The Tale of the Tail

The Tale of the Tail

The sales landscape is densely littered with unclaimed tails.

These tails are the ones that the salesperson assures their management will come as a result of making a pricing concession on this one deal. “The client tells me that if we agree to lower our price, this will open the door to a lot more business with them. The tail on this deal is huge!”

It’s a spelling error. What they mean to say is, “The tale on this deal is huge,” because this is the most widely-used story for rationalization among business people for their inability to sell or negotiate. It’s the tale of the tail.

Others include:

* It’s a must-win deal;

* We’re doing it for the relationship; and my favorite

* We’ll make it up in volume

How do professionals end up selling a loss to their management instead of selling value to their client? The list is too long to detail here. Fundamentally, it’s a misalignment of Interests stemming from a lack of sales and negotiation experience. To optimize the value of a product or service, one has to sell to the person in the company who puts the greatest value on that product or service.

Imagine trying to sell Action Comics 1 to a paper recycler. How much will someone who buys paper in bulk pay for a comic book that’s over 80 years old? Well, recycled office paper sells for about $10 a ton, so a comic book that weighs a few ounces is not even worth a penny to that buyer.

How much would a comic book collector pay for Action Comics 1, which was the debut of the character Superman? In 2021, a copy sold for over $3.2 million.

So you could sell the comic book for a penny on the promise that the paper buyer will do a lot more business with you. Or you could sell it to the person who places the highest value on the asset.

The fact that we have found a buyer for what we are selling does not mean we’ve got a great deal. A great deal is one that optimizes appreciation for the value presented, and means finding not just a buyer, but the right buyer.

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