20: Get what you want by using a range

How do you handle the, how much do you charge question or if negotiating a package, what are your OTE, expectations? Find out the power of ranges in this tip from Chris Voss in his book, Never Split the Difference.

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welcome to the bite-sized sales podcast where we believe that sales is the most important team and a B2B company, that the sales team deserves great sales skills training but usually doesn't get it and that taking bite sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan, and I'm using my experiences in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas every day to help you get better

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If you've been in sales for any length of time, you'll know that the general wisdom is you don't give a price too early. You don't understand what the problems are or you don't understand what they're trying to achieve and what their goals are. You haven't established any value in your solution, so how can you possibly just throw out a price and when all it is going to do is hurt you? But it can be weird just not answering the question. You know, sometimes in early stage calls, discovery calls there will be a question, you know, how much do you charge for this and just blanking it or you know, doing some, you know, sales Ninja stuff not to answer the question and fob them off can sometimes actually frustrate the prospect a little bit. Um, you know what, you probably are going to charge right within the ballpark. Um, and you want to make sure that you're on the same page as them. You want to make sure that you're even in the same book, never mind the same page. You both got time to waste if you end up working on the wrong opportunities. When I say both, I mean the prospect in you, you know, you as a sales person want to know whether it's worth working on and they want to know whether it's worth allocating resources to, to work on this. I'm not a big fan of just ignoring it or working your way around it . You know , if I look back, you know, the few times where I have thrown out a price early on or an indication of price early on , um, is when the, and it's actually killed a deal is when it's been a huge disparity with what the prospect thought they wanted to pay and what our proposal was going to come in at . You know, literally looking at hundreds of thousand dollars if not million plus dollars to implement what we have and the prospect for whatever reason is thinking this is a two week long 50 K project. Right? And it's okay to find that early that there's that huge difference because you can either walk away or you can react and, and kind of, you know, play a little bit dumb and say, yeah , you must be missing something. Right. Um, and this translates into compensation as well. If you've ever been through that dance early on in discussions with recruiters or with the companies, you know, that you get the, the question about what's your expectations for OTE, you'll probably throw back to , well, I, you know , I hadn't thought about it . What, what's, what ranges are you paying for this role? And you kind of do that dance and all feel somewhat awkward. Um, and Chris Voss, who is the ex FBI hostage negotiator talks a little bit about this in Never Split the Difference. And the example he uses, and I'll tee this up a little bit , uh , is a compensation negotiation. He is , he's already told the story of a guy called Jerry who threw out early on a low number and found out afterwards he was getting paid less than the others. So that was the kind of tee up to this quote that I'm going to read that. So from the book , uh, he calls the section establish a range while going first rarely helps. There is one way to seem to make an offer. And Ben, the reality in the process that is by alluding to a range, what I mean is this, when confronted with naming your terms our price counter by recalling a similar deal, which establishes your ballpark all be at the best possible bar ballpark you wish to be in. Instead of saying, I'm worth $110,000 Jerry might have said at top places like this company, people in this job get between 130 K and 170 K that gets your point across without moving the other party into a defensive position and it gets them thinking higher levels. Research shows that people who hear extreme anchors unconsciously adjust their expectations in the direction of the opening number. Many even go directly to their price limit. If Jerry had given this range, the firm probably would have offered 130 K because it looks so cheap next to 170 K in a recent study, Columbia business school psychologists find the job applicants who named a range received significantly higher overall salaries than those that offered a number, especially if their range was a bolstering range in which the low number in the range was what they actually wanted. Understand. If you offer a range and it's a good idea to do so, expect them to come in at the low end. So this tells me that we need to use ranges to our advantage because the research is in your favor if you do it. But make sure that the low end of the range that you're throwing out is at the high end of what you expect because you might throw out a range from a 100 to one 50. In reality what the prospect or the person negotiating with is gonna , they're going to zero in on that 100 range because that's where they'll come back. So for an example , um, be ready with, you know, phrase I've heard people use, we'll look at a company like yours. It can really depend on a number of different factors, but you know, similar projects or similar sized companies , uh , have been paying in the region of, you know, seven 50 to nine 50 K right? And you throw out the range. Um, so you use your similar size companies, similar projects, a lot to understand before we really nail those down. But I would expect something in the range of, of this and that gets the discussion going. It gets the anchoring going, especially if you know that your range is perhaps a little bit high , uh , and therefore you're trying to pull up their anchor a little bit or for compensation. If you're having those discussions , uh, you could say that, you know, I would expect a role like a sales role like this at a company this size in this market to have an OTE between two 75 and 300 K something like that might be the way you handled that, that range discussion. So the action from this is if you're uncomfortable and you Dodge the question and you , you do everything but feel good about how you're handling it, you know , this is your chance to change your habit . When you hear the question, how much is this going to cost me? Instead of just throwing out the answer that you do now or the way I handle you, handle it right now, throw back the the range and that will get the discussion moving forward.

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no to wrap up as Craig parish VP global sale development at crow's Trek may or may not have one set training without implementation is just entertainment and prefer entertainment when Monahan does it. So make sure, take an action on what you learned and keep getting better every day. This world does not need more sales BS. So don't create any more . Be great at the fundamentals. Be honest. Be real. Be yourself. Just do not be us. And finally, I'm setting off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying, gone to sell

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