Episode #452: Mike Figliuolo
Meet
Mike Figliuolo
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS. He is an honor graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served in the U.S. Army as an armor officer. Before launching his own company, he worked at McKinsey & Co., Capital One, and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He’s the author of three leadership books and has millions of views of his eLearning courses on LinkedIn Learning.
Our Mission Is To Change The Negative Perception Of Sales People
Our Vision Is A World Where Selling Is A Profession To Be Proud Of
What if the key to successful negotiations wasn’t about securing the best deal right away, but about building a lasting relationship that leads to ongoing success? In this episode, Paul Watts sits down with Mike Figliuolo, founder of Thought Leaders LLC, to explore how fostering relationships during the negotiation process can lead to more fruitful, long-term partnerships. Mike, a seasoned leader with a background in both the military and corporate America, shares how he’s applied relationship-building strategies in high-stakes negotiations to ensure long-term success for both parties involved.
Relationship-Driven Strategy vs. Short-Term Gains
Mike Figliuolo emphasizes that successful negotiation is not just about winning one deal—it’s about fostering long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. His strategy centers around building a foundation of trust and rapport with negotiating partners, which ensures that negotiations don’t just end with a transaction but continue with further opportunities.
This approach reflects Mike’s broader philosophy of treating clients as partners rather than simply customers. He believes that by investing in relationships and focusing on the long-term, businesses can avoid the “one-and-done” mentality that often drives aggressive negotiation tactics.
For Mike, relationships are the bedrock of repeat business, growth, and resilience in competitive markets. This mindset ensures that when issues arise, both parties are more likely to work through them together, rather than letting the relationship falter.
Top Negotiation Tactics
In this segment, Mike shares three effective negotiation tactics he relies on to gain leverage in challenging deals.
- First, he emphasizes the power of walking away. By letting the other party know you’re willing to walk away, you create an atmosphere of equality and can shift the negotiation dynamic.
- The second tactic, the power of silence, is a simple yet incredibly effective tool. By remaining quiet after an offer or counteroffer, you create discomfort, which often forces the other party to adjust their stance or negotiate against themselves.
- Lastly, Mike advises understanding what is valuable to both parties. Knowing what you can concede without hurting your position and what matters most to your counterpart helps build trust and creates a sense of reciprocity, making negotiations smoother and more cooperative.
Building Trust by Breaking Down Complex Deals
When dealing with large, high-stakes deals, Mike advocates for a strategy of unbundling the deal into smaller, more manageable phases. This approach helps mitigate risk for both parties and allows for incremental trust-building.
By splitting a complex deal into phases—such as pilot projects or trial runs—you give your counterpart the opportunity to evaluate your value over time, rather than committing to a full-scale partnership from the start. This step-by-step approach reduces the risk involved in a negotiation and encourages the other party to focus on one manageable component at a time.
This also allows you to build credibility and demonstrate your value in each phase, which will, in turn, lead to better terms in subsequent phases of the deal. Additionally, Mike emphasizes that this strategy gives both parties more time to communicate and adjust to the changing dynamics, which further strengthens the partnership. As both sides achieve success in smaller chunks, it lays the groundwork for a deeper, more secure long-term collaboration.
Building Relationships Through Negotiation
For Mike, negotiation is not about winning or losing—it’s about building long-term relationships. His approach to negotiations focuses on creating lasting partnerships, which is reflected in his mantra: “Sell once and schedule thereafter.”
By prioritizing relationships over individual deals, Mike has maintained clients for years, with little need to resell. This philosophy fosters trust, mutual understanding, and a sense of loyalty that benefits both sides in the long run.
Mike also highlights how each negotiation is a part of a broader relationship, and every interaction can influence future business opportunities, so maintaining professionalism and respect is essential for sustained success.
Resources & People Mentioned
Connect with Mike Figliuolo
Connect With Paul Watts
Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
https://www.podcastfasttrack.com
Learn More About Mike Figliuolo
What was a pivotal moment in your career that shaped your approach to negotiation, and how did it influence your strategy and tactics?
