Final negotiation is a critical part of the sale. In fact, one can execute perfectly during the sale but at the very end leave large amounts of money on the table. Especially in today’s challenging market conditions, the end of a sales cycle can create anxiety and even desperation. When this becomes systemic company margins suffer and in extreme cases companies go out of business. Now, as sellers we cannot take the entire blame but there are some things that we can do to help this situation.

First and foremost make sure that you are negotiating with the right person. One of the challenges we face is entering a negotiation with lower level procurement people. These people are not your friends. They are usually very well trained and often very shrewd negotiators. On top of that, they do not understand nor do they care that you will bring value, or that your offering is strongly differentiated, or even that their very own company has severe business pains that will only be solved by your solution! All they care about is getting a better price.

Try to get the line of business/power people that you have been dealing with throughout the sales cycle to join the negotiation, or better still bypass procurement and negotiate directly with them. Remember that if there is a conflict between procurement and true power, power wins every time.