In this article you will learn a lesson about building buyer confidence, improving sales engagement effectiveness, copywriting, and negotiating. A lesson you should put into practice long before your sale cycle ever gets to the negotiation stage. A lesson that when put into practice early in the sales cycle improves your cycle time and closing ratio.

A component of gaining concessions during any negotiation is to prove you understand what is important to the other side. This negotiation rule gains you prospect perspective and helps develop a set of agreed upon criteria to understand what needs to be asked for when it is time to ask for the business, and when you are in negotiation.

If you have any success at selling or copywriting, this tool is already incorporated into your preliminary activities. After all, identifying what is most important to your prospect directs your sales and writing effort.

Whether you are very successful and satisfied with your results, or looking to improve your results, take a moment and try this. Look at your written sales collateral- letters, meeting notes and proposals- and ask yourself, "Is it crystal clear to my prospect that I understand what is important to him?" Ask yourself, too, if it is just as clear to your prospect what is important to you.

Run a mental movie of your last meeting and ask the same question.

Let's take the example of a sales cycle for a complex IT implementation.

Do you know what's really important and what's nice to have? Defining what's really important adds immeasurable value to the buyer in your relationship. Of course it's important that the installation go well- that the work completes on time, on budget, without problems, and the installed applications functions as promised.

But is that what's really important?

Put yourself in your prospect's shoes for a minute. More likely, what's really important to your prospect is his reputation within his company, his relationship with his C-suite, and that he has a partner standing beside him during and after the implementation when you hit road bumps. Much of the other 'stuff' are items on a checklist of things your product is supposed to do or you would not be talking with your prospect.

Listen carefully and make the time to figure out what's really important and you differentiate yourself from the competition, understand what you must deliver, and identify concessions both you and your prospect may need to make.

Whether or not you can fill his wish list, you have a better chance of winning his business if you let him know that you know what is important to him.