How to best prepare your mindset for an important customer meeting or negotiation.

Do you have any big upcoming meetings with your Buyer?

Perhaps you have a pivotal cost price increase negotiation meeting? Or maybe you have a follow-up meeting to discuss the potential listings for your NPD in 2024?

In the annual cycle of an Account Manager or Sales Leader, there are several important customer meetings.  These can include the aforementioned CPI and NPD discussions, as well as Trading Terms and JBP reviews, Top-To-Top and Brand Kick-Off meetings.

I have no doubt that you prepare meticulously for these meetings. 

You spend hours crunching the numbers to make sure that the commercial proposals stack up for your business and your customer. 

You arrange weekly catch-ups with the relevant stakeholders across many different cross-functions in your business to curate the perfect presentation for your Brand Day. 

You create a negotiation “trade stormer” detailing all the possible tradeables and assign high to low values from yours and the customer’s perspective.  And you think of ways to deal with Buyer tactics should they make an unwanted appearance. 

No one can question the thoroughness of your preparation.

However, despite your efforts you feel nervous about how the meeting will play out.  And sure enough, often the meeting doesn’t go to plan.  The Buyer raises an unforeseen concern for which you don’t have a solution and it goes downhill from that point.  You become flustered and your agenda starts to veer off-track.  By the end you haven’t achieved your desired outcome from the meeting, and you feel deflated.

So, the question is: “What could you have done differently?”

The answer to that question is that you probably neglected to bolster your mindset going into the meeting.  It is impossible to prepare for the unexpected, yet having the tools to be able to shift your mindset from negative to positive when unforeseen problems or issues arise, is key to delivering your peak performance.

In this article I will map out a strategy for strengthening your mindset for these critical customer meetings.

1. Understand your top Saboteurs by taking the Positive Intelligence™ Assessment.

Self-awareness is arguably the most important aspect of driving personal and professional growth.  When you know your strengths and development areas, it empowers you to take control of your own destiny.

With regards to your mindset, I honestly feel that having a deep understanding of your top Saboteurs is most useful.  You can find out your top Saboteurs by taking the Positive Intelligence™ Assessment here: https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/

There are 10 Saboteurs which generate all negative emotions.  When you have knowledge of your prominent Saboteurs, you can start to develop an understanding of how the negative emotions you experience are formed. 

For example, if you have a strong Controller or Stickler Saboteur, you might start to feel frustration or anxiety when your Buyer questions the commercials in the proposal that you so painstakingly prepared.

Or if you have a staunch Pleaser Saboteur, you might feel disappointed or take it personally if your Buyer dismisses your idea or proposal.

These feelings can lead to a negative emotional spiral in the meeting itself which can completely derail your performance. 

2. Prepare for these Saboteurs to show up and hijack your mind in this meeting.

Once you have an awareness of your Saboteurs and the types of negative emotions they might produce, you must accept the very real possibility that they will show up in your meeting and try to hijack you.

One tactic to diminish the power of any Saboteur is to label it.  When you accept that a Saboteur could show up at any point during the meeting, you enhance your ability to recognise and silently label its presence.  If you can do this, you can then start to take action to shift to a positive mindset.

3. Select the “PQ reps” that you will when you are hijacked by your Saboteurs in the moment.

What is a “PQ rep”? Positive Intelligence™ describes a “PQ rep” as an intense 10-second focus on a physical sensation.

An example of a tactile PQ rep would be to close your eyes and concentrate on the sensations of touch as you rub two fingers together, paying close attention to the fingertip ridges.

This short, 10-second focus on a physical sensation has the effect of quietening the left region of the brain where the Saboteurs live, whilst stimulating the right region of the brain where your Sage resides.

Some people associate PQ reps with meditation and there is some truth to that.  However, PQ reps are more versatile in that they can be performed in a plethora of ways.  You can do tactile PQ reps with your eyes open in a meeting or even visual PQ reps by really paying attention to the details of your Buyer’s eyes or the movement of their lips as they speak.  Therefore, you can execute these reps without anyone in the room being aware that you are doing them!

Then you can move to the final stage.

4. Trust that your Sage brain will provide the response you need to move the meeting forward in a positive way.

Positive Intelligence™ defines the Sage, which lives in the right region of the brain as your true, resourceful self.  The Sage generates positive emotions like curiosity and empathy.

Assuming you have intercepted the Saboteurs and performed PQ reps to quell their harmful influence, you will have awakened your Sage which will allow you to progress the meeting in a positive way.

Perhaps your Buyer has flippantly dismissed one of your NPD SKUs. Instead of feeling disappointment or embarrassment, your Sage will give you the power to get curious and explore the deeper “why” behind the Buyer’s unwillingness to list the SKU.

Knowing the deeper “why” will in turn enable you to co-create innovative solutions, which work for your business and the customer.  Remember that “no’s” or issues raised by Buyers are usually buying signals.  You just need to find a way to make tweaks to your offer or the go-to-market plan to get them to say yes!

Putting trust in your Sage will lead to more positive customer interactions and successful meetings.

How building Mental Fitness can help you prepare for critical customer meetings or negotiations.

Building your Mental Fitness is very useful in helping you approach important customer meetings with a positive mindset.  Accepting that your Saboteurs will try to hijack you and having a strategy to overcome their negative influence will alleviate your fears or stress and give you the confidence to perform at your best.

However, the development of these mental muscles takes at least 6-weeks of intense work.  If you are interested in this game-changing program then take the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/ and then book a free 30-minute coaching call with me at https://www.expcoaching.co.uk/ to find out more!