February was almost over and we were still in negotiations to close a significant deal that started in mid-December the previous year. It only took one week to negotiate 50-something pages of a ridiculously long contract and now, there we sat, each side dug in over the same three damn issues a month and a half later.
It has been said that patience is a virtue, but the author of that eloquent quote must have never experienced two people representing opposing companies talk past each other for six weeks.
Why Is This So Difficult?
Call me simple-minded or maybe Captain Obvious, but the resolution to the impasse was quite simple. In fact, I pushed my agenda on every call.
Neither the client’s contract guy nor my guy could actually make any changes without checking with their respective attorneys. Instead of getting the attorneys on a conference call to hammer out the remaining issues (this was my genius idea), we played the car sales game.
The car sales game meant that each side took the requested changes to their attorney for consideration. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, it was certain each attorney’s answer to changes would be no.
Rough Edges
“Abrasive” is a gentle way to describe my contract guy’s personality. Pissing off his peer at the client came as natural as a warm summer breeze. This particular breeze just so happened to blow over a rotten garbage dump baking in the sun on the way to the client. It got so bad that the client’s negotiator refused to talk to my guy. Now, I was the mediator to the negotiators.
As the weeks passed, my sailor-language-laden rants to my boss got more and more intense. It appeared my choice of foul words had an impact on him. Even though my boss wasn’t prone to cursing, he was now flinging out f-bombs like a salty seaman when we discussed the litigious morass.
Finally, after weeks of this stupidity and way too many levels of management involved, the opposing attorneys got on a conference call.
Go to The Principal’s Office
The scene was like being in the principal’s office in middle school. Like two fighting children who no longer talked to each other, the two contract guys sat with arms crossed, stubbornly refusing to look across the table. The attorneys were the parents who reluctantly got summoned to hear what dumbass shenanigans their kids were up to. Acting as the principal, I described why we were gathered and the issues to be resolved.
Thirty friggin’ minutes later, we were done. That’s all it took. Problems solved. Holy shit!
Instead of being happy, I was furious that we just wasted six weeks to get to this point. Keep in mind that this was just the legal side of the contract; next we were faced with the business terms. What products would be included, how much of the product, the cost, and other terms remained unresolved.
Not Done Yet
You guessed it, another three weeks passed with both parties dancing around the business terms but never getting to a final answer. In this case, the client was the problem. Each time we agreed to a set of business terms, another procurement guy appeared with different demands.
My client was an enormous company with over 200,000 employees, and maybe it makes sense to have an army of negotiators when a company is super-sized like this one. With only two weeks left in the quarter, I arranged for my vice president of sales from my region to join me at the client.
This guy was a wildcard, and his unpredictable actions made him a sales time bomb. One minute he’d figuratively drop his shorts (the price) to get the deal, the next minute he’d play hardball negotiations so rough that the client relationship was at risk.
I prayed the bomb wouldn’t go off at my meeting.
Preparing to Win
In preparation for the meeting at the client, we reviewed what other levers we could pull to accommodate these wants. Time was becoming our biggest challenge. This deal had to get closed for the quarter. There we sat, on a Monday afternoon in a dark-stained wainscoted conference room with our deadline looming Friday after next.
A dozen or more people from the client spilled into the conference room. Half of the people were comrades working with me rather than against me. The other half were from the client’s procurement organization. They seemed more like the secret police. No one really knew who they were, but they controlled everything.
After the general pleasantries and introductions, one of the unknown procurement guys dived directly into the deep end of the business issues. He explained his demands but without reason.
No, NO, NO!
The room now awkwardly quiet, my VP looked at me, and then directly at the procurement guy, and replied with a very stern “no.” The tone of his answer made me squirm a little and give the others an apologetic smirk.
The procurement guy who was the next level up started his diatribe. It sounded very much like a kid explaining why he should get more candy than everyone else just because he wanted it. Everyone in the room seemed to know their role was to stay quiet, which is exactly what was happening again.
Most of us have been in these unpleasant situations. Everyone was hoping someone else would talk and break the glacial moments of discomfort. But, just like before, my VP stared directly at the procurement guy.
“No!” boomed from his mouth.
His voice was so loud, I slid down my seat in embarrassment. My key contact at the client, who was also a good friend, gave me the WTF look. Scanning the room, it was clear no one wanted to be here any longer as they adjusted themselves in their seats.
“I am the chief procurement officer,” the next guy explained.
“Good grief, we finally got to the big dog of this opaque purchasing organization,” I thought. He carried on about his self-importance before asking for more contractual blood from us.
This time a volcanic eruption of “NO!!” exploded from the red steaming face and gnarled lips of my VP.
If there was such a thing as an awkward meter, it would have gone through the roof. Everyone in the room could tell you about their shoes as our chins were buried deep in our chests to hide from the crazy-uncle situation we found ourselves in.
Everyone except my VP and the Chief Procurement officer, who were currently in a staredown.
Then, it was over.
Some kind of conversation ensued between my VP and the Chief Procurement guy about our partnership, blah, blah, blah. The rest of us looked up in relief and calculated our exit before we were exposed to more verbal pain.
“No” Is A Very Powerful Sales Tool
This story has made for many good laughs while sharing it with colleagues. The lesson didn’t hit me immediately, but it has had a profound impact in negotiations and in many different conversations with clients.
Most salespeople want to be very accommodating to their client’s needs. But sometimes, client requests don’t make sense in the context of good business decisions, like when a client is asking for work to be performed at no charge yet is unwilling to commit to the sale when the proof of value is established.
A simple, well-positioned “no” can propel the sales process forward. The concern my sales colleagues have with this approach is that the client may walk away or stop working with them. If this is the client’s reaction, then you’ve done yourself a favor by stopping the wasted effort early rather than carrying on, hoping for something good to happen.
Hope is not a strategy, but learning when to say “no” is. Saying “no” is not an easy tool to deploy and sometimes comes with significant risks, but it’s one of the most important selling tools in our arsenal.
