How to negotiate with your toughest customer!

Regardless of your political involvement or persuasion, there is little doubt that the new administration is different. However for top CEO's it's still just business. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen founders of the newly formed Axios Media posted an enlightening article, Trump 101: How to deal with Donald, on how some of the country's top CEOs are dealing with their new First Customer. Borrowing from The Donald's, The Art of the Deal, Sun Tzu's, The Art of War, and Kevin Hallenbeck's basic Sandler Sales Training, I believe it provides the following useful tips for dealing with any tough customer.

1. Check your ego at the door and engage. If you are not at the table, you are likely on the menu.
2. Understand your customer's needs, and satisfy them in the least costly manner possible. Never get in the way of a customer who is headed in the direction you want them to go.
3. Communicate with them in the manner in which they are most comfortable. If they don’t for example like to talk details and theory, don't try and take them there. Present the highlights at a level they can understand, by relating to common experiences and emphasize how it will be a win for them.
4. When criticizing, avoid “bulletin board material.” Recognize that most people don't like, let alone appreciate, being criticized, and some are simply more sensitive and have longer memories. Don’t unnecessarily provide your opponent with increased motivation, unless you have a plan to use it to your own advantage, somewhere down the road.
5. Identify and exploit back channel communication channels. Identify key influencers to the decision maker and use tips 1 through 4 above to help them advance your agenda.

One primary tenant of selling is that not all prospects are qualified to be customers. The country's top CEOs rarely have that option, when dealing with the White House.  And occasionally in business neither will you. 

Personally, I’ve had any number of tough customers, and in each case:

• I went and met with them at their place. (#1), which often put them and their team off guard.
• Once in the meeting, I listened for common ground opportunities (#3)
• If possible, I would talk with others in the company, as an alternative approach to finding common ground ( #3, #5)
• If they started in a direction I could live with, I let them go there (#2). If not, I would politely agreed to disagree
• Finally even though they behaved and had the reputation of being a bully, I never let my feelings be known (#4), and probably most importantly, I never boxed them in, always leaving them a way out to save face. 

Do you feel that these tactics are at all applicable to your own situations, or are there others which have also been effective?