Part 3: Sales negotiation strategy: Motivation, Leverage and Power

Question 1

What does MLP mean?

Answer 1

Motivation: desire
Leverage: influence
Power: alternatives

Question 2

Motivation? The more you want it.

Answer 2

The more a party wants an outcome, the more motivated they are to make concessions to get that outcome. For you, it means the more want the deal, the more you’ll give up in order to ink it.

Question 3

Why can motivation be leveraged?

Answer 3

Motivation is emotional and at times illogical. It can be leveraged to neutralize and diminish the value of other alternatives. If people really want to do business with you, then they’ll allow their confirmation bias to guide them and ignore other possibilities.

Question 4

Power (alternatives) is concentrated at the organizational level. Motivation is with the individual stakeholder.
How do you weaken the organization’s power position?

Answer 4

Increase each individual stakeholder’s motivation to get a deal done with YOU!

Question 5

Power (alternatives) is concentrated at the organizational level, while motivation is with the individual stakeholder. The company you are selling to is always in a stronger power position than you because they have more alternatives.

How do you weaken the organization’s power position?

Answer 5

Increase each individual stakeholder’s motivation.

Question 6

Increasing stakeholder motivation while reducing the perception of viable alternatives occurs on three levels?

Answer 6

1. Relationship
2. Individual succes criteria
3. Social proof

Question 7

The sales process (you) and buying process (your suspect) are linear, rational steps developed at the organizational level.

How does the decision process work?

Answer 7

It’s individual, emotional, nonlinear and often irrational.

Question 8

What are the five questions that matter most for your stakeholder throughout the sales process?

Answer 8

1. Do I like you?
2. Do you listen to me?
3. Do you make me feel important?
4. Do you get me and my problems?
5. Do I trust and believe you?

Question 9

What kind of buyers do we have? BASIC

Answer 9

1. Buyers
2. Amplifiers
3. Seekers
4. Influencers
5. Coaches

Question 10

What are amplifiers?

Answer 10

Stakeholders who see a gap that your product or service can fill. Typically lower-level people who will use your product or be impacted by it. Leveraged well, they become advocates for change and amplify the message, problem, pain or need up through the organization.

Question 11

Stakeholders:

• operate at the emotional level.
• avoid conflict and therefore hold back information
• don’t always know what they want or their limitations
• are sometimes unable to articulate problems, succes criteria, or their vision of the ideal agreement
• hide the truth because they feel that being transparent weakens their position

What do you need to do to identify your stakeholder negotiation list?

Answer 11

Ask a lot of questions.