Tips on How to Negotiate and Sell:

Plus a few Lessons about Neuro Linguistic Programming: NLP

You can not really be a successful entrepreneur unless you can sell and negotiate effectively. I am not sure which is more important to an entrepreneur: but probably the two most important things are:

1. SELL, SELL, SELL.
2. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK.

Obviously, you have to be able to sell to get launch clients, clients and customers. But you also need to be able to sell your ideas to: suppliers (to give you supplier credit, for example), excellent employees, bankers, shareholders, partners, media, directors, government approval agencies and just about everyone else you come into contact with.

My late father, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, Dr. O. J. Firestone also told me that you have to check, check and check again. There are no fire and forget missiles in business: you have to make sure stuff gets done.

But whether SELL, SELL, SELL is number one or CHECK, CHECK, CHECK is number one does not really matter: successful entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs do both, all the time.

Now one effective way to improve your sales skills is to do more of it. Like just about everything else humans do, they get better, a lot better with practice. As Ben Affleck in the film, Boiler Room, said: “ABC!” Always be Closing.

One of the sales people at the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club when I was there was Darren McCarthy. He came from selling at the Brick and, let me tell you, you have to be able to sell to survive at the Brick. He was one of the most determined sales people I have ever met: if he ever ran out of leads, he would open the Yellow Pages and dial for dollars. If he went to visit a business, he might try to sell them a $100,000 per year suite and a $250,000 in-ice ad but if he could not get that, he would come out of there with something, even a 12-pack of tickets for $600! ABC.

Now I like selling, I enjoy it and I know that there are three possible answers to a question: YES, NO or MAYBE. A YES is better than a NO but a NO is way better than a MAYBE. MAYBES waste your time and your clients time too. If someone gives me a MAYBE, I tell them I will treat that as a NO. Sometimes (actually quite often) they say, well, I do not want to say NO. So say YES!

When you hear a YES, whip out the order (always bring that with you), ask them to sign it (never be afraid to ask for the deal!). Then thank them and get out of there. After you hear a YES, the only thing you can do by sticking around to talk more is muck up the deal. So get their signature on a piece of paper and make like a tree and leave.

Selling is telling, Mark Gencher from Brymark told me once. He is right: selling is about providing timely information to the right person at the right time. Remember, selling is where the money is (sales people get paid multiple of what most marketing people get paid) and they almost never get laid off.

If you get a NO, so what? Do not worry about it: you will just have more time for your next client.

Sell what you love.

What are some of the things you can do to get ready to sell?

Well, for one, be prepared. I never make a cold call. I always know something about the organization I am about to approach. The Internet makes that pretty easy these days.

Practice too. Do not wing it.

I also use some of the skills talk by neuro linguistic programmers. Now these techniques are quite powerful and you should never use them inappropriately: like trying to get someone into bed with you who does not want to or forcing someone into buying something they can not really afford. So always be ethical and protect your reputation.

But here are a few tips (some of them are somewhat contradictory: do not worry about that. Entrepreneurs constantly deal in an environment where they have incomplete information and ambiguity is abundant):

1. Develop your BATNA: your Best Alternative to a negotiated Agreement. If you figure you can live without this deal, you are right away in a better position to negotiate successfully.
2. Someone once negotiated a long term office lease with me: he asked: “Give me a nickel!” We thought nothing of it but a nickel was worth more than $50,000 over the term of the lease so pay attention to details.
3. Always volunteer to write up the deal: he or she who holds the pen, hold a lot of power.
4. Calibrate the other party (that is how the top Texas Holdem Poker players almost always come out on top).
5. Read lateral eye movements (see the chart below for more on how to do this.)
6. Read body language.
7. Synchronize your breathing with the other party.
8. Mirror them and their body movements.
9. Get on the same side of the table as they are on (not literally). But, if for example, you are trying to sell them computer equipment, talk about different solutions and different vendors as if they were on the other side of the table and you are in effect providing them with consulting services… Tell them if they do not like any of the alternatives, you will work with them to find one that works for them.

I hate selling, says Serence CEO Allan Wille, but I love helping people buy.

