The Role of Emotional Control in Sales Negotiations

It’s been said that the more you need a deal, the less likely you are to get it. Why? Because desperation clouds judgment. When emotions take over, sales professionals tend to make unnecessary concessions, give away value, or settle for less than what’s fair. The person who maintains the most emotional control will always have the upper hand.

To navigate sales negotiations effectively, keep these key principles in mind:

1. Want the Business, But Don’t Need It

The strongest negotiators approach sales with the mindset: “I would like this business, but I don’t need this business.” The only way to maintain this perspective is by keeping your sales pipeline full. When you have multiple opportunities in the pipeline, you’re not dependent on one deal, and that confidence translates into stronger negotiation outcomes.

2. Your Prospect is a Counterpart, Not an Adversary

Many salespeople make the mistake of viewing negotiations as a battle. In reality, the person across from you isn’t an opponent—they’re a counterpart. You want to sell something, and they want to buy something. Instead of framing negotiations as a win-lose scenario, approach them as a collaborative effort to find a solution that benefits both parties.

3. Articulate Their Position First

A powerful negotiation strategy is to clearly state your counterpart’s position before they do. This builds trust, lowers defenses, and increases the chances of reaching a favorable agreement. For example, if a prospect needs to cut costs due to budget constraints, acknowledging this upfront demonstrates empathy and understanding.

Here’s how it works:

“I understand that your company has been mandated to reduce spending by 27%. That puts pressure on you to find the best value while ensuring quality doesn’t suffer.”

By articulating their concerns, you position yourself as an ally rather than an obstacle. This approach encourages open dialogue and fosters a collaborative negotiation process.

The Bottom Line: Emotional Control Wins Deals

The key takeaways for mastering emotional control in sales negotiations are:

• Stay emotionally detached from the outcome to avoid making desperate concessions.
• Maintain a full pipeline so no single deal feels like a must-win.
• Approach the negotiation as a partnership, not a confrontation.
• Acknowledge and articulate your counterpart’s position before they do to build trust and break down resistance.

When you master emotional control, you not only improve your negotiation success rate but also build stronger, more mutually beneficial relationships. Good selling and successful negotiations!

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Most companies use a CRM to monitor the opportunities in their sales pipeline. Some of the metrics that we recommend sales managers consistently review with their salespeople include:

• Number of qualified leads
• Conversion rates for key sales process steps
• Close rates
• Average deal size
• Sales cycle length

Effective sales pipeline management involves setting specific times to review these key metrics with salespeople and coaching them for skill improvement. Ideally, a scorecard is established that allows a sales leader to track improvement as they review these metrics quarterly with their team. This discipline should not be overlooked and remains a key differentiator for highly successful coaches. If a sales manager does not know the quality of their pipeline, how can they help their people improve, and how can they forecast business for the company?

Assuming these metrics are available, here are some things to look out for in sales pipeline management sessions, with the end goal of improving pipeline quality and coaching the sales skills of your team.

Beware of Stuffed Pipelines

Having a “fat pipeline” can result from an overly optimistic advisor or relationship manager. They call on a prospect and come back thinking, “We really hit it off! They really liked what we can do... We have a LOT we can help them with.” Their deceptively full pipeline may give the salesperson comfort because it looks like they have plenty of opportunities, but in fact, it may be very misleading in terms of what will close. In other words, many of those deals in the pipeline are not properly qualified.

A sales leader plays a critical role in managing this problem with their coaching. The skill of asking great questions is essential. Tone and tonality are of paramount importance, and they must be firm and helpful. Questions like:

• What did you hear the customer say that leads you to believe they will be a great customer for us?
• When you asked them about the impact of not fixing this problem, what did they say?
• Who else in their organization will be impacted if they switch providers?
• What did they say when you asked about their decision-making criteria?
• When is the last time they chose a supplier that wasn’t the lowest cost?
• How much is in their budget to make this problem go away?
• When you asked them, “How do you envision working with us,” what was their response?
• How did they choose their current provider?

By asking great questions, sales managers coach their people by example. The questions listed above are the type of questions salespeople should be asking the prospect. Coaching sessions are similar to a sales call in nature. By asking great questions of their team, leaders find out where their people need to be coached. If they hear a salesperson say, “I didn’t ask that question” during their pipeline discussions, they need to find out if the salesperson is unable to ask those questions (they need more sales training) OR if they are unwilling to ask those questions.

During sales pipeline management sessions, as managers review and discuss the metrics, it becomes clear if the salesperson is prospecting enough and regularly finding opportunities. Sales managers will know if their team understands that prospecting is a consistent effort necessary for them to reach their sales goals. Coaches can guide them on how to consistently make calls, ask for introductions, and network among their target prospects.

It’s healthy to “flush” a pipeline regularly. Opportunities should move through or out of the pipeline continually. If a relationship manager wants to cling to an opportunity and defend keeping it in their pipeline, it is probably because they have nothing else to take its place. Coach them, encourage them, and challenge them.

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The ability to understand a prospect or client’s industry and their market allows a B2B salesperson to understand the big picture. In order to have business acumen, salespeople must understand the forces and factors that impact their industry and it's impact on their clients and potential customers. This knowledge also helps them to differentiate their approach in the sales process. Salespeople with highly developed business acumen are not focused on the sale at hand, but on the broader goal of being a partner and advisor for the long-term.

