If you’ve ever experienced what appears to be extremely unfair behavior from your buyer or his (or her) procurement department, you will laugh out loud at the video below.

I got this link from my friend Joe Terry over at Corporate Visions whose organization helps companies create a compelling message to set themselves apart in the market. One thing that they do that I think really has value is that they know how to [help companies to] deliver the right marketing messages at the right place in the sales cycle.

This video shows some examples of [bad] corporate buyer behavior, but in a consumer context.  I particularly like the scene where a lady is trying to negotiate getting highlights in her hair for free.  When confronted with the stylist who (understandably) is not keen to work for free, she concedes “OK, but I will cover your hard costs only …” Now, where have we heard that before?

Joe goes on to say …

We’re almost so used to B-to-B purchasing demands that we forget how ridiculous they are. This video gives us a chance to step back and laugh, but, it doesn’t change the reality of your customers’ buying habits.What can you do? Do these battles always have to occur? According to The Corporate Executive Board’s Integrated Sales Executive Council, only 9% of brand preference and loyalty decisions are based on price.

Meanwhile, 53% of a prospect’s decision to choose you comes from their sales experience.

So you are saying I’ve got a chance

What these percentages mean is… in a world where everyone sounds and looks the same, your prospects and customers are saying:  “Would someone please cut through the clutter and present a clear path to value that will result if I partner with your company?”Unfortunately, too many salespeople wallow in parity with their presentations and proposals, leaving customers with the perception that everyone is a commodity.  Freeing them up to bring the hammer of B-to-B purchasing down.Avoid these ugly and ridiculous confrontations by preemptively showing the contrast between you and your prospect’s status quo, as well as you and your competition.Value Lives in the Contrast between Pain and GainHere are three easy ways you can use contrast to show value:

1) Focus on what you do that’s unique: Don’t waste precious conversation time playing the “me too” game.  If you’re in a job interview, would you talk about how your resume is exactly the same as the guy who interviewed before you?  Of course not!  Your prospect already knows that your solution is on par with others in the industry… that’s why they agreed to talk with you in the first place.  Instead, identify some unmet or under-served customer pain and talk about what you do uniquely or better to turn that pain into gain.

2) Before and After Stories: When presenting references, don’t just show off the end results your customers realized using your solution. That’s only half the story.  You need to show contrast. What was your customer’s life before they implemented your solution and then after?  Showcasing the pain first provides the foundation for understanding what value your solution brings by helping the customer visualize their current situation and see it getting better.

3) Use colors and space to make emotional connections: Don’t stop with the content of your message. Make sure the way you deliver your uniqueness and value is engaging and memorable. Work the room… or the web conference.  Remember, value lies in the contrast between the pain and the gain, so make the contrast as apparent as possible. Use different flipcharts placed at opposite sides of the room, or split your PowerPoint slide in two, to show the pain and the gain.  And use different colored markers or different colored fonts. In Western cultures, use red for bad and green or black for good. (Adjust the colors based on what significance they carry in your culture.)

Don’t fall for the same old B-to-B buying tactics.  Establish your solution as the one your prospects need by leading with your uniqueness, clearly showing the contrast between you, the status quo, and your competition, and proving it with a before and after customer story that makes your value come alive.

As you may know, The TAS Group, and others,  launched the Dealmaker Partner Network on Sept 29, 2009. Since then I’ve received many inquiries from individuals and companies who’ve expressed both intrigue and interest in what we’re doing. I hadn’t really thought that the DPN would create such interest, and as often happens when ideas evolve, I never called out the core thinking that combined to bring this idea to life.  Here it is in brief:

My perspective is informed by a number of macro trends that, in my opinion, are today combining to shape the future of the economy in general and specifically the sales effectiveness market in which we operate;

• Trend #1. The market is fundamentally changed – and it’s not going back
  The practices that have characterized (and, in truth damaged) our industry – no technology, poor adoption, little sustained delivery of value, ‘best practice-du-jour’, on the fly reinvention of (both sales and marketing) methodology, training event driven learning – are now, and will remain defunct. I’ve written about this a little in a previous post – The ‘New Normal’ in Sales Effectiveness

• Trend #2. We need to re-conceive value creation. 
  We need to prepare for the ‘new normal’ and commit to delivering sustained customer value, redress the value imbalance (you give me $100 and I will give you $13 value in sales training), and in effect re-conceive value creation.  If your customers’ adoption rates of the sales effectiveness solution you provide remains at the industry average (13%), you should give them their money back.

