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When you and your prospect are about to talk price, just drop the grenade —and shut up. The one who breaks the silence is the one who will give more concessions. Let them struggle with the price and give them space to ask for guidance.
First, willful ignorance. It's the avoidance of the facts and what's the situation. It's choosing to ignore all the red flags and moving away from making a decision. Why? Because it might feel uncomfortable. Or hard to make. Or the consequences are not the desired ones. Choosing not to see and know will not make the problem go away. It'll make the next phase of the situation inevitable. Choosing not to know so that it doesn't exist is magical thinking. It's wanting to have a sense of control...
"From a cost center to a profit center" What a nonsense. That implies that your profit is based on your costs control. That, magically, when you know your costs (or audit or improve them or whatever), you'll turn into profit. It implies that costs is the basis for profit per default. It also implies that to get to that profit, you need to be the most cost efficient and cost effective. That you rip off anything that is a cost. It implies that you follow best-practices. Bull.Shit. That also...
Getting too close to what the rules/views/templates/best-practices are can make you miss important details. Paper can hold anything. Reality doesn’t.
In a negotiation, the first thing you need to be comfortable with is zero. As in No Money, can't pay, won't pay, don't see the point on it. Having that figure clear in your head is the thing that will let you move forward. Right now, you have zero. If the deal doesn't happen, you'll still have zero. You didn't lose something that you didn't have in the first place. Zero means you're also free. You can say no when it's not a fit, when it doesn't make sense to you, or when you feel like it....
Anyone with money. Anyone who is willing to pay. Anyone that needs our thing. How do you reach to this specific anyone? If you can’t come up with a very clear specific description of who this “anyone” is, it’ll be hard for them to know you’re talking about them. For them to know of you. For them to recommend you to more like them. At the end of the day, anyone is no-one.
In diving, when you’re overwhelmed, you stop everything. Then, you breath. Assess. Decide. Same is in business. While everything seems urgent, you can only do so much. So stop, breath, assess, decide. And to get to that decision, you’ve already thought of a few ways to go about it.
Just as a band starts playing in a house, to small gigs, to more small gigs... all the way to stadiums with thousands of people. It's the same with decisions. The more controlled, low-impact, and low-risk decisions you make, the easier it is to see the patterns to move upwards. It's simpler to stir the wheel and correct direction with small decisions, than to shift everything from one decision. Quantity over quality first, quality over quantity then.
The way to choose better is by choosing more often. The way you decide better is by deciding more often. Practice. Quantity beats quality. It lets you make decisions that train your judgment. You won’t ever have all good decisions. Yet making a decision (even a shit one) can let you stir the boat and correct direction. Waiting for it to disappear won’t fix it.
Not only products. Also ideas. It's working around your ideas and offerings to present them in a different way. What's the impact it can have? It can lead to buy-in from decision-makers. It can shift how your brand is perceived. It can bring in marginal revenue. It can also bring new revenue in orders of magnitude (selling the same thing for a way higher new price). However, it's not about charging more only for the sake of charging more. It's about bringing (and articulating) more of what...