Win / win…is it really a winning formula? If it is, who exactly is the winner? Surely with targets, budgets, margins and productivity milestones to achieve and surpass, it’s the fast moving, agile, aggressive competitor that’s going to come out top. Well, you only have to look at some clear examples from the natural world to begin to realize that collaboration and community-oriented behaviour can yield significantly better results over a mid to longer-term period. Over time the “herd” usually does much better than the singleton operator.
There is much more focus in the sentient sales environment now on creating stronger relationships between B2B and B2C participants but when you peel back a couple of layers of the methodology, what can we notice about the underlying philosophical framework that is meant to support positive relational behaviour? When you think about your company or work environment can you clearly identify “how” co-operative and mutually productive activity is fostered, encouraged and rewarded? Do you have any measures in relation to “relational quotient”? I suspect you do not, as is the case with many business environments. You can even take it back to the recruitment and induction stages. Are organizations selecting for team members who have current skill sets or aptitudes for collaborative approaches to customer relations or are they still trying to recruit people who have a default setting of aggressively competitive and expecting them to change their “spots” overnight?
One of the core competencies of an emotionally intelligent and effective salesperson is the capacity to think of the win/win as the normal setting.
Win/Lose only works once and has nothing to offer in terms of developing a long term, trust-based relationship. From the customer perspective the lose position tells them several important things about you and your company. One, you could not come up with a win/win scenario. Two, they came off worse in the arrangement so from their perspective you attempted to “do them over” in the deal. In reality, the chances are you will not even be considered the next time they are looking to purchase services or products.
A Lose/Win scenario from your perspective isn’t too good either. One, you have failed to achieve a mutually beneficial arrangement so there is a trust and respect imbalance in the relationship. You may have secured a deal to help you move towards a short-term goal but at what cost to your professional standing and the reputation of your company? There is also a concomitant danger in that it could become habit-forming as a legitimate ‘strategy” for winning business. Heaven help you if you decide to take this route. You should also consider how the buyer might regard you if you demonstrate that you have little respect for yourself in the situation.
You can however, decide that if you can’t achieve a win/win outcome then it could be better to walk away from the deal. Actually, this can be a very strong element in building a stronger trusting relationship with your customer if you tell them that you are deeply committed to finding the win/win answer and if you can’t accomplish that it would be better for both of you to decide that in this instance it’s not going to work.
This takes a huge amount of transparency, personal integrity and emotional intelligence; and if you genuinely can’t make the deal win/win then at least these are some excellent qualities to demonstrate to your customers.
But best of all is win-win-win: a win for you, a win for your customer and a win for their customer. You’ve started the process of delivering value right the way up the chain. When their customer says ‘nice job’, you’ve begun the process of cementing your relationship with your customer and his relationship with his customer.
The Sales Controversy
No comments:
Post a Comment