Colleen’s Blog

As the post-pandemic landscape continues to reveal itself in today’s marketplace, price increases are a defining characteristic…and a pain point for many of us. In some markets, these increases are incremental bump-ups. But in others, the spikes are meteoric, due in large part to ongoing complications in the global supply chain.

“What do I do when my long-time customer calls me and says they want to renegotiate a deal we’ve reached previously?” I get asked that a lot by sellers and business leaders…especially these days.

It can feel like a big, scary problem when your customer starts demanding you renegotiate terms and prices on an existing agreement you have with them. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. As a sales leader, there are steps you must take to ensure you remain in the driver’s seat in challenging situations like this—no matter what.

It occurs in just about every business and it’s happening a lot now: the dreaded call from a buyer who says they need to renegotiate the terms of an agreement you have with them.

Are you sharing the same messages today that you were sharing a year ago with your clients? Are you approaching them with the same value propositions, teaching them the same things, or providing them with the same insights today as you were a year ago?

All value-based selling—when done effectively—is about correctly defining the benefits of your product or service based on what matters to your customer. As I like to regularly remind sellers and leaders: the only value that matters is what matters to the client. The better you are at defining this, the better you become at building a broad array of connections that improve your closing ratio.

Creating and maintaining a high-growth, high-profit business in your marketplace—one where sellers, leaders, and customers all thrive—is essential. That’s why, for many years, I’ve advocated putting value-based selling at the centre of your work.

Is your sales team in touch with your organization?

I want to share with you a real-life success story from one of my clients in the oil and gas industry. He started to embrace non-traditional, social, and remote selling in ways he never had before.