art of negotiation get to the need

Under every demand the customer puts forward there is a need, as a sales professional it is your task to unearth that need, for with out identifying the need, how are you going to meet your objective?As a professional sales person the last thing you want to hear your customer say to you is "I need to think about it and will get back to you" the customer seldom if ever will get back to you and when you follow up they will either not take your call or tell you that they have purchased else where!The main reason why a customer will not buy from you is because you have failed to identify and then satisfy their needs, instead you have become distracted by their demands and fear of losing the sle and conceded to their demand and presented price. At this point you are sliding away from the sale quicker than a land slip; basically you could liken your self to a motor vehicle spinning its wheels with no forward traction, not a good position to be in as a sales person, is it?Well I can hear you say OK this is all well and good but I have made sales even when I have presented price. Good for you. This event is rare. If you want to get a bigger pay check on a consistent basis you must get to and understand the customers' needs, not just give it a cursory thought. Make sure you have identified the need of your customer and not made an assumption as to what you have interpreted the need to be, you achieve this by getting the customer to tell you, by negotiating it from them.Tip: There is only one way to satisfy a demand. There are multiple ways to satisfy a need. There it is a demand does not give you room to move needs on the other hand give you several opportunities to work on, so get to the core need.When a customer enters your shop or yard to purchase, they are on the defensive, it is your task to make them relax and start talking about their needs and what specifically they are wanting solved, occasionally you may have a customer that becomes adversarial as this is the defense mechanism that they have taught themselves and it has worked in the past getting them what they want. An adversarial customer is trying to intimidate so they can take control, and usually this works when they are dealing with average sales persons, when they come up against a superb sales person this adversarial customer becomes putty and controllable in the hands of a superb sales person why? As superb sales persons remain consultative even with an adversarial customer during the negotiating phase, they never become adversarial, and eventually the adversarial negotiator runs out of puff and amenable when they realize that the adversarial method is not going to work for them in this instance.Tip: You do not have to be adversarial to be in and stay in control.

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