From Reactive Discounting to Disciplined Negotiation at Scale

agilio is a fast-growing healthcare SaaS business serving dental, pharmacy, primary care, and other clinical markets. Following a series of acquisitions, the company had reached roughly £40m ARR and was entering a new phase of commercial scaling.

To support the next stage of growth, Bruce Fair joined as CRO with a mandate to standardise the go-to-market organisation and strengthen sales performance across the group.

One of the early priorities was negotiation.

The sales team was capable and knowledgeable about their markets, but negotiation behaviour was inconsistent. When price pressure appeared, conversations often moved quickly toward discounting rather than deeper exploration of the buyer’s constraints and priorities.

As a result, value was not always fully established before pricing discussions, and some deals slowed unnecessarily or closed with avoidable concessions.

Bruce wanted to equip the entire sales team - around 14 reps and their managers - with a simple, repeatable framework for handling negotiation conversations more effectively.

The Approach

We designed and delivered a focused negotiation enablement programme built around real sales conversations.

Across three structured sessions, the team learned practical tools to improve how they handle pricing discussions:

Resetting buyer emotions Reps learned how to recognise when negotiations become defensive or confrontational, and how to bring conversations back to a collaborative problem-solving mode.

Active listening before reacting Instead of immediately defending price, the team practised pausing, labelling buyer concerns, and mirroring key phrases to better understand the real issue behind objections.

Value clarity before price discussion A simple value framework helped reps connect the buyer’s problem, the operational or financial impact, and the outcomes agilio delivers - ensuring price discussions happen in the right context.

Controlled concessions Reps learned how to explore constraints before negotiating, protect high-value elements of the proposal, and trade concessions deliberately rather than reactively.

Throughout the programme, real examples from agilio’s sales environment were used to practise these behaviours in realistic scenarios.

Results

The programme quickly changed the tone and structure of negotiation conversations across the team.

Reps became more comfortable pausing and exploring buyer concerns before reacting to price pressure. This created calmer discussions, surfaced more information from buyers, and allowed the team to position value more effectively.

As these behaviours embedded across the sales organisation, agilio began to see clear commercial improvements:

• Reduced unnecessary discounting

• Improved close rates

• Faster deal progression

• Greater confidence among reps when discussing pricing

Equally important, the team now shares a consistent negotiation framework that managers can reinforce through coaching and deal reviews.

CRO Perspective

“Ben helped us give the team a clear and practical framework for handling negotiation conversations.

Instead of reacting immediately to pricing pressure, reps now explore the situation more deeply and keep the discussion focused on value. The shift in behaviour was noticeable very quickly - negotiations are calmer, we’re holding value more confidently, and deals are progressing faster.”

- Bruce Fair, CRO, agilio