The company negotiators

EDITOR'S NOTE: “Global View,” by Richard Gottlieb, will appear in Playthings as a regular department. A 35-year marketing veteran and teacher, Gottlieb heads up New York-based consulting firm Richard Gottlieb & Associates, LLC, www.richardgottliebassoc.com. He has worked with Fortune 500 manufacturers throughout his career.

Who is your company's designated negotiator?

Who scares sales people more, their manager, or their buyer? No contest! It's the buyer. Why? Without their boss they don't have a job. Without their buyer they don't have a career.

Now that we have that out of the way, what does that mean in a practical sense for the management of salespeople?

Two things:

• They cannot be reliable communicators. If they have to deliver bad news to the buyer, they will disassociate themselves from their own company. If they have to deliver bad news from the buyer to their own company, they will make bad news sound worse and every opportunity sound better than it really is.
• They cannot be negotiators. They will not take a strong position with buyers because they don't want to make them angry. Above all, they want that order so that they get the commission and the glory.

If we recognize that they won't negotiate and they can't communicate, where does that leave us? Well, “packing it in” in this case might be justified but counter-productive. Instead, we can start by accepting the reality that no one with the word “sales” in his or her title should be negotiating agreements with a super power customer, not the salesperson, not the sales manager, and possibly not even the vice president of sales.

Every day North America's senior managers send their best salespeople out to negotiate on their behalf and every day these same salespeople get their heads handed to them. If they score points with their buyers, they look weak to their management. If they score points with their management, they fall out of favor with their buyer. Falling out of favor with management can mean losing a job. Falling out of favor with the buyer may mean never getting another job. Listings are lost. Promotions go to competitors. It's a tough situation.

They will never, however, admit to anyone in their own management that they are afraid to make the customer angry. They know that if they do, their career at that company is over. So instead, they will go through the appearance of being bold when they are with their own management but when they sit down with the buyer they will fold.

Also, be aware that their counsel will be a weak counsel. They will over-inflate their customer's strength of position, the potential rewards, and the dire results. This is true of employed salespeople. It is doubly or triply true of independent sales representatives.

Who then should be a company's designated negotiators? They should be professionals:

• Whose rewards are based upon the company's financial health and not just its sales figures?
• Who are not in a position where they may damage their career through animosities created with the buying community.
• Who sees the whole picture and is therefore able to evaluate if an order is good for the company or just the sales team. Whose toughness will mean a clear career boost and not a descent in to salesperson purgatory?

This person may be the president or a trusted lieutenant. If a company's fortunes depend on a few key accounts, then the president better be closely involved. What then is the roll of the salesperson? Why not allow them to be the mediator.

A mediator is a third party who, staying neutral, encourages two sides to come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial. It is the mediator's duty to facilitate communication, keep the parties focused, and constantly assess positions.

Taking on the role of being the communicator, the mediator allows the two sides to have time to discuss their positions and responses in such a way that they don't alienate each other. The way the mediator massages the communication is another way to help keep everyone on good terms and on target. What a great job for a salesperson. It is his or her nature to want to make everybody happy, so why not turn it into a strength?

So what are the rewards of designating a negotiator and allowing a salesperson to be the go-between?

• A confident and effective salesperson can add value to his or her company's key account relationship. There can be a clearer flow of vital data both ways that is not tainted by fear.
• A negotiating position that recognizes weaknesses and uses strengths can win favorable contracts and agreements.
• Most of all, it is the company that reaps the rewards by constantly improving customer partnerships while at the same time protecting its own bottom line.

Let's recognize that salespeople will seek to be friends with their customers whether we like it or not. Why not accept this, encourage it and take advantage of it? Let senior management take on the role of negotiator and allows its salespeople to be heroes to both sides. It builds self-esteem, it builds company relationships, and most of all builds the bottom line.