Mark Raffan: The Sad Reality of Discount Selling in Sales

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Now, if you've been a longtime listener to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, you'll recognize today's repeat guest, Mark Raffin. He's the CEO and founder of Negotiations Ninja and has become a good friend over the years. Now, Mark and I know each other for a while now, and I've always enjoyed our conversations because he actually comes from the world of procurement and now trains sales professionals on how to negotiate with him. So he comes from the dark side and he's trying to help us out. And a big part of our conversation revolved around having empathy for the other side. And since Mark has lived both roles, he has empathy for each of them. And throughout the conversation, we dive into topics around the dangers of discounting, how COVID impacted the role of procurement, and how to align priorities from the start.

So we are not battling with them. We're actually working with them. I always learn something new when I talk to Mark, and hopefully you will too. Let's make it happen. Mark Raffin, third time's a charm, my friend. Thanks for coming back to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. Thanks for having me, dude. I really appreciate you having me on. I got my coffee ready. I'm ready to go, man. There you go. A little plug for McCafe. Good for them. They're killing it out there. I'm still at the dunks, so I'm never going to give up on that. Mark, obviously we've had these conversations before around negotiations and everything else, but we're going to talk about this new book that you just put out there and some of the cool things you're looking at and some of the new stuff that we're both seeing out there in this bananas world that's happening right now.

But for those of you who don't, for those people who are listening and may not know, Mark, why don't you give a little background where you're coming from and what you're up to these days? Because I think we have a, there's a unique reason why I was always attracted to, you know, your approach and it's based on your background. So if you could give the audience a little background there, we'll dive right into it. Totally. So my name is Mark. I'm the founder of Negotiations Ninja. We teach people how to negotiate and persuade and resolve conflict. So within the grand scale of sales, we are a niche within a niche. So we really only talk about negotiation, all the prospecting stuff and sales strategy stuff we leave to guys like John and a few other folks.

When it comes to negotiation, that's what we do. And the reason we do that is because that's my background. I actually come from the other side of the table. I come from the procurement side and did that for the vast majority of my career, decided about six years ago that that wasn't for me. And I decided to start Negotiations Ninja, which actually started out as a blog, that it moved into a podcast, that it moved into a training company. And here we are today. Oh, so I love it. And I think so it's like, you could argue which one's the dark side, but as far as the arguments between both sides are like, no, you're the dark side. Well, actually that brings up a funny, like for me, I've, I always wondered in sales, like sales is such a chicken and the egg scenario, right?

Because you wonder who lied to who first, right? Was it, was it the prospect, was it the client that lied to the sales rep first or was it the sales rep that lied to the client first that made this divide so bad or the distrust within, you know, at least the perception of distrust, right? And I'm just, I'd love to go back to kind of the first, you know, almost big bang theory of where this divide happened in sales, but it is, it's, it's a divide that I think it will be for a long time. I agree, man. I think the last couple of episodes that we've done together, we've talked about how do we bridge the gap, right? How do we bring each other closer together? And I think there's more benefit that we can do there.

And I know a lot of salespeople listening to this are thinking to themselves, okay, procurement guy, what are you going to tell me that I don't already know about procurement people? But the reality is they're just people, right? Like, just like you, they're just trying to do their jobs. And they're also trying to do exactly the same thing that you are. They're trying to drive value for the organization in much the way, the same way you are. They're just coming at it from a different angle. Well, I think that's the, the, the thing that I think we've lost. And I've been preaching this for a while now. I mean, you know, ever since the beginning of the year when the tech industry kind of fell apart, you know, I, I've said, you know, if you've been in sales for the past 10 years and SaaS, it really just has not been that hard because we've over-engineered the sales process.

We've put too much technology, too many numbers, and we've lost the empathy factor. We've really lost that, like thinking about the person on the other end of that phone, that email, whatever it is, a person. And I, and you've heard me say this before, like, you know, when Morgan came on board, right, he was doing all right. His results were okay. And then he came to me one day and he said, John, like, I don't get it. Like, I, I think, I feel like all the effort I'm putting in, my effort should, you know, I should get better results. And I said, Morgan, your results aren't going to change until one thing does. And it's until you start giving a shit. And he was like, well, what do you mean? I said, look, I, obviously you give a shit about your, you know, work in here and all that, but until you start actually caring about the person on the other end of that phone and thinking of them as a person, you know, as opposed to a number, it's not going to change.

And so a lot of what I'm trying to do these days, I don't, I think we've lost the business acumen component of all of this. And so what I'm trying to do is, is help reps have some empathy. So for instance, you know, having companies bring in procurement from their existing customers to do interviews with their sales teams on what does it look like? So powerful. Doing research on these people, just simply Googling and saying, hey, procurement in this industry, top priorities, challenges, 2023, and just reading job descriptions and looking at these people as people, because then, and we'll get into this and I'd love your perspective. I think once you look at it that way, then negotiations is a hell of a lot easier.

It's a hell of a lot more collaborative than combative. Do you agree? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I agree entirely. And I think we have these ideas that we make up in our mind of each other, uh, of what the priorities are and what the priorities aren't. And it's interesting to see how people think that procurement thinks, and look, I'm not going to stand here and say procurement doesn't care about cost savings. Obviously they care about cost savings in much the same way that sales teams care about revenue, right? But the revenue is the outcome of the value that gets provided in much the same way as the cost savings is the outcome of the value that gets provided on the procurement side. So it's, it's just a, it's just a mindset shift, I think.

