From
the book:
‘Turn Your Customers into Your Sales Force’ by Ross Reck
Importance of ‘Negotiation’ was
made clear in the last article(Feb ’13). Also, to become a successful
salesperson, you must become an effective negotiator. There are two basic
philosophies people utilize to get what they want from other people. The first
of these philosophies is the Win-Win Philosophy and the other is the Win-Lose
Philosophy.
The Win-Win Philosophy: “I get what I want by helping others get
what they want and vice versa”.
In a true Win-Win sales transaction, both parties come away feeling very
good about the deal they have just concluded. Both are likely to follow through
on their respective promises, look forward to doing business together again in
the future, and to refer others.
Ross Reck illustrates this with
an example, when a senior vice-president of a bank approached him with concern
that some of the competing banks wanted to go after some of the large
depositors of his bank. These banks were trying to lure these wealthy customers
by offering them significantly higher interest rates. But countering this with
higher rates was expensive and it would have caused a price war resulting in
everybody ending up not making money. Ross Reck suggested that the bank has to
give a reason to stay for the valuable customers. He suggested to the senior VP
to treat these customer in a different way. Provide them special attention;
arrange gala events like afternoon tea parties for targeted customers. Invite
them with engraved initiations. Serve tea and snacks with fine china and
silver. Along with this, make sure the president of the bank or one of the
senior officers was on hand at each of these events to mingle with the guests.
These tea parties were smashing success. Instead of losing any of these wealthy
customers, the bank actually began to attract new customers as the result of
referrals from people who had attended some of the parties. This was truly
Win-Win in action: The customers got what they wanted – special treatment that
appealed to their egos – and the senior vice-president got what he wanted, in
that he was able to hang onto these customers without having to match the
interest rates being offered by the competition.
The Win-Lose Philosophy: “I get
what I want from you at your expense.” In other words, I win and you
lose and you know it. This philosophy does not motivate other people to stand
in line just for the privilege of doing you a favour.
This is illustrated with another
example. Ross Reck went to a local dealership with his family to buy a new car.
After numerous test drives, the whole family liked a particular model and
decided to go for it. They were then put on to the finance person, who took
long time to process their request and give them details regarding the finance
plan and procedures. The finance person told that the approved interest rate is
15.11 percent. But when Ross Reck had a
meeting with bank’s vice-president, he found that the interest rate was 11.9
percent for new car loans. When this was informed to the finance person, he
reluctantly gave him 11.9 percent. But this has created a bad image about the
dealer in Ross Reck’s mind. In the next two years, nine of his friends bought
cars similar to his car. Each of them asked him about where he bought the car,
his experience, etc. Because of the bitter experience he had with the finance
person, he strongly recommended to avoid this dealer. It is very clear, because
of trying to have a Win-Lose transaction with one person, the dealership lost
nine more sales.
General Motor’s survey in 1990 on
consumer behaviour also reiterates the importance of Win-Win philosophy in this
customer centric business environment – A
dissatisfied customer tells his experience to 22 people as against a satisfied
customer who shares it with only 8.
It should be obvious at this
point that if you want to be really successful as a salesperson, you must adopt
the Win-Win Philosophy.
In the concluding part next
month, I will be explaining the PRAM model of the Win-Win Negotiation process.
To be
continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment