Example Whiteboard Sales Negotiation

As mentioned in the general post on sales negotiation, keeping your sales funnel full depends on a continuous flow of successful negotiations with engineers and their buyers.

A quick example of the whiteboard strategy follows. The scene is that your buyer just said they want to negotiate your proposal and you walked up to the whiteboard to list out the issues and had them rank them in order of importance - you secretly know your own rankings.

Looking at the relative ratings reveals instant compromises that can be made to move the sale along quickly. For instance, it appears that you might be able to offer holding a certain level of their inventory on consignment if the price could be increased by just 0.2%. Also, you might be able to work in a second shift to expedite lead times if their minimum order levels are raised 10%.

See how it works? You simply exchange what’s important to you for what’s important to them. It’s all done in good faith, but I like to keep my ratings secret to have a little extra leverage.