I actually wanted to, we're going to get into the book here, but I wanted to circle back on something we had talked about before, which is that, that, that exact thing, right? Which is you would say something, I don't know, it was the first or second time we had the conversation about procurement, about how it is not just their job to get the best price, right? It's the best, right. It's to get the best value, but they're also on the hook. So for instance, if procurement is involved and they beat the shit out of the vendor so much that the quality of the initial product they were supposed to be getting based on the champion doing their thing and all that other stuff, if that is diluted because certain things got taken out or the price was so low that the client now, the vendor can't now even support them in a profitable way.

And if that solution doesn't actually do what it was supposed to do because procurement had an impact on it, procurement is on the hook for that, right? So, but my question, I guess, for you is this, is how are they on the hook for it? Like, I don't understand, like when we lose a deal in sales, it's obvious, right? When we sign a shitty deal in sales, we get beat up for it. We might not get commission for it, whatever it is. So there is some very tangible and objective things to look at. And I know exactly what happens when that happens on my side of the house. What does it happen on procurement side of the house? Yeah. It's all internal political. It's a political thing internally. So we may not be on the hook for the overall implementation of the thing, but the people who are going to get blamed if something goes wrong and we source the thing that doesn't necessarily work the way the people wanted it to work is always going to be procurement because someone who uses the end product or the end software or the end service is going to use it and go, this isn't what we wanted.

We wanted this. And that's why it's so important. We draw this into procurement people. It's so important to sit down with our internal stakeholders on the customer side of the conversation, right? So if I'm a procurement person, I can't go out or I shouldn't go out and buy something without having a very deep conversation with my stakeholder to say, what is it that you want? Because if my goal for cost savings supersedes your goals for quality, service, durability, all of those things that make sense for you, then I'm actually not doing my job because my job is to be a facilitator of value for the organization. So it's pretty rare. I'm not going to say that it's not always going to be this way, but it's pretty rare that cost savings is actually the number one goal on a procurement person's mind, at least in a well matured procurement department.

Sure, there are some where you're always going to default to that, but in a good enterprise size organization, it's pretty rare that cost savings is the number one goal. They give you the impression that it's the number one goal because they want to maximize their goals as well. But usually the number one goal is quality and service and safety and those kinds of things. Yeah. And you can see where this goes awry too. Like, I don't know if you're familiar with the HP, right? And Mark Hurd when he came in and everybody, and now this is my opinion and, you know, rest in peace, Mark Hurd, right? So I'm not trying to shit on him, but one of the things everybody got, and this is directly related to procurement in my opinion, because he turned HP for a period of time into a cost saving organization.

Right. And he quote unquote saved HP for a while there because he kind of brought him back from nothing. But it was like short term, long term issues here, right? Because they turned into a procurement shop, basically. Procurement, I remember trying to get negotiations through HP. It was impossible. No matter how much your VP wanted it, no matter how much your champion wanted it, if procurement didn't want it, it did not happen. It absolutely did. I actually got a $60,000 deal with HP and the VP had to put it on his fucking credit card. So he had like an Amex black credit card that he had because he just knew he's like, there's no way they're going to approve this. So fuck it. I'm just going to put it on here and expense it because that's a way around it.

Right. And yes, that got HP back to being profitable and all that other stuff. But then they took all the money away from innovation, investing in their products. There's a fine line, man. Have you heard anything from HP in the past 10 years? I mean, I know there's Sleeping Giant and all that other stuff, but they pretty much disappeared off the map as far as I can tell. And I think it was a lot because of that. There's a fine line between how far do we push it because if you keep pushing it year over year over year over year, it becomes a series of diminishing returns. And eventually what ends up happening on the supplier side of the conversation is they just start pushing B and C quality players to your account because there's no way for them to be profitable on the A players because the A players cost too much.

So if I'm selling consulting services, you're getting my CT and you're getting the bench. And that is actually what I don't think people understand. Like, so let's talk, let's get more and more into negotiations here because I talk a lot about obviously the give gets of negotiations and how if you give too much or you get too much, neither one of those scenarios is good. Right. Because if you give to like, if the client is getting everything and you're not getting anything in return, right. Talk about that win-win scenario. If somebody wins and somebody loses, that's a terrible negotiation, even if you are the winner. Right. So let's talk about procurement, even if procurement, let's say procurement beats the shit out of you.

Right. And it gets to the point where by the time you close that deal and all reps have been there by the time you close a deal, it's so it's almost embarrassing to close it because you've given up so many discounts. Yes. Then what happens is, and you could ask any customer success team on the planet, I guarantee you, they all have a list of five, 10 clients that are the problem children. And it's because they're either too much of a pain in the ass to deal with, they're way unprofitable and whatever. And you as a customer do not want to be on that list because eventually I'm going to have to figure out as a business how to make you profitable, how to make you less of a pain in the ass. And it's exactly what you just said there.

