Most sellers treat customer requests as fixed requirements. More units. Faster delivery. Lower price. A new term in the contract.
The want arrives. The seller reacts. Margin erodes.
High performers do something very different: they treat every want as a symptom, a clue pointing to a deeper motivation the customer hasn’t articulated yet. They search for the underlying need that actually drives the customer’s behavior.
And this is where negotiation power lives. Not in force. Not in dominance. But in preparation, information, and alternatives, the things great negotiators cultivate long before they ever discuss price.
They know that uncovering needs is the fastest path to value creation, higher margins, and greater strategic influence. They treat every request as a data point, not a direction. As a sales leader, ask yourself: when your team hears a demand, do they dig for the why, or rush to solve the what?
Wants are specific: a discount, a date, a quantity, or an exception. They’re easy to hear and dangerously easy to respond to.
They lock sellers into a single solution, shrink creativity, and trigger unnecessary concessions.
Needs are something else entirely. They explain why the wants exists. They expand the negotiation and reveal the real levers of value:
• Pressures
• Motivations
• Risks
• Internal expectations
• Personal stakes
• Strategic outcomes
In RED BEAR terminology: Wants = What. Needs = Why.
Sellers who anchor themselves in the why consistently protect margin and influence outcomes. Because customers will happily pay a premium when a solution protects what they value most: reputation, internal stability, risk reduction, strategic progress, or political capital.
Most sellers never uncover the customer’s real needs. They hear a want, assume it is true, and respond with a concession.
RED BEAR research across 121 companies shows that one of the most common and costly negotiation mistakes is failing to uncover the customer’s real needs and treating a surface want as a mandate.
The pattern is predictable:
• More price pressure
• Less perceived value
• Excessive internal strain
• Commitments no one needed and no one profits from
High performers break this pattern.
When tension rises, they slow down. They ask purposeful questions. They test assumptions. They explore motivations with discipline.
They stay in the productive tension long enough for the truth to emerge.
Situational Negotiation Skills™ (SNS) teaches that expert negotiators ask 2.5 times more questions and do one-third of the talking.
This isn’t accidental. This behavior exposes the fundamental drivers of the deal. And once the actual need is known, sellers can design negotiables that satisfy it without collapsing margin.
If your pipeline reviews sound like a list of customer demands and discounts, you don’t have a pricing problem; you have a discovery problem.
Selling to wants creates reactive, low-margin deals. Selling to needs creates agreements that:
• Protect margin
• Strengthen relationships
• Expand opportunity
• Accelerate execution
• Differentiate your offering long after the price conversation ends
Sales leaders know the truth: tension always shows up at the end of a deal.
The question is how your team responds. Do they default to “What do we have to give?” or “What’s really driving this request?”
When sellers meet a want with a concession, they reinforce that price is the only lever that matters.
When they meet it with curiosity, they reframe the entire discussion around outcomes that matter far more than price.
SNS operationalizes this discipline by giving sellers the tools to:
• Reveal the motivations behind customer requests
• Shape the perception of value through structured discovery
• Build creative trades that satisfy needs at low cost
• Maintain conviction in high-pressure moments
• Protect against unnecessary concessions
• Follow a repeatable negotiation process that aligns planning, information, and behavior
This is how challenging customer demands become profitable agreements.
Sales leaders determine whether discovery is optional or non-negotiable.
Top-performing organizations treat uncovering needs as a commercial discipline, not a soft skill.
They coach it. Reinforce it. Expect it. Measure it.
Teams that master this principle:
• Enter fewer price-only negotiations
• Expand deals by uncovering unconsidered needs
• Reduce internal chaos by aligning negotiables to real outcomes
• Protect time, resources, and margin without damaging relationships
• Win more—and win better—through structured negotiation practice
This consistency doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because leaders insist on it. The transformation is subtle but profound: your team stops reacting to the deal. They start shaping it.
Satisfy Needs Over Wants is not about being more likable or more empathetic, but about being more strategic, more prepared, and more precise.
Great negotiators don’t guess. They discover. They don’t concede. They trade.
They don’t treat customer demands as instructions. They treat them as signals pointing to the pressures and motivations that truly shape the deal.
By uncovering needs, they create value competitors never see and win agreements competitors never could.
Your sellers hear what your customers want every day. Do they uncover the need or give away the deal?
If the honest answer concerns you, it’s time to build the capability that separates average from exceptional.
RED BEAR’s Situational Negotiation Skills™ develops teams that consistently:
• Uncover real needs
• Create more value
• Protect more margin
• Negotiate with precision, not hope
If you want sellers who stop reacting and start shaping deals, the shift begins here.
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