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Unit 11: Wholesale Purchasing and Negotiation with Vendors

essential to a satisfactory agreement. They are simply not negotiable. Your nice-to-have issues Notes
are negotiable. Although they would be nice to have, they are not necessary to the agreement.
They are issues you are prepared to concede or use as trade-offs in the interest of concluding the
agreement or maintaining the relationship.
Your window of flexibility is guided by your prearranged min-max points—min being you’re
lowest acceptable point and max being your best, most ideal position. So, in the interests of
creative negotiation, each of your must-have issues should be accompanied by a window of
suppleness—your min-max points.
The second step in negotiation planning is to define the issues commendable of negotiation.
Refer to all your notes and assemble all the issues, yours and your customer’s, into a
comprehensive list. Some issues may have been resolved prior to the negotiation, which is fine,
but be sure to identify any outstanding issues. It can be frustrating and expensive—in terms of
time and success—if the customer calls you just prior to inking the deal with an unresolved
issue. After the issues are assembled, the next step is to prioritize them. By sharing the list with
your customer, you continue to build trust and confidence as you work through it together.
Extract relevant information from your notes to enhance your position. A comment in your
notes from six months ago may be a valuable piece of information. Salespeople frequently
compensate for inadequate planning by conceding more than necessary. This shortcut can be
very costly.
Sales entrepreneurs cannot manage to pay for quick and clever during the give and take of
negotiation. Planning increases your negotiation success substantially and helps you achieve
solutions that you never thought possible. Invest the time and energy (during janitorial hours)
to prepare a strategy in line with your customer’s behavioral style. Your strategy will help you
settle down, face fewer unknowns, and reduce stress.

Know the Lingo

The negotiation arena has a language of its own. Many negotiation sessions fail simply due to
not understanding the language of negotiation. The objective here is not to provide you with an
in-depth study of all the nuances of negotiation but to generate a mindset, awareness, and an
overview of the logistics of creative sales negotiation.

Negotiate Price, Don’t Sell It

Is price the most significant aspect of the sale? No. Never has been, never will be. Customers
have never based their buying decisions exclusively on price and they ever will. However,
salespeople convince themselves that price is the number one motivator to purchase. Studies
show that salespeople bring up price before the customer does 60% of the time. Why? I’m not
sure but I suppose salespeople feel obligated to bring it up, or perhaps they have been trained to
do so. It could even be lack of self-assurance or corporate self-esteem.

Many salespeople violate the sales process by introducing price too soon. Ideally, price should
not be discussed until after your preliminary confirmation. During the call you need to focus on
selling value and benefits to the customer. Don’t mention price unless the customer asks or you
are negotiating. This concept may seem somewhat manipulative and irresponsible, but it isn’t.
I have confirmed several deals without the customer or me mentioning price. It’s part of the
rapport and trust issue. If a customer trusts you and feels comfortable with you, price is not an
important issue. There is an implied understanding that your price will be competitive, otherwise
you wouldn’t be in business.
By shifting the conversation to price previous to initial confirmation, the salesperson has invited
the customer to openly challenge the price. Some salespeople are convinced the customer’s

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