Okay. I'm just going to start giving you shitty resources and it's down the toilet bowl, you know, just compounds on itself. Yeah. I think, I think there's a, there's a joint responsibility on both sides to recognize like, am I, am I pushing too hard? But that's really hard to know unless someone says enough. Right. And so the coaching that we give a lot of salespeople in negotiation is to say, Hey, no mas like enough. There is no more. We're not going lower. But then also be disciplined to be able to actually do that. Cause once you get caught in that bluff, if you are actually bluffing, you're done, right? Like your credibility shot, you're, you're gone. So like teaching people how to manage their concessions in a strategic and intelligent way is probably the biggest thing that we try and teach salespeople how to do.

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Let's make this happen together. Look, that takes a lot of confidence. And that's why I train prospecting so much, right? Because I always say it's your biggest leverage. Yeah, it's a big fat pipe. Like, I want to be in the position where I want your business. I don't need it. Right? Because if I want it, I sell the right way. I almost did a spit take there because I was so excited about what you just said. Because no, that's a classic Herb Cohen line. So, I mean, Herb Cohen's like my godfather in negotiation, right? Like, he's incredible. A famous guy from the 80s, still around in his late 80s now. But he said exactly that. He said, I want to be in a position where I want your deal, but I don't need it.

I care, but not that much. Not that much. Yep. Because when you're desperate, it shows, right? Like, when you don't have that pipeline, and then you can't really, even like, the fake it till you make it does not work, quite frankly. That's right. Right? Because somebody will call you out on that bullshit. And especially in the SaaS industry, because sophisticated buyers understand the dynamics, and reps don't understand the dynamics of their pricing models. So, that's, I think, a big gap of where I think organizations need to work on, which is actually help educate their reps on where the pricing came from and why the pricing is what it is, so that they can have confidence in that pricing, right?

Yeah. I mean, I want to go back to something you said there that was like, it's so important for salespeople to understand. If you don't have the leverage of having a good pipeline, you're going to be caught in this position over and over and over again. This happened to us the other day. So, we were sourcing a new CRM, will not be named, but we were dealing with the salesperson, and the salesperson did zero research on us, which was great for us, actually. Yeah, exactly. Fantastic. And so, we're going through this process with them, and they say, well, you can have this with this many seats and these features. And then we say, okay, we're really interested. And then we know our strategy, right?

So, we go dark for a week. And then the salesperson reaches out and say, well, I haven't heard from you in a week. Are you still interested? And then we just send back a question mark. That's it. That's all we send back, question mark. And then they say, well, you know what? We could come back with a discount. And they immediately discount. And then we go, okay, we're interested, but we're not sure yet. And we didn't say we wanted a better price. We just said we're not sure yet. And then we go dark for another week, and then they concede again. And again, and again. I thought we were going to get this thing for free, man. I said, let's keep going and see how far we can go here. And eventually, they said, hey, are you ready to move forward?

And we were like, all right. I think we're at the point now where we can make a decision. And we made a decision. And at that point, I was like, guys, this is silly, right? It's silly. How do you? So, I mean, look, we've conditioned buyers to do that, right? Like, as sales reps, we've conditioned you to wait till the end of the month. We've conditioned you to wait till the end of the quarter. And look, I do think that there is, obviously, a lot of this has to do with the discovery phase and how much you need this. And this is a want or a need or a must-have or a like-to-have or an Advil or a vitamin, whatever, right? Right. But how, say you're working in a world where you haven't really identified, like, the true impact of the decision and it's like a must-have for the client, which is a no-brainer, like, blah, blah, blah, right?

Say it's, you know, your typical sale, where if the client doesn't implement it by the end of the month, it's not the end of the world, right? Yeah. How do, what is your talk track and, like, to start, and also I want to make sure everybody's clear, negotiation isn't just about price, obviously. Right. It starts all the way at the beginning. So how do you set the stage for that, Mark, to prevent the end of the month, end of the quarter? Ah, panic button. Even if you tell me, yeah, you know what, John, I'm going to probably do this by the end of the month, right? Well, you told me that. Right. But what happens if you don't? And then you're going to skip, I'm going to forecast that, and then you're going to punt on me, and then three months later, we're still going to be chasing each other.

What is your talk track around setting the stage and expectation with a client so that that doesn't happen? Yeah. So the, I think you're right. You have to do all of the discovery stuff up front, but let's just say, for example, you don't do that. You don't get all of the information you need. You're coming to a point where you think you might have to discount on it. My question to you as a salesperson is, how do you know that that's the decision criteria that they want to have on it? Is the discount actually going to be the thing that moves that decision forward? And I think that's where a lot of salespeople make assumptions is they assume that the price is the hangup. Yeah. It's probably not.

It's probably either that they're just busy or they're trying to make a decision based on other criteria that may be involved. So our job as salespeople selling into that organization is to be able to understand, okay, how are you going to make this decision? What is it that you're hung up on? Why is it that this is taking so slow? And then being able to ask those questions so that you can move that forward. And I, I'm a fairly big fan of like direct blunt conversation. So I'm okay with you saying, Hey, this is taking quite a bit longer than it usually does. Why is that? Why? Yeah. Why is that? Like what's going on in your organization? Help me to understand what's going on in your organization of why this is going the way it is.

