Print Solutions December 2006
FEATURE ARTICLE
The Rise of Anti-Sales Seminars
And why they don’t matter
By Rebecca Trela
It has a certain sensational appeal: secret anti-sales training seminars, a
guerilla approach to purchasing aimed at decoding and demolishing the
traditional sales pitch. Hundreds of buyers gather around an enthusiastic
consultant, learning to talk their sales reps out of the decent margins they
take home to their families.
Stories about seminars like these have left many distributors wondering about
the combative information print buyers are receiving. Are there really
“anti-sales” seminars? Are they teaching buyers to talk down the price, force contract
conditions and use body language and diction to influence transactions?
In a word, yes.
“Corporations realize that purchasing can be a huge profit center,” says Mike Schatzki, principal of consultant firm Negotiation Dynamics, Far
Hills, N.J.
“It’s not exactly anti-sales, but they are enhancing their bottom line at the
expense of the sales organization
’s bottom line.” Schatzki, who travels the world to conduct negotiation training for buyers and
sellers, says that in the course of a two-day seminar, he taught one Midwestern
manufacturing corporation techniques that saved hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
“Although the number of people in sales is probably 20 times greater than those
in purchasing, about one third of my clients are buyers,” he says. Some on-site sessions are tailored to a specific company or industry;
some deal more generally with the world of business-to-business transactions.
Try Googling for a negotiation seminar and prepare to be overwhelmed. It seems
there is no end to the cadre of experts who promise your client the inside
story on price, nonverbal communication and controlling a deal.
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry
The truth is, although negotiation seminars are available, even gaining in
popularity, most print buyers say they get information that matters to them
from coworkers, job experience or even their print rep. Many have tried a
formal education session, but the most valuable instruction comes from hours on
the job.
“I worked very closely with a print buyer at my internship,” says Allison Steel, a print buyer for Boston financial firm John Hancock Funds.
“I just picked up on what they were doing. And I’m still learning, of course, but it isn’t something that comes from a classroom.” Many buyers in the industry—including Steel’s purchasing supervisor, Dan Rollins—say there’s no teacher quite like experience.
In other words, seminars and manuals do not make a purchaser. There’s some disagreement among print buyers about the importance of “relationship selling” and how often to call, but most industry veterans agree on one thing: the best
vendor will always rise to the top.
Negotiation can be done on price, but not quality, says Diane Dragoff,
purchasing manager for United Way of Massachusetts Bay in Boston. After decades
of experience buying and selling print, she says, formalized negotiation
tactics are superfluous.
“It’s not like negotiating on a car,” she says. “This is custom manufacturing and it’s individualized.” Most of the valuable information she uses to buy print she learned on the job,
not through seminars. In fact, Dragoff says, she hasn
’t been to one in years. “We have a web intranet of nine vendors, and I like to be honest with them.
Mostly they work cooperatively and they all know each other. It
’s like little kids—you play nice or you don’t play at all.”
Rollins, who also purchases print at John Hancock, has 25 years of print
industry experience—his first job after high school was for a printer. He sees competition as
healthy for printers and says that the way to win his contract is through
quality and service.
“Of course relationships exist, and there is some interaction back-and-forth, but
this is business. Either they can do the work, and they do good work, or they
can
’t. The simpler the process, the bigger the benefit for me.”
One of Schatzki’s clients, president of Illinois-based manufacturer Streator Dependable, holds
the same philosophy about buying: it
’s a business relationship. “It’s definitely not combative,” Paul Walker says. “We had this old pat-on-the-back relationship [before the seminar],” which he describes as “good” but inefficient, leaving the company’s money on the table. “It’s great to have relationships with vendors, but we make them perform at the same
time.”
When It Doesn’t Go Their Way
If a quote comes in unusually high, Dragoff lets the distributor know that he
has an opportunity to match her other eight firms
’ prices. “Otherwise, that’s it for negotiation,” she says. “But it’s usually not like that. I like to give people an idea of what’s going on. I spread the jobs around and we all work on a relationship basis
with each other.”
The cheapest shop in town—what too many assume is a buyer’s dream—will end up bankrupt, says Rick Chapman, a sales consultant in Connecticut and
author of two marketing bestsellers.
“It’s about being able to help someone discover what they might not have thought of
and allow them the opportunity to pay for that. It
’s the same in every area of human performance—when you’ve got something that is good, it’s never about price.”
