How Will You Get to Win-Win?

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by Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez with Tad Tuleja

In a recent article Define the Past, Improve Your Future, we outlined some ways to determine your past and present as it relates to the Win-Win concept. In this article, we'd like to focus on the future.

Win-Win doesn't simply "happen" to lucky salespeople. Getting to Win-Win is a conscious and active choice, and on any individual sales call you can make a decision as to what quadrant (Win-Win, Win-Lose, Lose-Win or Lose-Lose) you want to be in. That decision won't guarantee that you'll end up there, but failing to make the decision will almost certainly propel you toward the "magnet" quadrant of Lose-Lose. Therefore, we'd like you to think about specific actions you can take on the next sales call with this customer to manage the selling process toward Win-Win. We suggest you ask yourself one question, but stressed three different ways:

What can I do to assure Win-Win?

What can I do to assure Win-Win?

You'll notice that the first form of the question stresses reality: in listing actions you can take, you have to start with the immediately possible. Say you're meeting Harrison at the end of next week, and she has been playing an obvious Lose-Win game with you by demanding that you cut your price to an impossible level. Your company simply won't allow that kind of discount, so there's no point in listing an action like "agree to the rock-bottom suggestion." You might list a more realistic compromise like "counteroffer at 10 percent above their figure" or "explain to Harrison how her suggestion will set us both up to lose."

In the second form of the question, you focus on your personal responsibility. If credit terms in your company are governed by an unchanging formula over which you personally have no control, don't bother listing "try to rearrange the credit terms." What you can do personally with Harrison might be to "explain our credit options more fully" or "arrange a meeting with our credit manager."

Finally, in the third form of the question, you focus on what is actionable and concrete. You need to identify actions that relate directly to what the client thinks she needs from the sale and that still allow you to win. The actions you list should be specific and should be designed not just to keep the ball rolling, but to move the selling process forward. And they should be actions that you can perform, face to face, with the customer on the upcoming sales call.

The term action here might be misleading. We don't mean only physical actions like "take her to lunch" or "deliver the new spec sheet by Friday." Those kinds of actions might be fine, but remember that questioning is also a type of action, and it's a type you can definitely perform in that upcoming sales call. If you're not in the Win-Win quadrant with the client, or if you're not sure where you are, the actions of choice should always include drafting questions that are designed to improve your understanding.

This exercise won't give you all the answers. But it should give you a handle on which of the four quadrants your sale is in at the present time.