Cause when we chatted at the beginning, you said you were going to make a decision at the end of the month. Hey, we're at the end of the month. You haven't made a decision yet. What's going on? Oh, I just need a little bit more time to do what, right? What is it that's actually going on? So have you read Joel's effect? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Matt Dixon's new book. So, yeah. So I just, I just finished that, uh, the other day and I, and what really struck me was, was the, you know, I, and I focused on no decision, you know, no, we all lose to no decision. That's our biggest competitor. Right. And that book got my eyes open up a little bit to the indecision factor, right? And de-risking the decision because it's not that price is the issue.

It's the fact that they are scared to death to make the wrong decision. Because that's what people get fired for. They don't get fired for not making a decision. Correct. They get fired for making a bad decision. Yes. And so I always, I, you know, I've been coaching reps to say, Hey, um, you know, make sure you ask, like, if you got, if you're going to close, say you want this launch by, you know, whatever, uh, October 1st, right? Well, that what, Hey, what happens if you don't launch October 1st? Like what's the impact of the business, right? There's an answer. There should be an answer there. Right. And if it's not, then you're not, you don't have a lot of leverage. But then the additional question I want to add to that is, Hey, what's the impact here of a bad decision?

And who holds the bag to that? And then you hear, then hold, like I've asked that a couple of times now and you start to uncover what the real issues are. It's like, well, if this thing goes fucking South and it blah, blah, blah, that means I got to waste my, I'm going to lose credibility. I'm going to do this. And it's like, all right, so how can I de-risk that? Yes. So how, how do you uncover that risk factor? Like, again, are you asking early on, like the decision criteria? Because a lot of times they'll tell you some basic bitch decision criteria of, oh, it's got to be this. It's got to fit our, this, and you got to have industry experience and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it doesn't really uncover that, that risk factor of the bad decision.

So how, how do you thought about that as it relates to negotiations? So we ask that same question that you ask, like what happens if, you know, you get on the hook for making a bad decision here, but we flip it and ask it in the other way. So we say, how will your boss know if you've done a good job? Ah, okay, cool. So our question is more like, well, if you get, let's just say perfect world, you make a decision here, this is the best thing ever, you implement it and you get celebrated, what are the reasons you're going to get celebrated? Like, why is everyone going to give you a high five three months from now? Well, they're going to give me a high five because implementation went well. Great.

So that means we have to have an SI that helps you to implement that properly. Here are the recommendations that we have for an SI five out of five stars on all of their implementations. It's going to go well, please don't choose anyone else. What else? Well, it also means that it's easy to use and that we've had good training. Cool. Let's dedicate resources to make sure that you get great training out of this. What else? And so we just go through all of the reasons of how they're going to get celebrated and we tick those boxes. So same idea, just the other way around. I gotcha. Yeah. Cause that, that's really the kind of the, the key takeaway for that whole thing was de-risking the decision.

Absolutely. And, and the industry, and I, and I see it all the time too, cause, cause everybody talks about how, you know, obviously in corporate executive, they came from corporate executive board, right? That whole train. And they, they, they had that standard by the time somebody comes to us, they're already 60 to 70% of the way of the sales process and all that other stuff. But the, the idea that customers have more information than they've ever had before is, it's sometimes like, oh, they're always me as a sales rep. I actually think that puts us in a much better position because there's too much information. Yeah. Let me simplify this for you. If you can synthesize this into like, okay, here, and that's why Joel is like, you have to understand the decision.

Like you have to judge their ability to make a decision first of all, and then offer your opinion of that. It's like, Hey, here's my opinion. Here's what you should do. And if you give me too many options, you're going to lose me. Yeah. I'm going to be like, ah, okay, nevermind. Right. We know that historically, like the two biggest, especially in the SaaS world, the two biggest, single biggest issues in any kind of software sale are not the sale. It's the adoption of the software after the sale and the utilization of the software after people actually adopt it. So we are trying to address that upfront with a lot of the questions that we develop for folks to say, okay, we know that the two biggest things are adoption and utilization.

How are you going to make sure on your side that once this is done, we've closed the deal. How are you going to make sure that the team actually adopts the new software? Well, we don't have a plan. No problem. Here's the plan that we have for the vast majority of the companies, just like you to make sure that adoption is good. We are so confident in this plan that we're going to dedicate resources behind it. And then we go into the utilization thing as well. The thing that I think a lot of people don't understand here is like when you start saying, hey, here's the biggest issue, here's the biggest issue or the two biggest issues that we say, see after this is done, that kind of opens people's eyes to go, oh shit, I didn't think about that.

And that's great for you because now you look like the guiding light in that kind of circumstance. And they're like, oh, I'm surprised that you brought that up. Actually, I'm surprised that you've labeled this as something that I should be concerned about. And that makes you now look like a more trustworthy source. And it also, interestingly enough, presents massive opportunities for you to cross-sell and upsell additional services that you maybe didn't consider because you're only thinking about the seats that you're selling and not necessarily the managed services that go with that. And I think that's where a lot of, especially junior reps, are scared to bring up the negative shit, right? They want to paint everything in this beautiful picture.

