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4Sales Negotiation Skills Are Not One-Size-Fits-All

My objective with this book is to give you a playbook and field guide for becoming a more effective sales negotiator. Although this book is primarily focused on business-to-business (B2B) sales negotiation, the concepts may easily be applied to business-to-consumer (B2C) sales situations.

However, there are few one-size-fits-all solutions in sales, and negotiation is no exception. In the sales profession, context matters. There is little black and white.

I will not be able to provide explicit instructions for handling every conceivable sales negotiation situation. For you, some things I teach in this book may not apply. It is important that we acknowledge this as we begin our journey together.

• Negotiation complexity shifts with the situation. Enterprise-level and long-cycle complex sales negotiation is much different from transactional, one-call-close haggling.
• Negotiating with a stakeholder who works for a business is different from negotiating directly with a business owner.
• Negotiating with C-level and senior executives is far different from working out a deal with a middle manager.
• Negotiating with procurement is vastly different from negotiating with an engaged stakeholder.
• B2B negotiation is different from negotiating with individual consumers in B2C sales.
• Negotiating over physical products is different from negotiating for intangible services and software.

However, as a sales professional, you are going to be required ...