Negotiate to Increase Your Training Budget!

Negotiation is vital to organizational effectiveness. Sales Trainers can implement better sales training programs by teaching negotiation tactics. These tactics can be used to facilitate sales support and it can also be used by the trainer themselves to justify a business case to upper level management for increasing training budgets and obtaining the funds for new training technologies and resources that drives sales support. GET YOUR BUDGET BACK!

Sales negotiation is an increasingly important part of the sales process. Negotiation starts when the sales professional and the buyer are in agreement that a sale should be made. A price will be compromised when the sales person gives a price drop incentive or increases the benefits. At that point, the buyer will be more open to purchasing when there is an increase in benefits.

The buyer will also negotiate before making any kind of commitment and give objections to the sale to see what they can "get" as a part of the deal. The sales person will then overcome these objections by raising the value of their sales position. The sales closing will occur when all the objections are answered and all selling points are negotiated. The final offer, commitment and the signing of a contract that outlines the financial agreement will be the result of these series of negotiations.

• There are many financially rewarding outcomes for trainers when they teach sales negotiation skills. For instance, most negotiation techniques and strategies can easily show sales professionals how to add 10% to sales revenues going directly to the bottom line. This is of great value to the organization and will win points with your training department at the Executive level!

• Sales management negotiation can also be used to reduce staff turnover and reduce recruitment and training costs. Proving these business outcome measures with evaluations of profit increase from sales performance will prove that training is critical to the bottom line. The resulting outcome of negotiation can improve staff quality, work production consistency, increase profits and earn you a seat at the Executive board meeting! You will be showing the C-Level executives how you accomplished this through teaching the sales staff how to negotiate. They will not argue with your ability to show positive cash flow by way of positive employee behavior change!

Also when developing and implementing a training program focused on negotiation skills, you may consider the idea of "creative collaboration". Creative collaboration in negotiating arrives at a better collaborative outcome where both parties have an opportunity to develop and improve synergies between each other which benefits both sides.

For many trainers, however, negotiating is confrontational. NOT NEGOTIATING is one of the reasons you may have seen a budget cut in your training department!

LESSON LEARNED: Learn to negotiate and earn a right to speak in the C-Suite! Show your Executives how your training has increased new business revenue and reduced operational costs as your sales team brought in more sales! A little math, a little negotiating skill and a little guts can bring BIG DIVIDENDS - especially when it comes to the organizational support for your training budget! This is a more 'partnership' approach. Everyone likes a Win-win!