The art of communication is no. #1 thing you’ll ever need in order to run business, make partnerships and to attract clients. Of course, you always have the option to hire a person who can do this instead of you. So it doesn’t mean that you should feel bad if you don’t like to speak directly with your clients or something like that.
Anyway, let’s assume you are a business man, a freelancer or just a guy and you have something to offer to others. This can be your product or services. Have you ruined some of your opportunities that you thought it could bring you long term benefit? Feeling bad about it? Well, don’t.
Let your past becomes your experience and let experience becomes your future. First, you cannot do anything with the past and second, past can help you to improve your future negotiation process and to find something new about yourself in order to gain more results and success.
Here are few tips that can help you to avoid the most common negotiation mistakes with clients.
What are the most common mistakes during negotiation?
Be straight and direct
Try to minimize negotiation process. Don’t spend 50 email with clients trying to understand each other. Be accurate and descriptive. There is nothing worse then spending days or weeks emailing to client information that won’t help.
Make good presentation and great offer revealing what you can do for your client. Show results and show how you’ll do it. If the client’s project is complicated, it doesn’t mean that you must send 10 emails for each topic or subtopic. You can arrange very complicated stuff with 1 or 2 pages of text and small power point presentation.
Be honest and fair
Every potential client doesn’t have to become your real client. Approach to you client needs with professionalism and creativeness as you would do for yourself. Don’t take the project just to earn money. If you cannot do it, you cannot do it. There’s nothing bad about it.
Explain your client what you services or products can do for him or her and what your services or products cannot do for them. You won’t get far by promising the things that you cannot reach because your journey will probably end before you think.
Be flexible but stick to the price
Sometimes it’s very hard to estimate the effort, time and cost that is needed to accomplish your client’s goal. It depends on many factors. For products it is easier but for services it can really be a pain in the neck.
However, it’s very important to stick to your decisions about price, especially if you have already estimate the rates and announced it to your client. Avoid looking unprofessional by lowering your price to 70% after few emails or questions. You should rather spend your time investigating before you bring your rate to conclusion.
If the client’s budget is not within your rates, maybe you can offer smaller packager of your service but keep the quality.
Money back guarantee
When speaking about digital products and services, money back guarantee is a must. Unless you are No.#1 in your niche and your clients have full satisfaction without any complaints, then you don’t have to worry about this.
Ok, lets be real. You are not #1 and you cannot provide services that will fit for every client in the world.
Money refund is not the thing you should be unpleasant with. You should stand behind the quality of your goods and services and understand the people who are simply not satisfied with it. After all, if you don’t trust yourself, who will?
Conclusion
If you keep up the good work for the particular area that you are good in, all this things could come natural. Unsuccessful negotiation doesn’t have to mean that you ruined it or that you’ve done something wrong.
Following this tips you could really make a progress in this field. Keep it simple, tell your client what’s on your mind and you might be surprised about results.