In order to get the best fit for his company, Walker says, Streator Dependable
learned that its buyers had to equalize the playing field and assign value to
the
“extras” that make a good relationship: training opportunities, material quality,
delivery options, payment options and responsiveness.
“The better vendors don’t always have to be the lowest price. They have to be better,” he says. “On the other hand, just because someone is the lowest price doesn’t mean they’re at their lowest price,” indicating the need to probe for extra margins. Training his company’s buyers to reevaluate how they buy and what they tell sales reps has made the
difference.
Jim Camp, a sales consultant and negotiation guru, speaks fondly of his longtime
friend Woody, a print industry veteran.
“He’s one of those guys who is able to create an idea of quality. He’s able to fill their world with a vision of what they require, which drives the
negotiation, not the price. In fact, he
’s the most expensive printer I know, and has been as long as I’ve known him.”
Camp, who has conducted thousands of negotiation seminars worldwide for buyers
and sellers, is a fan of pragmatism.
“It shocks me how much time people spend on tactics or cutting their price,” he says. While most sellers try to lower prices to make a sale, they should
spend every waking moment improving their performance.
|
Sales Counters
Here are some popular anti-sales negotiation tactics you may run into from
buyers:
THE FLINCH
This tactic is a physical or verbal exclamation of horror at the “ridiculous” price offered by a salesperson.
If the buyer feels the need to use this tactic, then he or she hasn’t seen the value you can bring at your price point. You need more explanation or
better understanding of what the client firm is seeking, not a lower margin.
“MY MANAGER WON’T LET ME”
The buyer tells you that the president, CFO, executive committee, etc. won’t grant the authority to make a purchase. This isn’t a problem with the buyer. The seller has misidentified the decision-maker.
Remember to ascertain at the beginning of contact with an account that the
person you
’re dealing with has purchasing authority.
CONE OF SILENCE
The seller talks, and the buyer says…nothing. But wait! Don’t start negotiating with yourself. If the seller arrives, gives a pitch, and
waits, he or she won
’t score the sale, industry experts say. (Avoid the “show up and throw up!”) Instead, ask questions about the company’s revenue goals and problems, and work on a spreadsheet that demonstrates your
company
’s ROI opportunity.
Source: The Product Marketing Handbook for Software by Rick Chapman
|
What Is Anti-Sales?
“Every tactic out there has been categorized and understood,” Chapman says. “There’s a ritualistic aspect to buying in almost all cultures. These tactics, at a
certain point, become obvious to everyone but it almost has to be done to
demonstrate good faith and follow proper negotiating posture.”
Anti-sales training originated in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s as an answer to formal sales seminars popularized in the ‘50s and ‘60s by IBM and Xerox. “Now, sales seminars are incorporating those anti-sales counters, and countering
them,” he says. “Negotiation is an answer to closing techniques, and there’s an answer to that now. It’s choreographed like a kabuki dance.”
Corporate purchasers, who may have millions of dollars at stake through
franchise-wide deals, are the most likely to invest in negotiation seminars,
Schatzki says. They are also likely to have familiarity with body language
interpretation techniques and other psychological theories.
New print buyers who are unfamiliar with the industry are also more likely to be
combative with experienced distributors, eager to prove that they have the
savvy to get a fair price. To avoid this, work with your prospect as a partner,
explaining the print process. Even if you don
’t get the job, you’ll have made inroads to a better business association.
As the print industry evolves, formal negotiation will become less and less
relevant to the sales arena.
“Everyone has an idea of what an envelope should cost,” Dragoff says. “You may say, ‘Ooh, mine has windows,’ and you may say, ‘I could print that for 10 percent less.’ But that is going the way of the dinosaur.”
Most print buyers are thrilled when sales reps understand the nature of their
business and the print business.
“Marketing material is 10 times more complex than a stack of envelopes,” Dragoff says. “You have to sit down and really understand your customer’s problem. And then that job has a custom solution, and it has a unique price.”
Smart buyers understand the value of a successful job, completed on time by a
reasonable business partner. More sophisticated pieces require a greater
rapport and understanding between buyers and sellers, with price relegated to
peripheral importance. Stock items like statements, invoices and even
letterhead can be grid-priced, Steel says, but the firm
’s most important variable data mailing and brochures entail a high level of
scrutiny and involvement.
“I have a vendor, not the cheapest, who calls me all the time,” she says, which can be annoying with a low-end order. “But when I know I have a complicated job, it goes to this guy. Because it’s done, and it’s done right.”
Rebecca Trela is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to
rtrela@PSDA.org.