• Truth #3. Our customers need to be Agile – and it’s our job to enable that. 
  Market cycles are becoming increasingly compressed. Volatility is here to stay. Organizations or departments must be able to ‘turn on a dime’.  Velocity, productivity, effectiveness and information flow in the sales and marketing organizations are the enablers of growth that we must facilitate. That’s only achievable through short-cycle closed loop ‘now information’, that can only be facilitated with integrated technology.  Without ‘now information’ I can’t measure, or correct my course.

• Truth #4. This restructuring of the economy creates tremendous opportunity.
  I view the current/recent market challenges more as a restructuring of the economic order rather than a recession. It’s a fine example of capitalism at work, but re-imposes the need for a foundation of trust, ethics and good business practices.  On such foundations are good partnerships and other successful business ecosystems (such as the DPN) built.  We’ve witnessed many exemplars of this trend; e.g. Linux, Cisco, Dell, etc. Uncommon opportunity calls for uncommon partnerships to best support and facilitate the rate of change, innovation and self-disruption necessary in our business models – not just to grow, but to avoid extinction or lingering death.

When some one expresses interest in joining the DPN, my first question is:  “What value do you think the Dealmaker platform, and the DPN in general can bring to your customer?”  My contention is that if the answer to that question isn’t clear, then perhaps now isn’t the right time for the company to join the DPN.  I look for alignment with the core principles outlined above, because if we don’t share a vision, we’re unlikely to succeed.

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog will know that at The TAS Group we try to support the great work being done by the folks over at WITNESS, the charity founded by musician Peter Gabriel.  WITNESS uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations..

I’m delighted to say that on November 11, at the WITNESS Focus for Change Benefit Dinner in New York,  we will be joined in supporting WITNESS by a number of fellow members of the Dealmaker Partner Network.The work that the folks over at WITNESS do is very important, and a quick look at the WITNESS Hub puts into perspective the minor trials and tribulations we face in general commercial life everyday.  I’m very pleased that our partners in the Dealmaker Partner Network are sufficiently philosophically aligned with us to join us in supporting WITNESS.  If you’d like to join us, just sign up for the event at the  WITNESS Focus for Change Benefit Dinner website.  It’s a very cool event anyway, and is both good fun, and a good thing to do.  At least take a minute to have a look.

Recently I caught up with the Executive Director of  WITNESS, Yvette Alberdingkthijm, and I continue to be humbled by the work they do.  I’m also intrigued by how well they use Web 2.0 to defend human rights – something more of us should take time out to do.  I thought that the WITNESS story might be of interest to the readership of this blog, so I asked Yvette to put together a short tale of how they use Web 2.o.  Here’s the story in her words.

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Using Web 2.0 Tools to End Human Rights Abuses

I’m celebrating my first year as Executive Director of WITNESS (www.witness.org), the human rights organization that musician and activist Peter Gabriel founded nearly 17 years ago, with the mission to use video and new technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.

WITNESS partners with and trains human rights groups around the world in the strategic use of video to create change. My “customers” are human rights defenders all over the world, experts in their fields, who need to beef up their skills to have more impact.  In the past 17 years, our expertise in how to best use video and technology, has powered up my customers’ campaigns and, as a result, has changed people’s lives and delivered justice to victims of human rights abuses.

WITNESS is known as an organization that is innovative and on the cutting edge of technology, applying the latest tools and tactics to the field of human rights. We were recently recognized as the world leader in ‘video for change’. How did we do this?  By constantly tapping into evolving trends in technology and listening to our customers’ on-the-ground needs. In Cambodia, they want “flip camera” skills to document and fight evictions; in the U.S., they want to improve their skills with mobile video to fight against the abuse of older people; in Iran, they need to understand how to stay safe when using Twitter against a repressive regime.

