The Difference Between Selling to Negotiators and Price Shoppers

I was introduced to Michael, an expert in multi-cultural selling who wrote this must read top 10 Myths About Multicultural Customers.

I love #8 on Negotiators.  Salespeople often confuse the prospect who needs to negotiate with one who must have the lowest price and as Michael says so often in his article, nothing could be further from the truth.

The negotiator simply needs to win – to get a better price than the one you started with.  The price shopper wants to go with the lowest price.  It is much simpler to do the break and shake (my tag for providing a price break and shaking on it) and be done with it, then it is for you to give away the farm with a price shopper who may not care about your value proposition, storied history, legendary quality, or unsurpassed customer service.  On the other hand, any one of those may be the very thing the price shopper is demanding – but at a lower price than anyone else can offer.

Selling successfully to both the negotiator and the price shopper takes good strategy, effective tactics, and timing – you must know when to employ them.  For instance, with the negotiator, one can’t simply give the price break to get it over with because the negotiator believes that now that there has been movement from the starting price, there can be yet more movement. You must learn how to offer only a single concession and have that be good enough for a win-win.  With the price shopper, you must become expert at leveraging the one thing other than price that is so important, build compelling reasons around it, and use the resulting urgency to drive up your value.

Most executives who read this won’t have to deal with negotiators very often for it tends to be industry specific in America.  It tends to be part of the car shopping and home buying experiences, and you’ll see it at flea markets too.  Price shoppers are out there.  Objective Management Group’s statistics show that about 20% of the sales population buys this way and they are the most likely group to show up with the lowest margins.