How do you ensure you have all the right people on the prospects side and your internal side to manage complex deal structures and complex negotiations?

The unfortunate answer here is that you can never have all the right people on the prospect side to manage complex deal structure and negotiations. It is about asking the right questions to try to understand all of the key folks, but it is unlikely you will get them all to come to a call or participate in the negotiation the way that you want. Prepping the internal team to ensure everyone understands their role or the internal questions that they may have so there are no internal surprises happe ...Read More

To effectively manage complex deal structures and negotiations, it boils down to a deep understanding of the customer's objectives and their timeline for achieving them, and most importantly which internal resources they will need to progress the opportunity. Once we've identified the "when," the next critical step is crafting a mutual close plan that outlines the roles of both internal and external stakeholders. However, it's imperative not to develop this plan in isolation. Every facet of our ...Read More

Define what "right" means at every stage of the deal cycle. Who is to involve internally and what is a seller capable of covering without support. The more precise the sales process is designed the clearer it is for every function within the company when to take actions. Externally you need to know what persona you need at what stage to get the information you need to move the deal forward. In this case it is crucial to have a real champion that will help you to gain access to the right personas ...Read More

By confirming the skeptic(s) as soon as possible. At the end of every sales call the most common thing is for the prospect to say, "Taking it back to the team". Well, who cares who the decision maker is on the team. We need to know the skeptic(s).  So saying something like, "Hey I know you are going to take this to your team when this call is over. I am curious, who is usually the most skeptical person on the team? What are they skeptical about? What would they want to discuss/see if they were h ...Read More