For those in a producer’s role, whether it’s sales or business development, cultivating business acumen is essential. It allows salespeople the ability to uncover and articulate the challenges faced by the customer or client before they do. This skill involves understanding their problems, the impact of those problems or opportunities, and seeing the world from their perspective.

Business acumen is the key to perceiving the hindrances and challenges impeding their business growth. It’s about comprehending their aspirations to strive and thrive. Every company owner, CEO, or division manager is striving to overcome challenges, bring in new talent, and expand into new markets. Simultaneously, they are thriving by increasing revenue and optimizing costs to enhance the bottom line.

By demonstrating a deeper understanding or business acumen, a salesperson can position themselves as a trusted advisor who comprehends their world. One exercise to test business acumen is to see how long it takes for a salesperson engaged in a conversation with a prospect or customer to introduce their products, services, or company. Are they able to extend the conversation for two minutes, 20 minutes, or even two hours by focusing on the prospect’s needs and challenges before pushing their own solutions?

Developing Business Acumen

In addition to using every industry tool at hand, a well-thought-out pre-call plan can guide a salesperson to organize and articulate the relevant points during the conversation. Instead of entering a sales interaction with the sole aim of making a sale, a salesperson must shift their perspective to building a relationship. They should ask themselves, “How can I establish a meaningful connection with this person?” Developing and exercising their sales superpower – business acumen – is crucial for success in this endeavor.

We partner with Objective Management Group (OMG), the pioneer and industry leader in sales evaluations. According to OMG, these are some of the qualifying competencies that contribute to helping salespeople develop business acumen:

• Able to Stay in the Moment
• Self-Limiting Beliefs Won't be an Obstacle
• Knows Why a Prospect Would Buy
• Asks about Everything
• Not Vulnerable to Competition
• Meet with Decision Maker
• Uncovers Actual Budget
• Will Discuss Finances
• Knows Decision-Making Process
• Can Influence the Decision-Making Process
• Handles High-Ticket Pricing
• Need to Be Liked Doesn't Get in the Way

Salespeople who are successful at developing their business acumen superpower have a frame of reference of continual learning. This includes their desire to fully understand their client’s goals and objectives. In fact, according to Amazon CEO, Andy Jazzy, the second a person thinks they know it all -- or even just enough -- is the second their career generally starts to stall out. Those who continue to grow into greater and greater success, on the other hand, remain hungry for learning. "The biggest difference between the people I started with in the early stage of my career and what they're doing now has to do with how great they were at learning," states Jassy. 

Back in the early seventies there was a group called The Main Ingredient. At the time, they had a hit song and the lyrics went something like this… “ So you’re heart broken, you’re sitting around moping, crying and crying. You even feel like dyin’. Well, before you do something rash, dig this- everybody plays the fool!”

In our world of selling, maybe everybody doesn't play the fool, but we know this, dealing with rejection in sales is part of the job. Everybody gets rejected. So, the question is when that happens, what happens? Does it take you two minutes, two hours, two days, two weeks to recover, or are you able to get right back into the fight? When we find people have a hard time recovering from rejection, it’s probably one of two reasons. Number one: they're way too emotionally involved in this sale. “If I don't get this sale, I'm in trouble. If I do get this sale, my year is made!”

And the second reason is people don't have the pipeline that they should have. It's not as robust and filled with other good prospects as it could be. So, when those two things happen, maybe we take the rejection a little harder than we should.

Here's a formula that I believe you can use that'll help you get past your fear and help you deal with rejection. The formula is simply this; SW³ N. And that stands for this…

Some will. Some won't. So what. Next!

Keep that mantra chanting in your head! Some of the salespeople I work with even write it down on their desk and refer to it as they’re saying goodbye to one prospect and trying to find their next opportunity. Somebody needs what you do, go find them. And when you do, don't fear rejection.  Remember SW³ N.

If we don’t fully understand the reason for a prospect's statement, the purpose of their question, or dig deeper to find the real problem, we will waste time and miss opportunities.

In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey has a quote… “Seek first to understand. Then to be understood.”  I think that statement is especially true for sales professionals.

When we coach our clients, we try to get them to understand and remember these three tips when in conversation with their prospects and clients:

So, as your prospects talk about their main concerns, your job is to determine the following: Is this a symptom or a problem?  Problems get solved, symptoms are tolerated.  I was working with a prospect and he kept saying he needed to fix his cash flow problem.  The more we talked, the more it became clear that cash flow wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was he missed out on an opportunity to purchase one of his competitors.  The symptom was cash flow, the problem was missing opportunities to acquire market share.  We focused on fixing his true problem.

One of the ways, and really the only way, to bring clarity to the conversation is by asking or saying the following when we hear prospects make statements or ask questions:

We also need to listen to emotionally charged words such as . . .

These are emotionally driven words and emotion drives sales.  Facts and figures justify sales, but emotion drives it.  If we don’t fully understand the reason for the statement, the purpose of the question, or dig deeper to find the real problem, we will waste time and miss opportunities. 

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