THE MULTIPLE EQUAL OFFERS PRESENTATION


As with the validation meeting, the first thing you must do in regard to the MEO presentation is determine who should be there. In extending invitations, it’s advantageous to include as many of those individuals with whom you’ve had validation meetings or phone conversations as possible. This is important because, even though lower-level buying influences are usually more concerned with price, those on the executive level tend to be more interested in a comprehensive package, which is, of course, what you really want to sell. So if you’ve successfully used your sales process to sell the total value of your solution and continued to do so through the negotiation process, it’s likely that if those executives attend the meeting, the lowest-priced, low-value MEO will almost immediately be discarded. If you can’t get executive-level buying influences to the presentation but have completed validation calls with them, it’s important when you review the MEOs that you let the buyer know that the senior vice president—or whoever—was particularly interested in X, Y, and Z in an offer, and that you designed such-and-such an MEO with his or her needs in mind.

When you do begin your presentation, you should start with an overview of the three offers. Remember that it’s important in the overview to include the title of each of the offers so your customer can immediately recognize the type of relationship between your companies that each offer represents. Once you’ve outlined all three, it’s best to start with the lowest-priced option, review the details, go on to the highest-priced option, and then finish with the one in the middle. This option is typically the best for both sides, and you should make that clear to your customer by showing them how it includes as many of their Wish List items as possible—citing what they told you during the validation step—as well as how it meets your own needs. Doing this benefits both of you in two ways. First, it shows the customer that this is the best option based entirely on facts, not emotions. And, second, by explaining how it meets your needs as well, it shows them that you’re being honest, which helps foster trust between you.

Once you’ve made the presentation of the three MEOs, the next step is to launch your attack—in a diplomatic way—on their Consequences of No Agreement in order to exploit the Gap you identified during your analysis. Like me, you may have been taught that you should always upsell your own solution and not speak ill of competitors. Let’s get this straight, though. This is business, the best wins, and this is exactly the right time to attack their CNA—whether it’s your competition, doing it themselves, or doing nothing. This is what closing is all about. Of course, no one likes to be “closed.” But businesspeople do want to make the best decision to meet their needs. And it’s your job as a consultative salesperson to helpfully let your customer know why your middle Multiple Equal Offer is much better than their alternative (their CNA) and that it trades on many items that they ranked as important. Here’s an example of the kind of thing we say when we want to do that with one of our own customers:

When I came to see you a few days ago to learn about what you wanted, I got a lot of very valuable information, and I’ve embedded that information into my second offer. For example, you mentioned that customization and the ability to implement an organizationwide process are important to you. Now, one of the other things I learned at our meeting is that you’re considering two of our competitors, ACME Negotiating and Professor So-and-So from the University of Wherever. If you don’t choose us, I’d suggest you choose ACME, as they’re the best of our competitors. Professor So-and-So’s primary function is as a teacher, and he only does corporate negotiation as a sideline. So he’s not likely to be able to implement an organizationwide process for you. Both ACME and Think! are full-time, “purpose-built” negotiation firms—it’s all we do.

As far as ACME is concerned, you told me, and I agree, that your business is unique and requires a high degree of customization. ACME does provide a good quality training experience, but they don’t write case studies for participant practice that are customized to your industry, and they don’t spend a lot of time showing how to apply the concepts to live negotiation. Also, ACME provides salespeople with 137 tactics and countermeasures, which makes for an interesting class but can’t really be implemented as an organizationwide process.

You should have noticed two things about this example. The first is that our presentation of the Gap (the difference between us and the customer’s CNA) was based on what we know about the customer’s needs in this particular deal, the competition, and our own value proposition. The second thing you should have noticed is that although we did show the customer how we would meet their needs better than our competition, we did it in a diplomatic way that enabled the customer to make an informed decision, one based on elements of their CNA.

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You should note, though, that it’s never a good idea to attempt to communicate such a direct CNA Gap analysis unless you’re at least reasonably confident of what you know about the customer’s CNA and needs in this negotiation. If you present what you think makes you better when you don’t really know their needs, or misdiagnose a Gap in the competition’s value proposition given the customer’s needs, it will come back to bite you.

But what happens after you’ve presented your MEOs? Well, every once in a very rare while your customer may simply accept one of them as presented. You shouldn’t count on it, though. What’s much more likely to happen is that your customer will start looking for ways to change the terms of one or more of the MEOs. And that’s when the trading starts. In the meantime, though, because you’ll have anchored the negotiation and diplomatically educated the customer on how your offer is better than their CNA, you’ll have established an advantageous starting point for the discussion.




Strategic Negotiation. A Breakthrough Four-Step Process for Effective Business Negotiation
Strategic Negotiation: A Breakthrough Four-Step Process for Effective Business Negotiation
ISBN: 0793183049
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 74

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