By Tony Ventimiglio
Do you feel like you have a kick me sign on your back when you have to talk to a client about your fees? I have been recruiting
for about 4 years now and have been in professional sales since Jimmy Carter was President. I have seen good markets, bad markets and markets in between. In all cases, my least favorite part of the job was negotiating my fee
for service. Early in my career the
scenario went something like this. Mr.
/Mrs. Client, the standard fee for our service is $ XXXX. They counter back. Well, that is just way too much. XYZ Company will do it for? My turn.
Really, well I doubt they are as good as I am. (Of course I also tried to establish my
unique value proposition.) Then I would
blurt out something like "Well let’s meet halfway and get this moving."
The problem with this
scenario is most other sales people have been trained by the clients to do this
so clients expect the discount. Think
about it, when you are the buyer don’t you do pretty much the same thing? There is a better way!!!!!!!
One huge mistake is
engaging in a negotiation before understanding a number of important
factors.
1. Is
the buyer/client feeling any pain from this matter being unresolved?
a. What
impact is leaving this position open having on your department?
b. Of
all of the questions that you could have asked about our service, why did you
start with that one?
c. Is
your department meeting established goals with this position being open?
d. How
is this impacting your relationship with clients?
e. Where
else are you feeling pressure from?
f.
Are you the person that ultimately is affected
by this? Who else is involved in the
decision making process?
g. Tell
me how this is affecting you personally.
h. What
is your budget for fixing this?
i.
Who established the budget?
j.
Are they aware of the costs associated if the
problem is not solved?
2. Is
the person you are talking to the ultimate decision maker?
a. Tell
me a little bit about the process the last time that you decided to work with a
recruiter?
b. Who
was involved other than you?
c. Who
else is involved in the interview process?
How do they feel about working with a recruiter?
d. Tell
me a little more about the process.
e.
Would you be the person that will be approving
my proposal?
There are other areas to
question as well but this is a good place to start and some future articles
will dive deeper. Let’s talk about closing!
How can you even begin to
quote a fee before you have identified that the person that you are talking to
is the decision maker, that they have the budget to invest in working with you,
that there is sufficient motivation to make a decision to hire if you present
the right candidate and that the process is one that you can live with? It is also important that you are able to
articulate your unique value proposition as well as insure that they have also
identified the pain of not filling the position. The way to insure that there is sufficient pain
is to summarize the pain areas that they discussed with your earlier and ask 1
simple but powerful question; WOULD YOU LIKE MY HELP? Why is that so important? Well, if they don’t say yes, you are missing
something. Why start to negotiate a
service agreement when you don’t even know if they believe that you are a
solution to their problem?
This is probably enough
for 1 article. I hope that you found the
information helpful. Please feel free
to call me with any questions that you may have. My cell phone number is 714/329-3437.