We used video as a technology before anyone did; we created a website where human rights defenders could share human rights videos before YouTube existed (http://hub.witness.org). We use social networks, blogs and online networks to solicit feedback, support for campaigns, and share learnings in video for change. We reach our customers where they are: www.youtube.com/witness; www.facebook.com/witness) www.twitter.com/witnessorg); we monitor our impact by analyzing web metrics; we partner with our donor base through social networks and email; and we significantly increased our reach and network by sharing our training materials online.

Today, everyone with a mobile phone can become a witness to a human rights violation and technology is enabling the sharing of those videos for change. Technology is facilitating collaboration and coalitions, sometimes across oceans, that were inconceivable a few years ago. WITNESS is currently  adapting its strategy to scale the value we deliver (e.g.video toolkits), to seek impact in collaborative partnerships that build on our respective expertises, pool resources, and deliver an integrated solution to human rights defenders. That is the way we realize the 2.0 change we seek.

— o — o —

To become a partner and support WITNESS, go to www.witness.org/donate.

If you’d like to join us (The TAS Group, and other Dealmaker Partner Network members) at the  WITNESS Focus for Change Benefit Dinner website, just sign up at the website.

In fact,  after having had negotiation training, negotiators “highly effective” rating jumps to a whopping 6.8%!!!  (makes you want to run right out and sign up for one of those courses advertised in the airline magazines, doesn’t it?). Another way to look at this is that 95% of us say we are not highly effective even after negotiation training. Isn’t that the proper standard for a professional sales rep or account manager for negotiation? Given our roles as B2B sales people and sales managers we shouldn’t we be highly effective at selling and negotiating?

Why are global sales organizations reporting such dismal negotiation effectiveness ratings? Relax, it’s not entirely your fault. The real reason is that if you don’t have strong intuitive skills for negotiation, the solutions to help you build up your skills are just not that good. Whether it’s business schools or private consultants, strong choices for beefing up your negotiation acumen just aren’t readily available.

The reason for this is that negotiation has been improperly diagnosed as a:

• soft skill
• something that is random
• highly driven by emotion and tough guy tactics

None of the above is true.
Let’s look at one more fact,  85% of sales organizations say they have a sales/opportunity management process in place and only 26% say they have the same for negotiation. Why is this? Companies spend millions on sales and negotiation training each year, why is sales “sticking” and negotiation isn’t?

Let’s say you walk into a doctor and say your knee hurts, the doc doesn’t even examine you, she simply says “I think the real problem is that you need surgery”. You leave the office getting ready to schedule surgery and on the way home, one of your shoes blows out. You are walking by a sports store and go in and get good walking shoes, they put you on one of those cool new machines that automatically builds orthotics custom to your feet and you put on your new gear and walk home. Oila!!! Your knee doesn’t hurt. The problem was your shoes…not your cartilage.

This is what business schools and consultants have been doing for years. Improperly diagnosing negotiation symptoms (tough buyers, price and give away pressure etc.) as “soft skills” and “random tactics”. This improper diagnosis has led to prescribing solutions of long lists of tactics, personality profiles, counter tactics, 6 principles, 9 steps, trips and tips to cover every possible random event that might happen. Don’t get me wrong, every now and then one of these work…if you prescribe enough of them. It’s also like Vegas, every now and then you win but on average you lose. 

In fact B2B negotiation is “a business process” that “can be anticipated”. It is only when we change our core fundamental belief about the root cause problem about negotiation that we can also radically shift our approach to the solution of negotiation. Today’s B2B sales leader and sales professional need data. Repeatable and systematic data collection, analysis and use is the name of the game in negotiation now.

Sales consultants made the move in the mid 1980’s to shift a lot of that focus on the “art” of selling to the “science” of selling. Sellers today routinely diagnose customer business needs and systematically apply their solutions to solve those business problems. Sellers today know that their job is not to sell products and services but help their customers raise throughput, increase revenues, get products to market faster etc. 

It’s time for the art of negotiation to catch up to the science of selling. It’s time for us to start treating business negotiation like the grown up it is.

* data comes from Think!/SAMA white paper entitled “Negotiation for Sales Effectiveness, Benchmarking Current and Best Practice”.