When I was a young consultant, I was encouraged to send a proposal to a CEO. In writing that proposal, I was coached to understand the client’s need and what they saw was going to be the value coming from the engagement. I was coached to then show how our services could help the client achieve that outcome. Before I received that coaching, I was too focused on emphasizing our capabilities and our services. By flipping the lens and looking at the proposal from the client’s perspective, I was able to draft something that was more resonant for them.
Can you share a specific negotiation tactic that has consistently helped you close deals more effectively? Please provide an example where it worked.
A tactic I find helpful when trying to close a deal is being extremely responsive. When I have a client or a prospect who wants a proposal, pricing, a contract, or any other interaction, I respond immediately. A mistake I hear some people make is they wait for a couple of days to respond because they don’t want the buyer to think that they’re not busy and not in demand. They think that delay shows the client that they’re in demand and therefore the client should be eager to work with them. I take the opposite approach. I look at the fact that the client is thinking about me at that moment and I respond immediately to satisfy that need. First of all, it demonstrates that I’m a responsive service provider. Second, it enables me to advance my negotiation while my competitors are sitting there deliberately making the client wait for a response. For clients who are action oriented and impatient, I have a tremendous advantage in those situations compared to the competitors who are making them wait.
What is the most challenging negotiation you’ve ever faced, and what strategy or tactic helped you turn it into a win?
The most challenging situation was when I had done some work for a client where a portion of my fees were contingent upon them reaching some specific milestones. They absolutely met those milestones but when I asked them for payment, they asserted that they had not yet met the milestones and since they were being purchased by another company, the contract was going to essentially be void and they would not be paying my fees. The strategy I took in that situation was one where the relationship was clearly not going to matter and instead the outcome I was seeking was getting paid as much of my fees as possible. The tactic I used was engaging legal counsel and threatening to sue them and block their merger because they were going to be breaching the agreement. They very quickly changed their tune and I received about 90% of the fees I was owed. You need to recognize when the relationship doesn’t mean anything anymore and change your negotiating strategy accordingly.
What are your top three must-have tools, frameworks, or resources that sales professionals should use to improve their negotiation skills?
The first resource I would encourage sales professionals to get access to is my course on strategic negotiation. That is available on my website (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/courses/everything-is-negotiable/) and it’s full of all my best negotiation strategies, tactics, and approaches. The second tool is something all sales professionals already have: it’s preparation. Spend time before the negotiation looking at the deal from your negotiating partner’s perspective to understand their strategy and what they want to get from the deal. That will help you be better prepared for the conversation and help you keep emotion out of the discussion. The third tool is silence. Let people be uncomfortable with the silence because many times they will start negotiating against themselves.
With buyer behaviors evolving and AI playing a larger role in sales, how do you see negotiation strategies and tactics changing in the future? What should sales professionals do to stay ahead?
AI can help salespeople and buyers with their preparation for the deal. It can quickly pull together information that will give you hints as to what’s important to your negotiating partner across the table. As far as how AI is going to impact negotiation strategies in the future, I believe your negotiating partners will be better prepared and come to the table with more information about you and your position. What sales professionals need to do to stay ahead is conduct the same level of preparation about their buyers to keep the playing field level.
What’s are some simple but powerful negotiation tactics that most salespeople overlook?
A negotiation tactic that I see a lot of salespeople overlook is not looking at the deal from the buyer’s perspective. Salespeople tend to come to the conversation with a mindset of having a product or service to sell and they try and put the product or service first and then explain the benefits of it. Once they’ve done that, they try to pitch how those benefits might solve a problem the buyer has. That essentially becomes a push sale and it’s like pushing a rope – it doesn’t go anywhere. The tactic I encourage people to apply is looking at the deal from the buyer’s perspective and understanding what their needs are. Once you understand that need, you can explain your solution in a way that makes it obvious that your solution fills that need. At that point, the buyer starts pulling on the rope and pulling your solution toward them
Share This Episode, Choose Your Platform!