The art of Negotiating

[RJT]

I have noticed recently people asking about commissions, type of machines, to place, what pricing, etc.

 

The main question is, are you negotiating correctly? Are you controlling the conversation with the customer or is the customer controlling you?

 

You have to be able to go in ask the right questions and then put together what makes sense to both you and the customer in order to gain their business. Are you giving away more than you should to get the account? Many new folks go in giving away the store or throwing everything they can at them to see what sticks.

 

You will be in a much better position to gain their business if you can strike a balance of what they are looking for and what makes sense to do. I have mentioned before that I have turned down more business than I take on because it simply made better sense not to do it.

 

Recently I and one of my clients were knocking on doors and came across an account that was not happy with their current vendor. After talking with them they had some pretty bad pricing with $1.00 bottles, $0.65 cookies, $0.90 pastry (the rest was in line), cold food machine that was mostly filled with filler items and not much food, free condiments like salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, mayo, napkins, coffee machine with $0.35 and $0.45 price and a 10% commission.

 

After looking at it we proposed it with $1.25 bottles, fresh/frozen machine, condiments pack sold out of snack machine for $0.25, we went up on the snacks that made sense to like $0.85 cookies $1.00 pastry, $0.50 coffee and still offered the 10% commission.

 

In the end we got the account even after getting rid of some of the things they had like free condiments, cheap bottle prices, cheap snack prices, etc.

 

We negotiated with the contact person and sold her on the idea what we where proposing made sense and why it did. We sold her on service and not so much on pricing and offered her somethings she was not currently getting like frozen treats like ice cream. 

 

 

Make sure you are negotiating and not giving in the get accounts because it will pay off in the end with more dollars in your pocket.