Secretarial knowledge > negotiation skills

Five tricks to negotiate with big customers

Compared with the fast-moving consumer goods market, the industrial consumer goods market can be regarded as a singer without a horn. The world is equally exciting. Compared with fast-moving consumer goods, industrial consumer goods are not for the public, and their professionalism is very strong. There are not many opportunities to show their faces in the media. The sales methods are mainly for direct sales to large customers. Although there are high barriers to entry, the competition in this market is also fierce. Especially in the new era of marketing, which advocates relationship marketing and service awareness, how to make breakthroughs in the three fields of technology, market and relationship has become an important issue for all industrial consumer goods manufacturers. In the actual marketing of industrial consumer goods, such cases are not uncommon: the project information that every party has heard is the “smoke bomb” released by the customer, which has spent a lot of money and energy, but finally found the basic needs of the client. Nothing; it’s hard to “get” a person in charge, just on the occasion of the signing of the order, the client unit is temporarily replaced, the new project leader is on the stage, everything has to start from scratch; in experience of technology, quality, After several rounds of price elimination, all the competitors have already been out, the order should be at your fingertips, and the client unit has come up with an almost irrelevant project: We think it is more appropriate for you to do this. At this time, do you still do it? It can be seen that the marketing of large customers of industrial consumer goods is quite difficult. There are three barriers to entry for industrial consumer goods, namely, professional technology, market segmentation and customer relationships. It is also because of the high barriers to entry that it is not a mediocrity to enter this field. The masters will naturally not be as hard as the children fight, but the mystery is not difficult to understand by the authorities. In the author's customer relationship management experience, there are several successful or less successful cases. After a summary, the successful cases are similar, and the failure cases are different. In the marketing of big customers, the most important point is the business negotiation with the big customers. Only by mastering certain negotiation skills, we can accurately grasp the real needs of customers and break through their psychological defense. Here, the author combines his own experience to provide you with five major tricks for big customer negotiations. The first measure: seeing the fog and seeing the moon, going to the false, and discovering the real needs of the customer. The author used to be the marketing representative of a well-known industrial automation equipment company in China, and was responsible for the bidding and negotiation of large customers. At that time, the author's primary task was to find the potential customers with the most likely transactions, so as to carry out key public relations. In the case of bidding, some companies often throw out some “obstacle-eye” project requirements, which shifts the attention of some manufacturers. Through a variety of information channels, the author knows that two of the three major projects we have announced are unrealistic, so that we can seize the marketing focus and lock in the target. In this process, a wide range of information channels is key, and communication between formal and informal situations is very important. In fact, a very important piece of information comes from a chat with us and the driver of the business owner. This seemingly unhelpful gossip let us know which requirements are already set by the company and which requirements are not needed or are temporarily incapable of execution. The second measure: using the comparative advantage to combat competitors' first bidding, three companies were short-listed. In addition to our company, there are two other provincial enterprises, which are the products of Siemens and ABB. They have the advantages of local companies and the technological advantages of multinational companies, which is very difficult to deal with. But our advantage is also very obvious, that is, the integration advantages of the system. At that time, there was a software failure in the Siemens product, which caused the customer company's production line to fail to operate normally, and the foreign engineers arrived at the scene at least twenty days later. At this time, we immediately dispatched a team of experts from the Beijing headquarters to solve this problem for the customer free of charge. This event not only won a very precious vote of confidence for the company, but also made Siemens company hopeless. The third measure: looking for a breakthrough in the relationship, moving with emotion, tempting to benefit Siemens, although out of the game, ABB is also not good to deal with, and I heard that the agent boss and the client company's boss also have distant relatives. After many inquiries, we learned that the wife of the client company’s CEO was a colleague of a marketing manager of our company, and she still owed the manager a “personality”. At the critical moment of competition, the human factor has become a top priority. We immediately designated the manager as the bidder for the project and launched a series of corporate public relations activities. The child of the client company’s boss was sick and hospitalized. The project manager and his wife made a special trip to the hospital to visit. Two mothers of similar ages saw each other and had a lot of talks about their children’s education. Afterwards, the CEO of the client company recalled that your company is sincerely caring for people, and sincerely to you, you must also pay this friend. It can be seen that in this negotiation process, enterprises must be moved with sincere care, emotional, and interests, and must not be reversed. The fourth measure: rejecting small profits, sticking to the position, keeping the right direction, after all the rounds, all the competitors have been eliminated, our company is about to become the winner. However, it is a good thing to do. A company that has already been out is a long-term business partner of the client company. It has inextricably linked with the top management of the client company, even if it is out of the company. One day, a vice president of the client company informed us that in view of our outstanding performance in several rounds of bidding, we have to hand over more than one million yuan of instrument orders to us, but we have expressed our hope for the long-awaited industrial automation project. Slow down. After research by the company, we immediately gave up the instrument project, focused on the automation project that we are best at, and urged the other party to confirm the order. At that time, some managers said that they were puzzled. The instrument project was also a piece of fat. Why should we give up? Our attitude is: First of all, the instrument is not our strength, it will distract our energy, and the risk of failure is also greater. Secondly, the promotion of instrumentation projects may create a real sense for competitors, so that they can make a comeback and even steal this bid. Key projects. In this process, it is not confusing for small profits, and adhering to the established line policy is the key to the success or failure of the project. The fifth measure: self-examination and self-correction, make up for the loopholes, and win the bid in one fell swoop. After our insistence, the customer finally agreed to hand over the automation project to us. When reviewing the quotation, we found that we reported the price of some non-critical supporting materials too high, and the other party spoke, requesting to cut 30% of the total price. We immediately investigated and found that the price of some supporting materials was too high because the front-line marketing staff felt that the project cost was too high, and hoped to raise the price of some non-critical products that were inconspicuous. The company immediately lowered the price of the whole line of accessory products, and promised that the other party could supervise the accessory products. Finally, on the basis of only adjusting the price by more than 200,000 yuan, the company won the order with a total value of more than 3 million yuan. Therefore, in the final phase of the clearance, the company must pay attention to the details, adjust itself in time, find the problem immediately, and finally ensure the successful signing.

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