Leaked Information

As we emphasize over an over in our negotiation training seminars, gathering information is the key to a successful negotiation. And to find that information, you want to gather from lots of sources, the most important being multiple sources within your customer’s organization, because that’s where you really find out about their needs, their pressures, how they look at the world, how they view you vs the competition, what real value they put in your added values, and so forth.

Just be very careful about how you use the information that you gather. You certainly don’t want the professional buyer become aware that the end users have given you everything you need to know.

This is particularly important if you happen to have found that golden nugget of information that tells you really where their LAS is, or close to it.

Now I know you would never say to the buyer, “Jim down in Manufacturing told me that Golf industries had so messed things up that you’re never going to let them back in here again.”

But when pressed by the buyer, if you somehow let slip that you know that Golf has been kicked out, you may have created a real problem for yourself. I have seen some situations where salespeople have given away what they have ferreted out, and the buyers have been so angry that they haven’t done business with them just for spite. (Continued on page 20)