Negotiation That's Never Negligible May 02, 2008 Edited by Jeremy Cohen
Never underestimate the value of principled negotiation when it comes to retaining profit for salespeople. That's the take-home message of a new report from Wilson Learning Corporation, which also validates the notion success in development and behavior change is tied to a performance improvement approach, versus training alone.
"Today, it's a given that salespeople need to embrace negotiation in order to be effective," says David Yesford, Wilson Learning's vice president of solution management. "However, there are few studies that can actually demonstrate the impact of negotiation skills on sales performance and business results. 53% of the total revenue value attributed to sales negotiation is extremely compelling."
The survey participants—an environmental services company's 120-person sales force—were developed using Wilson Learning's Negotiating to Yes (NTY) workshop. Through surveys and interviews, Wilson Learning researchers explored the impact on overall negotiation skills of the reps, along with the impact on work performance and productivity and the financial impact to the organization.
"Our findings provided strong evidence for the value of the NTY performance improvement solution in improving the salespeople's negotiation skills and the company's overall business results," says Michael Leimbach, Ph.D., vice president of research and design for Wilson Learning. "We believe that companies with a similar need to make salespeople part of their sustainable competitive advantage can greatly benefit from an NTY implementation as part of a broader performance improvement process as well."
More specifically, the study showed that a sales performance improvement process centered on NTY resulted in better negotiation outcomes, increased sales revenue and profit, improved client relationships for future business opportunities and better internal staff interactions.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
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