B2B Street Fighting

Buyers Are Tougher Than Ever

Negotiating a business-to-business (B2B) sales deal was never easy, but it’s even more challenging in hard economic times. Buyers were tough before; now they’re ruthless.

Nevertheless, with a street-fighting approach, you can counterpunch against price barricades and use carefully documented facts about your value proposition to get what you – and your customers – want. You can predict 97% of your negotiating opponent’s tactics. And, anything you can forecast so precisely, you can control.

Negotiation Trends

According to a recent study, current negotiation trends include:

• “More professional buyers” – Procurement professionals strive for expertise in negotiating. They care about beating you down on price, so they focus strictly on the negotiation itself, not the product or service you’re selling. With that goal in mind, they approach every negotiation with maximum diligence. In contrast, most sales organizations and their salespeople treat negotiations as an afterthought.
• “Increasing price focus” – For buyers, price seems to be everything. Offer them more practical, far-reaching details about...