, they have separate methods and approaches, they both want more customers. They do compete for financial resources in some companies, so that may set off some minor turf scuffles, but I think each is misunderstood by the other, and it’s a case of walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes.

    Add to this the fact that management executives in many companies confuse the role of each in their organization, in fact use the terms interchangeably. This kind of thinking simply adds to the controversy, and pits one against the other.

    The functions are different, they have different ways of measuring success, have different individual goals on a small scale, and use resources differently. In some firms, the sales function is placed underneath a VP of Marketing, correctly or incorrectly depending upon the structure of the company, it’s size and the product or service being sold. My guess is that if that VP had to actually go out and sell to a lead list, they would not fare very well. That doesn’t make them an inappropriate manager for that function, but it does weaken the case for non-peer review. On the other hand, if the leading salesman were asked to assess the company’s current brand health, determine their most likely next move in entering a new niche vertical, or have to craft an outreach marketing strategy, they would likely come up with something that might have some value, but not the whole ball of wax.

    The reason is that they are different skill sets, not interchangeable and with different focus points. The salesman focuses on customers one at a time, creates and environment where they can use their powers of verbal or written persuasion to tell people what they want to hear about the product in a way that motivates them to make a purchase, big or small, right then and there.

    The marketer is in the mass communication business. They set up a virtual environment in the mind of a predetermined prospect type without ever having met them, make a case in a variety of ways for that product or service being the best choice among many, and motivate through written or spoken word (radio or TV) to create an impression that drives huge numbers of prospects to understand that product or service in a certain way, and helps them decide to make a purchase at some point.

    Success is determined for the sales person by dollars driven in, or clients gained, or products moved. Success for the marketer is about more product moved over time, a rise in brand awareness, the number of conference attendees at a tradeshow, and a host of other metrics determined by the goal of the exercise.

    But these two can each do their job better in the presence of the other! They should be buddies! But they’re often at odds within the organization. They each think the others’ job is less important, likely because they’ve not done the others’ work for any length of time. But by working together, they can each improve.

    Sales, you need to understand that the marketer’s mindset is more focused on hitting the most common denominator the most often, because it’s easy for prospects to ignore their messages – delete them, throw them out, hang up, you name it, it’s a one-way conversation. Marketing, you need to hold onto the understanding that if the prospect hangs up on or ignores pleas for a meeting, Sales takes it personally, because each one counts for a lot! They invest a lot of emotion and time into each approach, planning, investigating, researching, so they “know” the prospect much better – therefore when things to get accepted right away, it’s a bigger loss.

    A little understanding goes a long way. If Marketing took the challenges Sales faces to heart when creating one-sheets or promotions, they’d be simple, answer the most often asked questions, and be nearly weightless so the briefcase-carrying arm doesn’t drag on the ground at the end of the day. If Sales realized how much time it takes to say things in just the right way, how hard it is to determine what the most often asked questions are, and how long it takes to “just redo it”, they’d make their wishes known early and often, and get better tools to work with in return for their efforts.

    We can’t fix Greece v. Turkey, or even know whether it’s Godzilla or King Kong that wins the battle for Tokyo, we do know that when Sales and Marketing work together things go much more smoothly and there more money all around.

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