Episode #460 – Kent Kononoff

I’m sitting down with Kent Kononoff, a seasoned B2B sales leader with over 25 years of experience in sales and sales leadership. Kent is known for his expertise in value-based selling, collaborative negotiation, and strategic planning to drive high-stakes deals. Kent shares his go-to collaborative approach, his favorite negotiation tactics like calibrated questioning and strategic silence, and reveals his top dos and don’ts for effective negotiations. 

Plus, don’t miss a real-world story that brings these concepts to life and a powerful reminder that everyone in your organization, including those outside of sales, can all uncover new opportunities.

Outline of This Episode

• [04:30] Kent’s three favorite negotiation tactics—including collaborative questioning and strategic silences
• [07:43] Effective negotiation strategies include value-based selling and collaborative approaches.
• [09:38] How to spot aggressive tactics like unrealistic deadlines or extreme terms and stay calm under pressure 
• [14:24] Avoid undermining your own sales pitch
• [16:10] Leveraging strong customer relationships and market positioning to secure new opportunities 

Confident, Collaborative, and Value-Driven Negotiation

Kent frames strategy as the overarching plan—your big-picture approach to closing a deal, shaped by your objectives, the client relationship, your position in the marketplace, and how your company is perceived. Tactics are the actionable tools that help execute the strategy: the specific maneuvers, like deploying credibility-building testimonials or positioning yourself as a subject matter expert. Strategy provides direction; tactics are how you get there.

When it comes to high-stakes negotiations, Kent prefers a collaborative strategy. Instead of pushing generic solutions, Kent concentrates on building rapport, understanding the customer’s precise needs, and creating a solution that fits the individual circumstance. This approach sets the stage for trust and long-term partnership.

We also discuss why not every negotioation counterpart will be cooperative—some may come in with a “win-lose” mentality. According to Kent the secret is to stay patient, ask calibrated questions, and gradually guide even competitive negotiators toward mutual understanding. Relationship-building and deep discovery remain essential, ensuring that you become more of a partner than just another vendor.

Essential Negotiation Tactics for Difficult Deals

Kent’s negotiation toolkit is robust but centers on three tactics:

1. Calibrated Questions:
   Asking calibrated questions, positions you and the customer as teammates working on a problem together. Examples are, “How can we solve this together?” or “What are the biggest challenges your team faces?”
2. Strategic Silence:
   Sitting with silence can be uncomfortable, but Kent believes “sales are made in the silence and lost in the noise.” Pausing give clients space to share objections or hesitations they wouldn’t otherwise have mentioned.
3. Anchoring:
   Kent believes in anchoring expectations early on during discovery. By citing market trends or industry challenges, he helps shape a realistic frame of reference, making pricing discussions smoother down the road.

The Irreplaceable Role of Planning

Planning, Kent insists, is everything. Quoting Benjamin Franklin, he reminds us: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Kent attributes 90% of success to diligent preparation, including knowing your customer, mapping out strategies and tactics, and setting clear objectives. Ad-hoc negotiation may result in occasional wins, but consistent, sustainable results only come with meticulous planning.

Recognizing and Countering Aggressive Tactics

In negotiations, especially with professional buyers, you’ll inevitably encounter aggressive tactics—take-it-or-leave-it offers, last-minute demands, or anchoring at a very low price. Kent’s advice? Stay calm, never react impulsively, and always use your rapport to bring the conversation back to shared goals and values. Ask clarifying questions to uncover the real motivations behind demands, and always know your own BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) so you’re prepared to walk away if necessary.

Sales isn’t just the job of the “sales team.” Any team member, from operations to delivery drivers, can spot opportunities and bring them forward. It’s a culture of service and curiosity that uncovers hidden value for both customer and company.

Thoughtful negotiation transforms sales from a transactional contest into a platform for partnership and value creation. From strategy and planning to calibrated questions and collaborative tactics, Kent Kononoff’s wisdom offers B2B sales professionals a powerful toolkit for success in even the most challenging deals. Remember: Prepare, listen deeply, and always seek the win-win.

Connect with Kent Kononoff

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Learn More About Kent Kononoff

1.  What was a pivotal moment in your career that shaped your approach to negotiation, and how did it influence your strategy and tactics?

I was raised by parents who always taught my brother and I to be genuinely interested in helping people. I always had a friendly personality and naturally gravitated towards sales and customer-facing roles. I have been successful in those roles by focusing on helping people as my parents raised me to do.

2. Can you share a specific negotiation tactic that has consistently helped you close deals more effectively?

Collaborative or consultative selling and negotiating.

I’m always looking to build a positive outcome for customers and genuinely solve their problem.

Example: We had a potential customer that was satisfied with their current vendor. However, by using the consultative selling methodology, I was able to identify that they had an issue—not with the service but with invoicing and tracking costs. We were able to work collaboratively and figure out a creative invoicing solution that helped them ensure they were capturing all the costs associated with each job so they could, in turn, invoice their customers correctly. We have now had that contract for close to 10 years.

3. What is the most challenging negotiation you’ve ever faced, and what strategy or tactic helped you turn it into a win?

I worked for several years with a customer on a major project before coming to an agreement and winning the business.

We worked very collaboratively with them from conception through the development phase of their project—up to and including providing feedback and suggestions on what should be included in the RFP and many other details due to our position in the marketplace as subject matter experts.

Having provided the customer with feedback on what should be included in the RFP, we were well positioned to provide the best answers and best solutions when the RFP was issued.

4. What are your top three must-have tools, frameworks, or resources that sales professionals should use to improve their negotiation skills?

• Calibrated questions: They prompt problem solving and can uncover a lot of information while still allowing the other party to feel “in control” of the negotiation.
• Financial Review: I find Cost of Inaction and Total Cost of Ownership particularly helpful as we seldom have the lowest-price service offering. Calculating COI and TCO enables us to show the real costs and benefits of our solutions.
• BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement): Know your worth. Know your walk-away point. Don’t be desperate to make the sale.  Do not negotiate against yourself. Sell value and customer-centric solutions.

5. 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?

Buyer behaviours have been evolving rapidly with technology for many years. That evolution was sped up even more by the pandemic and will continue to evolve. AI is the next step in this evolution.

You can use AI for roleplays, brainstorming scenarios, to compare products and services, and many other things.

If you’re not leveraging AI, you’re missing out on a valuable tool to enhance your selling and negotiation abilities.

6. What are some simple but powerful negotiation tactics that most salespeople overlook?

Silence: Many salespeople either like to hear themselves talk or feel uncomfortable with silence and feel the need to fill in the gaps in the conversation. Silence can be awkward, but it can allow your prospective customer time to think and potentially even motivate them to fill in the silence by voluntarily providing information that is valuable to you when determining what solution would work best for the client.

“Sales are made in the silence and lost in the noise” – Paul Watts

Pre-framing (or pre-anchoring) the negotiation:

Start planting the seeds (or anchoring) well in advance of a negotiation. If you are a trusted advisor or subject matter expert, the more information you can provide about industry trends, costs, inventories, etc., well ahead of the negotiation, the easier it is for the customer to understand these as you get into the nuts and bolts of the negotiation.

Connect with Kent Kononoff

Kent Kononoff LinkedIn URL – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kent-kononoff-5411a231/