And it feels counterintuitive, but it's not that when you bring up all the negative shit and say, hey, let me tell you when things go well, this is what it looks like. When things don't go well, this is what it looks like. Exactly. And it hasn't gone well sometimes. We have clients who didn't have this, didn't do that, and they wasted their money. And quite frankly, I don't want you to waste your money here. I'd rather you not do this than do it with us in some half-assed way. And the credibility that you gain from that is so incredible. But so many reps are so scared to add that extra service because it's like, I got to sell my shit first. And then that other stuff, my customer success team will take care of, my account management team will take care of.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Provide the whole package. And I'd love your perspective on this, right? Like provide the solution. Fuck budget here for a second. That's why I never ask, what's your budget? Ever, ever, ever. I don't ask that. I ask, is this a budgeted thing? Because I want to know where are you on the process of- Do you have money? Yeah. Have you, and have you identified this? Like, because if you haven't budgeted for this yet, that means we are way early on in the sales process, right? And I get, that's fine. But if this is a budgeted thing, well, now you are pretty far down the sales process. And now, but with that, I don't want to know the number because I want to hear what you have to say and then paint the picture of what the solution should be based on that.

Right. So how do you approach that? Like, because sometimes that number is going to be pretty hefty. And, and then do you believe in taking things away when people start chipping away? Absolutely. Because that's exactly the concession strategy that we say. Okay. Well, they may say, well, here's the whole solution. And this is the price that's attached to that whole solution. And they're going to get, oh my God, right? Sticker shock. That's way bigger than I thought, especially if they're well-trained, right? They're going to have that approach to you. And then you're going to say, hey, I can sense from you that this doesn't necessarily align with what your expectations were. Tell me more about that.

What does that mean to you? They're going to tell you all of their objections. And then you're going to say, okay, well, tell me, give me an understanding of what's important out of this whole package. Like why, why would you decide to move forward? Well, we like this, this, and this. Okay, cool. What about the other things? You don't want to include those other things. Here's why those other things are important, by the way, and why you should keep them. And now you can start to get into a conversation around, okay, well, we can remove this and that's going to reduce the price by that. We can remove this and that's going to reduce the price by this. Or they may say, well, we want the whole thing for cheaper.

And then you have to make a judgment call to say, well, okay, I have a range of acceptance because I gave list, right? When I proposed this thing. And now I have to decide how much am I going to decide to discount this thing? And what am I going to ask for in return? So you don't just, you don't just have to take things away. You also can say, well, I can reduce the price if I ask you for something in return, but then you've got to be very clear about what it is you ask for in return. And that thing or that collection of things that you ask for in return has to be equal to or greater than the thing that you're giving away so that you're not at a trade deficit. And this, so this is the trap that I think this is why I fucking hate discount selling.

I fucking hate discount selling. First of all, I think proactive discount selling is the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life. You just explained it earlier. It's like, I didn't even ask for one. And at the end of the month, some kid says, hey, John, I know you're probably going to sign next month, but if you do it, there's one, you just lost all credibility. But let's, let's talk about the dis, I want to talk about this. And then I want to go to like, what's changed in the past six months based on what's going on right now. But with this discount, like the whole, hey, if you sign by the end of the month, shit, okay, you'll get 20% off. I, I hate that strategy because every buyer knows the discount doesn't expire.

It's like, what did your fucking profitability change over the weekend, asshole? So, and guess what happens? I tell reps this all the time. You're going to dictate, okay, by the end of the month, you're going to get this and I'm going to give you 20% off. Clients can say yes, because it sounds great at that moment, whatever. Well, guess what happens at the end of the month? Their end of the month happens. Right. And it's more important for them to sign their contracts that's going to drive revenue for them. So legal team procurement, that type of thing, than it is to buy something that is going to cost them money. So they're inevitably going to throw you down at the bottom of the list when it comes to a priority standpoint on contracts at the end of the month.

And then inevitably, you're going to get the call on Monday and you're going, I'm sorry, like it was just crazy busy last month. We're ready to move forward here, Mark. Just make sure to send over that contract with that 20% and we're good to go. How do you deal with that? I know you don't put yourself in that position, but how do you coach people on dealing with that bullshit scenario? Because if you come back, if you did that to me, and then on Monday I said to you, hey, Mark, like, I'm sorry, Friday was crazy. Let's move forward. You're like, sorry, John, the discount expired. I'd be like, fuck you. I'd be like, you know what? I'm going to wait until the end of the quarter now and I'm going to make it that much more difficult for you, asshole.

You know what I mean? So how do you avoid that shit? Well, so if you have made the mistake of let's deal with this in two ways. So we'll deal with like, okay, if you made the mistake of trying to discount early and you waited at the end of the month and they came and tried to collect after the month was closed. I do think that you should still hold firm on saying, hey, unfortunately, that opportunity has passed. I'm happy to have a conversation with you about how we can build this into a solution for you. But the opportunity is gone because if you just you're going to keep reinforcing bad behavior from the buyers. But let's just say that the whoever the buyer is decides they're going to hold out again.

Your job now is to make sure you've got to your point and everything that you preach. You've got good enough pipeline to say, hey, that opportunity was then. That's yes, we discounted because we didn't have enough people to fill the seats. We have enough people now. Thank you very much. We're full price again. And in fact, I had this conversation with someone the other day where they said, well, if I wait until the end of the month, will that price change? I was like, you could try, right? Like you could try and give it a go. But the risk is, is that you don't get a seat. And so that's going to be a challenging conversation if this is something that you actually really need. And then my next question was, and it sounds like this is just a price based decision for you.

