Mladen D. Kresic is President and Chief Executive of K&R Negotiations, a consulting firm specializing in structuring and negotiating business transactions in the computer, software, Internet and other industries. Mladen has over 31 years experience negotiating business transactions both as a lawyer and a businessman.
At my negotiation firm, we have often written about the topic of personal value since it is so important to effective negotiation strategies, particularly in a B2B environment. The ability to communicate clearly and persuasively is fundamental to winning profitable deals and building strong client relationships. When you are understood and believed, you can greatly […]
Part One: Challenges 1-3 The late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s long-time partner, observed, “Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.” Many negotiation skills I practice and teach are intuitive and pragmatic, yet effective only if based upon a firm foundation of work and knowledge. Every negotiation is different in terms of […]
Completing a winning deal, while maintaining positive relationships, depends largely on your ability to gather as much information as possible about the other side, including their market position, motivations, and goals. This holds true at the personal, departmental, and organizational levels. Better and more complete information can lead to a finely tuned value argument and […]
Over the decades as the K&R team have assisted leading companies achieve business and sales negotiation success, the subject of ”unprincipled concessions” has been a constant. Simply put, unprincipled concessions are those that are not tied to a credible business rationale. Research shows that this simple business negotiation mistake can (and has) cost companies between […]
Everything we do at K&R Negotiation is based on our philosophy, honed over several decades of helping the world’s leading companies achieve successful sales and business negotiation outcomes. We last shared this philosophy in late 2018 and it is time for a refresh. While some negotiations can be adversarial, negotiations as a defined business activity […]
For firms delivering services on long-term contracts, rising inflation has hit like a sledgehammer. The inability to raise rates due to resource rate or fixed price commitments threatens to jeopardize profitability as wages escalate by as much as 15%. Contracts signed before 2022 are in danger of becoming unprofitable, while competition for new business requires […]
In one of my previous articles, I wrote about the “time factor” — not only how you can manage it against other considerations but also how to use the high-level (or macro) agenda to help create agreements that have a significant impact on your success. You can read that article and case study here. The […]
During our conversation on the Sales Reinvented podcast, host Paul Watts asked me what I considered to be the three most essential do’s and don’ts of sales negotiations. After 30+ years negotiating and writing books and articles about sales negotiation strategies, narrowing the list of negotiation opportunities and pitfalls down to three was a tough […]
In a previous article, Negotiate Like a Pro: Ask the Right Questions, I wrote about the importance of understanding how to help your negotiation counterparts achieve their most important personal objectives while simultaneously serving the business needs of your respective organizations. If you are going to do business with someone, it must be related to […]
As you may remember from part one of this series, Gaining and Maintaining Positive Leverage, I had the opportunity to join Kison Patel, CEO, and Founder of M&A Science, as his guest on the M&A Science podcast earlier this summer. Kison and I spent over an hour talking about negotiation strategies and tactics in an […]
