Negotiation Quotes

Customers get exactly what they need, while you hit your sales targets and become incredibly successful – fair deal.

We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.

Don't burn your bridges until you build better ones.

Diplomacy "was like a card game. The difference was that you never really knew the value of the cards in your own hand.

One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to "have skin in the game" and take the payout in stock that he would agree to hold for at least a year.

Get up in the morning on a mission to save prospective clients from the shabby, ill-fitting, overpriced and worthless alternatives that those charlatans - who are your competition - are trying to get away with flogging them.

One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to "have skin in the game" and take the payout in stock that he would agree to hold for at least a year.” Jobs resisted. Finally, they compromised: Jobs would take $120 million in cash and $37 million in stock, and he pledged to hold the stock for at least six months.

Ignore the people who say that the sales industry needs to become professionalised: it already has.

Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic

We usually learn from debates that we seldom learn from debates.

Anger travels faster, conscience is slower! Angers goes ahead to destroy long before conscience lately arrives to regret! Don't try to keep anger just for a while... It destroys before negotiations!

It's hard to argue over money when a girl flashes you her pussy.

Why do customers (and that includes you and me) find it so difficult to recall more than a couple of occasions when they felt that they were treated exceptionally by the salespeople who dealt with them?

22% of current business-to-business salespeople will be replaced by search engines within the next five years.

Solving the problem means helping the customer to understand why you’re the best person for the job

The salesperson you’d ideally like to be and the salesperson you’d like to encounter as a customer should roughly be the same, shouldn’t they?

Don’t tell me you’re passionate about your job – show me that you’re passionate about helping people like me.

In this wonderful modern age, if you know what you want, you can just reach out and, with the click of a mouse, take complete control of your entire buying and shopping experience.

The thing about negotiations, not to mention the manipulation, is you can't go too far in any direction. Refusing once is good, twice is usually okay but a third is risky. You never know when the third person will stop playing and you end up with nothing.

There isn’t anything I can tell you that you don’t already know,” Melly answered.“Yes, but if we already know it then you’re not telling us anything new,” Bea said, thinking her way through the carriages of fear on the witch’s train of thought, “and if we don’t tell you what we know and what we don’t know, then you won’t know if you’ve actually told us something we don’t know, and what you don’t know we don’t know won’t hurt you.”Melly stared at Bea, her cigarette hanging from her lip in defeat.“Did that make sense?” Joan asked.“Yes,” Melly said slowly, “but it probably shouldn’t have done.

We all desperately need brilliant sales professionals far more than ever before – to help us, guide us, keep us informed and stop us from making diabolically stupid buying decisions.

Be persistent, be persistent, they say. But please, do not mistake being a pest for being persistent.

For all salespeople - Driving around and talking to people for a living, with no recognisable return for the time or money spent by your employer - is a job description that belongs in the past.

Diplomacy is the art of getting what you want without offending anyone too badly.

Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will – if someone actually had that kind of power – wouldn’t it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical.

We all need salespeople who understand the problem and can deliver a solution that works brilliantly for both sides.

Note to the wise: whenever someone insists that he wants to buy something from you, but tells you there’s no real value in it yet, two things are happening: he’s lying, and you’re being taken.

The ability to close sales effectively has never been confined to the last few moments of the conversation.

If customers don’t trust you to help them at the beginning of the sales process, they certainly won’t trust you with their money at the end of it.

Asking the appropriate questions means understanding exactly what your customer is trying to achieve

The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he’s not telling you,” he said. “The most important thing he has to say is what he’s trying not to say.

If what you sell doesn’t help me then why are you knocking on my door?

Just being nice is not a winning strategy. Nice sends a message that the woman is willing to sacrifice pay to be liked by others. This is why a woman needs to combine niceness with insistence, a style that Mary sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, calls "relentlessly pleasant." This method requires smiling frequently, expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common interests, emphasizing larger goals, and approaching the negotiation as solving a problem as opposed to taking a critical stance. Most negotiations involve drawn-out, successive moves, so women need to stay focused... and smile.No wonder women don't negotiate as much as men. It's like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels. So what should we do? Should we play by the rules that others created? Should we figure out a way to put on a friendly expression while not being too nice, displaying the right levels of loyalty and using "we" language? I understand the paradox of advising women to change the world by adhering to biased rules and expectations. I know it is not a perfect answer but a means to a desirable end. It is also true, as any good negotiator knows, that having a better understanding of the other side leads to a superior outcome. So at the very least, women can enter these negotiations with the knowledge that showing concern for the common good, even as they negotiate for themselves, will strengthen their position.

We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.

Focusing on Earning the Right will have an incredible effect on the success of every single sales call that you will make from this day on.

When your pipeline is full – with business coming out of your ears – the notion of people asking for a discount will sound hilarious, because you’ll already be at capacity

Negotiation is permissible for mediocrity not for excellence.

Great selling involves helping people to make great buying decisions.

Do not compromise on the quality and your customers will not negotiate on the price.

Fatigue could be the dealmaker's friend.

Write like you speak with the 'rhythms of human speech,' as William Zinsser said, and in as few words as possible. Use action verbs to carry water.

In many instances, the words “sell” and “influence” are completely interchangeable.

Executing the solution means gaining customer commitment and delivering on your promises

As long as people are talking instead of fighting, nobody loses very much blood—unless he happens to bite his tongue.

Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with the seven-layer dip...And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing Soprano for a week.

In a negotiation, we must find a solution that pleases everyone, because no one accepts that they MUST lose and that the other MUST win… Both MUST win!

He could follow someone’s mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going.

Salespeople need to “Earn the right” to become suppliers more than they ever did before.

We all need salespeople who help people with the same enthusiasm shown by a small child describing the best Christmas present EVER

Earn the Right - Ensure you put this chunk of Sales Tetris in place first and all the other pieces just take their own positions naturally.

The commitment gap is the massive distance between “yes” and “maybe

I can’t and won’t promise you magic sales fairy dust or the Jedi Mind Trick for salespeople – they simply don’t exist.

Everybody sells something to somebody every day, whether it’s a product, a service or just a case of making sure that they get their own way.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Remember: when you walk into a DIY store to buy a drill, you don’t want the drill. Your end goal is to make a hole and, in order to achieve this, you have to buy the drill.

Salespeople who think that it’s all about price aren’t required: If it can be sold on the internet at the lowest price, you can take the huge cost of a sales team out of the equation.

If you sound like a contestant from The Apprentice or if the customer believes that they are being sold AT, you have already failed.

In a negotiation, we must find a solution that pleases everyone, because no one accepts that they must lose and that the other must win... Both must win!

Earning the Right is a commitment to be the sales professional that your customer really needs

Any negotiation has a limit. Otherwise, war is irrelevant.