And if it's a price based decision for you, we're not the right people for you to have a conversation with. You need to go talk to someone else. And this is the most important thing that I think people need to understand is if you don't believe in your product enough for it to be only about price, right? Like if you're thinking like, oh, people are making a decision on this product because of the price, sell something else. Yes. Because that is, you're just putting yourself into a situation where you're, you don't believe in it. So you're always going to be stuck there. And there's no, and there's no sale as it relates to that. Like there, there takes no sales skill. Correct. You are, you are a salaried, I might as well just hire a salaried employee and put my pricing on my fucking website and hire customer success to answer questions.

Yep. Right. And, and that's why when I, and you brought this up, that's why I always ask, hey, what's your decision? You know, you said earlier, like one of my gets is obviously, hey, what's your decision criteria here? And, and, and, and I made the mistake prior previously of saying, hey, what's your decision criteria? And then just get, okay, great. But now I obviously ask, could you prioritize that for me? What's most important to you when making this decision? What's least important? And if they don't put price on the list, I always put it on the list. So say if they're like adoption and this and this and this, I'm like, great. Let me ask you, if, if, if all, if we kill it, if we're way better than everybody else in all those categories right there, but we're twice as expensive, where does that put us?

And they'll say, well, price is all, okay. So could you help me understand? Is it first on the list? Yes. That's a great way to do it. That means before I even get to the, I will just, I will get the fuck out of that conversation. Like if you say straight up, yeah, you know what, John, price is number one for us right now. I'll be like, you know what, Mark, thanks for your time. Let's save each other both a lot of time here. We're not the cheapest, nor do we ever want to be. So if that's really the case here, then, you know, go talk to X, Y, Z, right? That type of thing. Yeah. I had a conversation with someone the other day and the funny thing is, is that we're both trainers who sell and negotiate for a living.

And so I was having a conversation with someone where we had come up with a deal and they had said, okay, we're going to put 200 people through this program. Fantastic. Wonderful. All the rest of it. And then they came back at the end, just before a classic procurement move, it came back just before at the end. And they said, oh, you know what? The numbers have changed. We actually need to reduce it to 50, but we need to keep that same price. And no, that's not how this works. Thank you so much. I do appreciate your concerns. But if the numbers have changed, the price has changed. That's how this works. And they said, well, I can't believe that you're pulling back on this deal. I said, I didn't pull back.

You pulled back. You were the one that said we're going from 200 to 50. So, yeah, I think it's really important for people to really hold firm on that, because even if you do have to walk away from that kind of a deal, I promise you, you didn't want that deal in the first place. This goes back to the problem children, right? If they're a pain in the ass during the sales process, what do you think they're going to be as a customer? Right. Period. Like, you have to understand that. If they're going to be that difficult through the process, then they're going to be that difficult at a client. And if you get paid on recurring anything, like if you're one of those reps that's like a one and done, you get your permission check for that one deal and see you later, and it doesn't tie to.

But now that things are rough, I'm seeing a lot of companies tie revenue towards renewals. Yes. If you actually don't get paid. I talked to somebody last night at Inbound who said they actually are making it so that they get a little bit when they close the deal, but they actually get the much bigger chunk when they renew the deal in a year. Oh, I like that. So it was like the sales rep is on the hook for that year. And maintaining the relationship and following up. Yeah. I love that. Which aligns, right? So talk to me a little bit about what's changed here from what you're seeing with procurement, because I think what happened scared the shit out of a lot of sales reps, myself included. And what struck me in Q1, when COVID hit, we charged 20, 30, 40 grand, whatever, right?

When COVID hit and the world stopped, I was like, holy shit. What's a number that an executive could just put on their credit card without having to get approval for it? Right. And I was like, $5,000. Fuck it. Go, right? And we all of a sudden started selling like that, like hotcakes, right? It was like people just five grand, five grand. And then we went to 10, 20, right? But when this one hit, I took the same approach. I was like, well, fuck, nobody's signing these 30, 50, $100,000 contracts anymore. So what can I do? Five grand again, let's go. And what I found was it was different because this time it didn't matter whether it was five grand, two grand, 10 grand, a hundred grand. It was going to the CFO, period.

And so, and you really, I mean, I was shocked, quite frankly, like big organizations that had, you know, seemingly had shit loads of money. And I'm like, you can't, like CRO's even telling me, we got to do this, John, CFO, fuck off. Right. So what, what has changed from the procurement perspective now? Because before money was free, who cares? Overlap on, you know, tech stack, shit like that. ROI didn't matter as much. What has been, what has the mantra been for procurement with this shift of, of, okay, we got to start paying attention here. Well, that's exactly what you said. The CFO and I went through a similar conversation earlier on in my career with it, where a CFO literally walked into a room with the entire procurement team and said, uh, we are going to be reducing costs by 35%.

