{"id":974,"date":"2015-03-30T11:21:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T11:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/?p=974"},"modified":"2015-03-30T11:21:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T11:21:04","slug":"but-youre-my-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/but-youre-my-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"But You’re My Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ericsson\"A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk to my dad\u2019s second cousin (no idea what relation that is to me), who is a sales rep for Ericsson, one of the largest mobile network
\nproviders in the world.\u00a0 Of course I asked him what some of his best techniques were \u2013 especially since he said that he and his team had just closed a $1<\/em> BILLION<\/em> sale.<\/p>\n

As we talked about various tactics and philosophies, the story that stuck out most to me actually had to do more with buying, which is just the other side of the selling coin.<\/p>\n

\"Hug\"In bargain-based societies (ie Asia), Lars said that it was a common practice to refer to the\u00a0person you\u2019re trying to do business with as your friend, even if you just met the person ten minutes ago.\u00a0 As we all would assume, he knows what price he\u2019s willing to pay before the meeting starts.\u00a0 But as negotiations begin, it\u2019s not always that easy to close on what you want.<\/p>\n

\"Lost<\/a>So as the parties haggle back and forth, he names the price he wants to pay.\u00a0 Usually, the seller responds with, \u201cI can\u2019t sell it to you at that price \u2013 I\u2019ll lose money!\u201d\u00a0 To which Lars answers sincerely, \u201cOh okay \u2013 you\u2019re my friend, so I don\u2019t want you to lose money.\u00a0 I\u2019ll just take my business elsewhere then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Yes\"<\/a>At this point, the seller basically has no choice but to offer him that service at (or almost exactly at) the price he wants to pay because he sees that there are other players in this game.\u00a0 Does that actually work?\u00a0 According to Lars, he closes deals (as the buyer!) using this technique at least nine times out of ten.<\/p>\n

So for the seller, is this a case when trying to empathize and personally connect with the buyer (ie \u2018my friend\u2019) backfires?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk to my dad\u2019s second cousin (no idea what relation that is to me), who is a sales rep for Ericsson, one of the largest mobile network providers in the world.\u00a0 Of course I asked him what some of his best techniques were \u2013 especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}