CHAMPION STRATIGES

Strategies for customer centered selling success

Negotiating/Closing and the Three Ts: Trust, Time and Tactics

I was speaking with James Christ, GM of Crown BMW in Princeton, NJ recently about the walk-around competition at his store and the conversation expanded to a discussion about negotiation.  I told James that I was from that area (Trenton) and for three years was the voice of the Princeton University Men’s Basketball Program.

I had the opportunity to watch legendary coach Peter ‘Pete’ Carril during his last three years as the Tigers mentor.  Other Division One school’s feared playing this Ivy League school in the post season because of their negotiation mastery of ball movement.  In 1996 Coach Carril’s last year at Princeton they upset UCLA in the first round, it was a great game for me to call and watch.  He is the only Division One college coach with 500 victories to never have a player on an athletic scholarship.  You played for Coach Carril to be a better negotiator at life, using his three T’s on the court (Trust in your team members, Time to pass the ball and slow the game down and Tactics to deliver the backdoor scoring opportunity), so this week let’s look at Negotiating/Closing and the three T’s.

Successful negotiating requires you have a strategy. The clearer your strategy before negotiating, the more successful you will be. I always tell everyone who attends my sales training classes – “If the guest likes, trust and respects you, they will listen to you as a professional, as someone who can offer a solution to their product needs”. This leads you to a natural part of the process or the apex of value selling – Negotiating/Closing.

At the core of this strategy is what Coach Carril referred to as the “3 Ts; but we will look at them from a sales standpoint of Negotiating and Closing: Trust, Time, and Tactics.”

TRUST – The more trust you and the guest, customer or client have in each other, the less need there will be to negotiate. The risk is in knowing whether the trust is real or perceived. Trust only comes through time and the quality of interactions (rapport building) you have with the customer.

To gauge the level of trust you have established, consider what the other person has told you about their individual situation or company’s situation. Remember:  “Buyers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. The more they tell you that they have not told others sales consultants or dealerships, the more trust they have in you.

Perceived trust is blind and will get you in trouble very quickly. It often comes when the other party (guest or sales consultant) is a good communicator and is easy to get along with, but “pain” or resolution to a situation is not resolved. Remember:  The 80/20 rule in sales!

TIME – The more time you have spent investigating/product presentation/demonstration and trial closing before finalizing the deal, the greater your leverage at the negotiation/closing phase. If time is of the essence to you and your guest, client or customer, do not allow the person to rush you or short cut you through a good value added sales process.  Proceed with your Asbury Automotive Group’s “Road To The Sale” process.  (Don’t forget about the early managerial introduction)

 

 

A good negotiator/closer will use it to their advantage by knowing timelines the customer is dealing with (The Motivation for being in front of you NOW) – without revealing anything other than what is necessary to help you close the negotiation.

TACTICS – People use tactics to negotiate when they do not have an established level of trust with the sales consultant or they don’t have time working in their favor.  They have been at two or three stores with unprofessional sales consultants and now it’s down to the best price.

The number and type of tactics a customer will use is in direct proportion to the lack of trust they place in others. We have heard and seen them all lie, cheat, con, give miss-information just to formulate in their mind that they have a good deal.

One way of looking at the role these 3 Ts play in negotiating/closing is to think of the sum of the three equaling 100%.

If you have a high degree of trust in the other person and they have trust in you, then there is no need to use tactics or leverage time. In this case, trust might be 75% to 100%.  A stronger position for value selling or a one sit close! (It is not a lay down)

On the other hand, if you have very little trust in the other party and have not asked “Hi-Gain” questions or built rapport, then you need to introduce them to a manager early in the process. Early managerial introductions add a level of openness and comfort to guests, clients or customers. This allows you to continue with value selling and gives the dealership the time to structure and complete the negotiation/close.  In this case the sum of the two might be 75% or more.

The worst case would be when you have zero time to work the process properly in order to negotiate and there is no trust between you and the customer. In this case, the only “T” you have or the other person has is tactics.  However, your success rate in value selling may be 33% or lower because now you are merely an order taker.  You have stepped out of the Selling Process and no longer contribute value.

Your ability to increase the level of trust (rapport) will always allow your guest, client or customer to decrease the importance of tactics.  Start today paying close attention to the level of trust that exists between you and each of your customers.

I encourage you to really think about this, even if you are not currently in a negotiation situation. Now is a great time to practice by role-playing, negotiation and closing situations with co-workers or management before you sit across the table when it really counts for you and the dealership!

Wise sales consultants know how to assess each T with each guest customer.  The more adept you become at this, the better negotiator/closer you will become.  Coach Pete Carril’s three T’s are being used in the college game by Coach John Thompson III at Georgetown University who guided his team to the 2007 Final Four (He was a former assistant coach under Pete Carril and later became head coach of the Tigers and hated for me to announce his name as John Thompson the third) and in the NBA by the Sacramento Kings.  When Rick Adelman became Sacramento’s Head Coach before the 1998 – 1999 season, coach Carril helped Adelman install the Princeton offense and oversaw the Kings’ development into one of the NBA’s best, most talented and most potent offensive teams.  Are the three Ts part of your strategy?  They should be.

Make It A Champion Day!

“SALES TRAINING MATTERS”