Your job is to be able to deliver to that number, go forth and prosper. And I remember someone who was afraid of mine raised their hand and said, Hey, well, what about the preexisting contracts that we have? The CFO said, cool story. Don't give a shit. Hold them up. We're reducing prices. Um, and that's, that's basically what's happening in a lot of these organizations. The CFO is saying, Hey, it's my job to make sure I can steer the company through financial difficulty. We do that two ways. We do that by increasing revenue and managing costs. I can't impact the revenue conversation as a CFO, as much as I can impact the cost conversation. So the conversation that that CFO is having now is saying spending freeze on everything, anything that we consider to be nice to have travel conferences, training, marketing, those kinds of things are now on hold.

And now you have to justify all of those expenses with a business case for it. So in the past, we've been in a position to be able to say, okay, we need this. It makes sense. It's going to help us. We're going to go forward and do that thing. But now everyone has to be able to support that with a business case that goes through that, which is actually really good for people like you and me, because we get to say, okay, here's the impact that we can have on that kind of an organization. What really sucks is for those folks who were experimenting with a lot of different things. Right. And I believe experimenting and innovation is a really good thing in organizations, but innovation and experimentation is just going to go like this and it's really going to tighten up.

And I think we're going to go through a period of, um, the tables have flipped, right? I think for the last, I think it's safe to say for the last, at least seven to 10 years, salespeople have had a really good time, especially in the software space, selling SaaS software. And now that you're not just going to see renegotiation of contracts. You're going to see like, like renegotiation of seats. We're going from 3000 seats down to a hundred, right? Or we're going, we're canceling this entirely and we're consolidating to one wholesale provider who's just added on as an additional service. So these best of breed sort of softwares that you've seen are going to go through a very difficult time, I think.

And that's what's, that's the problem right now is because not only are, is that happening, but because of the grow at all costs and the past 10 years, the skills of these sales reps to be able to have those business conversations, justify the ROI, create a business case, are just not there, they're just not there. And that's the scary part to me is like, you have all these reps who are now deers in headlights saying, holy shit, like, wait a minute, what? You don't want this? You don't need it? Like, no, I don't like, this is justified for me. How the fuck this is going to actually have an impact on my business. And I mean, people are still making decisions, big ones too, making like they're writing checks, but if it doesn't align from a business standpoint and help them achieve their goals of what they're trying to accomplish, good luck at this point.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's why it's so important to have good training, to be able to have those difficult conversations. Because if your team isn't skilled enough to be able to have that difficult conversation, you're just going to continue to lose. You're going to get killed. So in the last, you know, section here, let's talk about, you got this book coming out and nine secrets to win deals and influence stakeholders. First of all, why'd you write the book? Well, number one, because I felt like I had like a burning need to be able to say, look, negotiation's not all that complicated. That's what you do. Here's nine simple steps that you can follow to get ready for your next negotiation. That was the goal.

The second thing was in our industry and what we do for a living, the book is the next step, right? So once you develop that book, you develop a greater level of credibility. And look, I'm not going to stand here and say to the listeners that, you know, now that I have a book, I'm smarter than I was three months ago. But the weird thing is, as soon as you start writing books, somehow, for whatever reason, people view you differently in the marketplace. And it does actually allow me to charge higher prices. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. But I love, you know, what you put together. Give us just a preview. I'm going to tell, obviously, everybody to go grab this thing. But what are some of those nine secrets that really you think are critical for people to really lean into right now?

So we talk about concession management throughout the book, which you and I have talked about throughout this conversation. But I think the single most important secret is secret number one, where we stress to salespeople, look, the reason you're not getting good, profitable deals is because you actually don't even know what you want. Like the conversation that I have to salespeople all the time is, what do you want from this deal? And they say, well, I want a good deal. I say, okay, that actually doesn't mean anything. Nope. Right. When you say a good deal, what does that actually mean to you? Well, they say, I want to make money. I say, okay, still actually doesn't mean anything. What are the component parts of the negotiation that are going to help you to drive a good deal?

Like, what does a good deal mean for you? And then we go through the list, right? Does it mean you increase revenue? Does it mean you sell more seats? Does it mean you reduce risk? Does it mean you get co-branding on something? Could mean a number of different things that people don't actually think about it. And the problem with that is, as soon as they get into a situation where they get asked for a better deal, they immediately concede because they only think the deal is about making the money. And there is nothing else to trade because they've only thought about that one aspect. But once you start to develop those things, then it becomes much easier to manage that deal throughout. And especially during this economy, during this time, having those multiple levers to pull throughout the negotiation is going to help you dramatically.

Yeah. It's funny because we go through that exercise with the scorecard that, you know, right? The gives and the gets. Yeah, absolutely. And the fun thing is, you know, we brainstorm all the gives, right? Like, what are all the things that your clients ask of you? And then you prioritize that. And that's an eye opener in some cases because reps, like when they prioritize what's easy to give away and what's hard to give away, that's a really interesting debate, right? You see senior reps, you know, junior reps, oh, fuck it, demo. That'll super easy to give away. Discounts, really. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up here. Like, we need to push those down. But what's really interesting is the get thing, right?

Because first of all, with the gives, they start to realize that everything that we have has value to it if we put value to it, right? Correct. Like, reps don't think case studies. Oh, fuck it. Here's a case study. A case study positioned the right way is actually a really high value. piece of content to the right person, okay? Yes. And you should be getting something in return for that. But on the get side of the house, really thinking through every single little nuanced thing you could get throughout the entire process puts you in a position to be asking for things in return for this shit. And this is where that reciprocity versus quid pro quo comes into place. You actually want to get in a position where, like, Mark, I'm thrilled to give you what you're asking for, my friend.

