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Negotiation is not a Destination

You’ve heard about negotiation before, perhaps you agree that it’s needed. But how will a negotiation process that’s specific to sales enhance your strategy and help you win deals?

If there’s one thing everybody knows about sales, it’s that serious negotiation starts when you and your customer or prospect sit down together to close a deal. Right? When people hear the word ‘negotiation,’ they think, “Oh, that happens at the end of the sales process”. The best salespeople start thinking about negotiation much earlier — sometimes even before they’ve made the first contact.

Negotiation is not a destination that you reach at the end of a sale, nor is negotiation about one party winning and the other losing. Negotiation is part of each step of the sales process, not a one-time event. It begins prior to the first sales call and ends with customer recognition of the value your product or service brought to his business.

Interests, options and deal-breakers
Too often, salespeople don’t dig enough to find the customer’s real interests. They need to find out whether the client’s focus is around price, or around the terms and conditions or around something else.

In general the goal is to satisfy clients and provide them with service they consider valuable. When you negotiate from the very beginning of the sales process, you uncover the buying organization’s interests and can therefore generate more creative options. You learn the criteria on which their interests are based, and you discover deal-breakers. You explore how both parties can win. Perhaps even more
importantly, you discover if both parties can win; after all, it’s far better to lose quickly and exit the situation, thereby wasting fewer resources, than to lose slowly.

Achieving the end goal
Additionally, since the end goal is repeating customers, there’s no advantage in creating a situation where you win and your client loses. If your negotiation leaves a bad taste in your customer’s mouth, it’s less likely that they’ll come back to you for more products or services. Conversely, by negotiating in a way that allows both parties to win, you set up an environment that is conducive to a long-term
relationship.

Incorporating negotiation into the early stages of a working sales process leads to deals–and client relationships–that are more mutually beneficial.

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With Christmas Decorations in Place, We Think of the Presents!

With Christmas decorations in place we turn our thoughts to presents to give to others. If someone has a fancy for cooking a wheel of cheese will be a thoughtful gift. We can give cheese of many flavors to them before the Christmas celebrations and it can be used to cut up with fruit to make a nice appetizer platter.

There are many kinds of cheeses with specialties made worldwide. One cheese is made with buffalo milk to give it a different flavor. The base for other cheeses can be found to be made with goat and sheep milk. For a special someone there are cheeses shaped like pears and dipped in wax to keep it pretty. Some are made with portabella mushrooms and some mellow with wine, this would be special for Christmas. If the cheese you give them is from another country make sure you give the companies time to receive it for your holiday giving.

There is the traditional colby or cheddar cheese that you can use in your recipe for cheese balls. Cheese balls are easy to make using cream cheese with onions and spices of your preference. Mixing them up together to let all the flavors meld together.

You can place your homemade cheese balls in a wooden bowl, or wrap it up and set it on a cutting board. When you get someone a cheese block you can include a cutting board made out of marble keeping the cheese cool til you have the job complete.

This is a perfect Christmas present for anyone that loves to eat. They can use it to make their own grilled cheese or nachos. They will remember you long after the holidays. Most of the cheeses included are easy to keep and some will freeze.

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Are You Presentable From All Sides? The Art Of Building A Trade Show Display In The Round

You’re used to analyzing your trade show display from the front. You can hide many things in back, like a disorganized pile of literature or a staff schedule. Yet this kind of design makes a very important assumption: that you’ll be able to put it against a wall and that three of the four sides will be enclosed. While space allotment often works out such that those conditions apply, there are many venues where the design permits, or even favors, trade show displays that can be viewed from any angle.

A Trade Show Exhibit Inspired By Theatre In The Round

For many years, some of the most artistic and innovative theatre companies have been putting on performances in the round. In the round means that there is no ‘back’ to the stage; your audience is all around, so you have to be certain that you’re always presenting an appealing visual from every side of the stage. This becomes even more complicated because the design must be a good setting for the telling of a story.

Remembering the roots of the total visibility trade show exhibit often helps first-time designers with their initial conceptualization. Your information is like the plot of the play, unfolding against the backdrop of your trade show displays. When you have the unit out in the open, the stakes of good display practice are higher, but there’s a lot more potential reward as well. Like the set designer for a major production, you must always remember that you’re promoting a product or the unit itself can take over.

Square Or Round Trade Show Display?

The first choice you will make will be to decide what shape you’d like the unit to take. Theoretically (and budget permitting), you could make it any shape you desire. Some of the companies with the largest budgets will create highly personalized shapes that further represent their company or offer particular advantage for showcasing their products. While this might be a good option for your next trade show display, your first exhibit in the round can be a bit more simplistic. Simply decide whether you’d like the strength and hardness of a squared-off unit, or the curved form of a circular version. Like with so many other questions, there isn’t a wrong answer; it’s simply a matter of which you feel best suits your company.

Remember That Your Trade Show Exhibits Have No Back

Whenever you design one object for an exhibit, you need to plan what will be put in back of it. When you have true total visibility, people will literally see things from every angle. If you’ve chosen to put a sign high above your exhibit, you need to think about how you’ll hide the supports so people passing on the other side can read it as well. In some cases, adjusting for this is as simple as creating a mirror image of the front on the backside. In other cases, it can be much more difficult. One way or the other, the key to success here is to simply plan out all sides of the unit and its components.

Creating a cohesive and visually dynamic freestanding display is an art that takes time and practice to master. Once you have some experience under your belt, you’ll have a substantial advantage because this type of unit looks like no other. Many companies and visitors consider it to be the pinnacle of modern trade show displays. Your first attempt might not win any awards, but with additional experience you’ll be able to create even more outstanding designs that will impress visitors at every angle.

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