Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value - Hardcover

Holden, Reed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0134268415 ISBN 13: 9780134268415

Publisher: Pearson FT Press, 2015

Synopsis

B2B sales professionals: resist mindless discounting, level the playing field against tough procurement organizations, and close the deal on your terms! Negotiating with Backbone, Second Edition definitive guide for every sales pro facing the “procurement buzzsaw” – and it’s just been updated with even more powerful strategies and techniques! Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials seek to dictate, through multiple tactics with a single intent: to gain unprecedented discounts and concessions. Premier pricing strategist and sales consultant Reed K. Holden gives you the powerful new strategies and tactics you need to protect your margins and get the right deal. Holden guides you through recognizing what purchasing negotiators are really up to, keep value at the forefront of negotiations, and avoiding the mindless discounting that wrecks profitability. Holden details eight strategies for all types of pricing negotiations, including approaches for negotiating with price buyers, relationship buyers, value buyers, and poker players, reverse auctions, and much more. In this Second Edition, he offers extensive new coverage of establishing your foundation of value, and developing crucial give-get options, including value-added services. This book will be an invaluable resource for every B2B sales professional, customer-facing professional, and every executive responsible for leading successful sales organizations.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“Procurement relief! Salespeople can unlock the mystery of  procurement price pressure and bidding wars for less than the price of a dinner. Negotiating with Backbone is the first negotiation book of its kind that doesn’t teach ‘manipulative tricks’–rather it focuses on winning strategies that turn into orders.  Buy it, read it, bank it.”

–Jeffrey Gitomer, author, Little Red Book of Selling

 

“It comes as no surprise that evolving procurement organizations are placing increasing pressure on supplier salespeople. Holden distinguished among price, relationship, and value buyers; then offers down-to-earth practical approaches for successful business results. The entire sales organization will learn from Negotiating with Backbone; after all, Holden’s been there, done that!” 

–Noel Capon, R.C. Kopf Professor of International Marketing, Columbia Business School; coauthor, Sales Eats First 

 

“This is a must-read for sales, sales management, and even executive management. The recent evolution of procurement to negatively impact seller margins and therefore sales commissions with complex buying behaviors is real! Holden provides detailed steps to recognize and address these strategies and tactics to maximize profitability. More than a book, it’s a reference guide that should be at your fingertips to use daily to coach and mentor  the sales organization. It will with me.”

–Lewis Miller, CEO and President, Qvidian

 

If you sell B2B (or lead a B2B sales  organization), you’re facing a brutal, profit-draining force that threatens your very survival: the procurement department. In Negotiating with Backbone, world-renowned pricing strategist Dr. Reed K. Holden offers a complete plan for “re-leveling” the playing field, restoring your pricing power, fighting back against ruthless procurement  organizations—and winning!

 

Holden reviews how customer buyer  behaviors and the procurement function have permanently transformed the sales process and why “conventional” selling is getting even tougher. Next, he shows how to systematically anticipate and respond to each of procurement’s most sophisticated traps, gambits, and tricks.

 

Negotiating with Backbone brings together actionable best practices for strengthening customer relationships and selling with  tangible value, despite procurement’s  interference...negotiating far more effectively with “economic buyers” of all kinds... fixing pricing mistakes you’ve already made...giving sales teams all the tools  and insights they now need to succeed!

 

Understand your true value and  power in the sales process
What procurement doesn’t want you to know—about them, and about you

 

Re-stack the deck in your favor

Ten detailed tactics for escaping the  procurement buzzsaw

 

Recognize and plan for  every type of buyer

Get better results with price buyers,  relationship buyers, value buyers,  and poker players

 

Stop surrendering, start negotiating

Master today’s eight most important  negotiating scenarios for each buyer behavior

About the Author

Reed K. Holden, Coach and Founder of Holden Advisors, is a world-class B2B pricing expert who helps clients build go-to-market strategies to drive price leadership, selling backbone, and profitable growth. Dr. Holden specializes in helping sales organizations avoid the procurement buzzsaw SM  by implementing strategies to recognize and counter margin-reducing buying tactics. As a change agent, he works with major corporations throughout the world to manage with in outside-in view of the customer.  He is an enthusiastic and persuasive advocate for demonstrating customer value and price leadership with companies that need to adapt in highly competitive markets. In 2008 he co-authored Pricing with Confidence: Ten Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table, a top selling pricing book for executives.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson FT Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0134268415
• ISBN 13: 9780134268415
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 208