And instead of saying, but I need this in return to do that. No, no, no, Mark. In order for me to give you exactly what you're looking for, this is what I need in return from you. Right. Right? So this is where it'd be like, hey, John, I need a discount, right? Mark, I'd love to give you a discount here. Let me tell you, I have to go fight for you internally on my end to get you that discount. If I just go by my boss and say, I need a discount, he's going to kick me right in the ass. So let me ask, if we can get that discount at that price, would you sign this week or whatever it might be? Or would you sign it? I can't promise that I'll get it for you, but would you? Like a kind of an if-and state, right?

Yeah. Now you have some leverage. Exactly. So is that similar to the concept that you're pushing, that you're really trying to give it? Very similar. What I really want people to start establishing at the beginning of the book is first understand what it is you're trying to achieve. Like we call them aspirational goals. What are the aspirational goals that you want to achieve in the negotiation? The biggest thing that I, and this is written from the perspective of a procurement person talking to salespeople. So I want everyone to understand that. Oh, that's cool. Procurement people really, really know what it is they want to achieve at a very deep level. And the problem that I have whenever I chat with a salesperson, because they don't have like a really, really good understanding of what it is they want to achieve.

They automatically become subject to their emotions throughout the negotiation. And if you're subject to your emotions, I can move you. I can move you whatever direction I want in the negotiation. So this first secret is the foundational secret of everything. And everything relies upon that. And a lot of salespeople think, well, what does the customer want? And that's wonderful. And I want, I want you to think that, but what do you want? Sometimes we put the customer's needs ahead of our own and often at the cost of our own interests. Yep. And so we are, we are now, well, the customer wants this. Well, we can't actually afford that, man. We can't afford to make, I give a story in secret number one, for example, where there's this guy who's selling earth moving equipment and earth moving services.

And the procurement person sees the proposal from this guy and says, look, I'll give you the price that you want as long as you can start in May and finish by October. And the guy's stoked, right? He's unbelievably excited and says, yes, absolutely. I think we've got a deal. Takes the deal back to his boss and his boss says, cool, what, what happened with that deal? And they said, well, they just agreed to the price. And the boss is like, well, hang on, procurement people never just agreed to the price. So what's going on with this deal? He said, no, no, it's fine. Well, let's look through the deal. And we find out that we start in May. Well, what happens in May? It rains in May. So we can't actually mobilize to the site.

We've lost an entire month. Our schedule is shot. You've agreed to something that we can't actually do. There's the operational risk, the environmental risk, the logistical risk of this is so big. We can't actually do it. You've got to go back and renegotiate this deal. And that's what I mean by know what it is you're trying to achieve. We all get starry eyed and enamored with the big number. But that big number comes with a catch. And that catch is what you've got to know to be successful. And I think that's also the component of like a little bit of the challenger sale too. It's like the client doesn't always know what they need. They don't always know. They're going to tell you what they think they need based on what their limited understanding of the situation is.

But you as a sales rep going through this time after time and seeing what happens when good and bad things happen. I think it is incumbent upon you. It's imperative that you push back and say, look, like I appreciate that. But it is actually not in your best interest for us. Like not it's not in our best interest, but it's also not in your best interest to do this because we're missetting expectations. And I guarantee I'm going to say yes to that if I say yes to that and you're then going to say yes to your superiors or whoever you're dealing with. And now when that doesn't happen, yeah, we're in deep shit because we didn't come through and contractually we're going to get in a legal battle.

But guess who's holding the bag? Going back to the de-risking the situation. Exactly. You're the asshole who signed this contract to bring us in and misset that expectation. And that could be good for you. So I think that really kind of saying, what do I want? But also what is in their real best interest, not just what they're asking from. That's right. Yeah, exactly correct. And that's why I wrote the book, man, because I feel like saying to folks, like first have the strategy. There's a lot of conversation around negotiation tactics. Like what words do I say? How do I say those words? How do I inflect on those things? Give me the script. And those are good, right? I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

That's a good conversation to have. And we need people to train on those things. But without a good strategy, none of that shit matters. It doesn't, you're just going to be saying nice things at the wrong time and getting things that don't actually matter to the business. Yeah. Awesome. Well, look, we're coming up on time here. We can keep going as usual, but let's leave the audience something to go read about. So where can they find out more information about you, Mark? Negotiations Ninja. And this book, again, Nine Secrets to Win Deals and Influence Stakeholders, where they can find out more information. Best thing to do is to go straight to Amazon to pick up the book, Nine Secrets to Win Deals and Influence Stakeholders, and go to my website, negotiations.ninja, to find out more about what we do.

Or LinkedIn. Just hit me up on LinkedIn. Love that. And for everybody listening, it's negotiations with an S dot NJ. Correct. Plural, because we are good at more than one negotiation. Awesome, Mark. It's always a blast talking to you, brother. Thanks for coming on again. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, John. I appreciate it, man. Absolutely. And everybody, hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And as I always say at the end of these, look, go out there and make somebody smile today, because no matter how bad your day went or you think it's going, make somebody smile and you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much, and I will see you on the other side.

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