10. Listen to tonality.
11. Empathize with them.
12. Ask them questions, do not tell them stuff, ask first.
13. Make the first move: do not be afraid to put your position out there first; show confidence that you know what you are talking about.
14. Leave something on the table for them: they will come back later and spend it with you anyway because you treated them fairly.
15. Do not bet against yourself: if you have made a proposal that is greeted with silence, do not lower your asking price (say). Smile and wait for their response.
16. Try to agree on simple terms first: build some +ve momentum.
17. Provide evidence to support your position.
18. KISS: Keep It Simple.
19. Tell the truth but make it the smart truth. Smart truth is what lawyers call artfully ambiguous.
20. Remember that body language is more than half of what people are really trying to say, voice tonality is about a third and words are only about ten percent so make your body language and tone work for you!
21. Sometimes silence is best: they will often use your silence to answer their own questions and talk themselves into a deal.
22. Smile. Be positive. Remember the “Secret” is the Law of Attraction. What you think and do counts. If you think positively you are far more likely to achieve your goals. Think only about what you want, not what you do not want. The latter invites a negative result.
23. Be patient. If you lose your temper, do it on purpose never because you have lost your patience.
24. Knowledge is power.
25. Do not agree too quickly or they will think they did not get a good enough deal.
26. Really know your product or service.
27. Use negative cost selling: tell them how they will make money by buying your product or service. Do a spreadsheet from their POV not yours.
28. Make sure you can demonstrate your value proposition in a compelling way in simple language in less than two minutes.
29. Remember, you are selling them a solution to their problems: this is called, naturally enough, solution selling.
30. Never take No for an answer.
31. Make sure you do not talk all the time: listen carefully and pay attention to their body language and tonality.
32. Set weekly or monthly goals: do not think you can reach your sales goals for the year in the mast month or even quarter of the year.
33. Face your fears: do the tough stuff. Never take a No personally.
34. You can learn something from Yoga practitioners. Before you say something, ask:

a) Is it true?

b) Is it an improvement on silence?

c) Are you going to hurt someone by saying it?

35. Never tear down a competitor, let your clients do that if they want to.
36. If you are less successful than you would like to be and want to know who is preventing you from being a success: first look in the mirror.

I claim my own power and accept responsibility for my own life, a quote from the book Chakra Meditation by Swami Saradananda, Duncan Baird Publishers, London, 2008.

Bad things happen to people in their lives and it is easy to blame others. No doubt they contributed to the situation. But mostly, if you are really honest with yourself, you almost certainly had a hand in it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get out there and do it/make things happen. There is a person inside you and, when you listen to him or her, good things happen. It is when you substitute the judgment of others for your own, bad things often happen to you. Not selling enough? Do not blame the markets or lousy clients, find new, better clients, change your niche, improve your selling skills, get more education, whatever.

37. People like to buy from people they like and trust.
38. Remember that pricing is an art not a science. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Minister of Finance to Louis XIV once said: The art of taxation (a tax is a price, ed) consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing, The quote may also have involved obtaining the maximum number of quills (a valuable writing tool at the time) with the minimum amount of hissing. Either way, you get the point.

Here is my cheat sheet on NLP that will give you the basics for interpreting eye movements. Top poker players do this all the time: they calibrate their opponents (James Bond played by Daniel Craig in the 2006 film release of Casino Royale does this to Le Chiffre); they do not play their cards, per se, they play their opponents.

When people make rational decisions, they use their prefrontal cortex to do so. But if people think they are being treated unfairly, the primitive part of the brain (the anterior insula) lights up similar to when they smell a skunk or see a horrific sight. So if someone does not like you or trust you or feels abused by you, they will not make rational decisions. Their raw emotions overwhelm their rational faculties. So if you do not establish rapport, you can not sell. People will act against their own best interests if the primordial brain is activated so trust is a key component of selling.

Also, people make decisions more based on their fear of losses than their perception of gains. That is why in the prisoners dilemma, the police always separate the co-accused. If neither confess, they both spend 4 year is jail: total jail time for two prisoners is 8 years. If one confesses and the other does not, the confessed criminal spends two years less a day and the holdout spends ten years in jail: total jail time 12 years. If they both confess, they each get 6 years: total jail time is 12 years. Obviously, the optimal solution is for neither to confess but remember, the fear of loss (lost freedom) is weightier than their perception of gain (optimal jail time), so there is rush to see who can confess first and get the two year less a day sentence.

In terms of selling, you need to not only address the upside of the deal, but show how their downside is covered. What is the worst that can happen? I do this all the time in getting people to make Offers to buy land or office buildings or what have you. In the real estate industry, we almost always put in a series of conditions that allow the Buyer to opt out if he or she finds something that is not what they expected. I tell them that all they have lost is some time and what ever the cost is for the due diligence they have just completed…

People like to buy from people they like and trust, Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, Ottawa Canada. April 2008.

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