Insights on Business and Sales Negotiations

Nogotiation Blog

Insights on Business and Sales Negotiation

Join us for insights on how to negotiate a winning balance, where where both sides understand and appreciate the value they receive. As a result, you are more likely to forge a long-lasting relationship that yields more and better opportunities in the future. This idea underpins K&R Negotiations’ Win Wisely™ approach and underlines the importance of using leverage wisely.

The Dynamics of Credibility and Leverage

February 15, 2012

This is the third in a series of blog posts The Principles of International Negotiation: Finding Universal Value in a Complex World. "You lied to us." That was what we heard from across the table on the opening of our fifth consecutive negotiation meeting during a Japanese engagement. The actual issue was minor, having only to do with the meeting’s start time. But tensions were high. Days one through four had started at eight a.m., usually stretching until two or three a.m. the following morning. The man making the accusation was a key Japanese negotiator from the customer’s procurement organization. He had been difficult, not because he was hard to work with, but because he was detail-oriented - and often right. In the preceding days he had used good logic and persuasion to push costs…

If You Don’t Listen, You Can’t Win: Positive Attitudes for Effective Global Negotiators

February 4, 2012

This is the second post in a series entitled: The Principles of International Negotiation: Finding Universal Value in a Complex World. You can read all posts in the series here. In its essence, good negotiation is good communication. When the person across the table from you is from a different country, you’ll see and feel just how critical good communication is! In K&R’s world, negotiation is the interaction between people to reach agreement. To reach that agreement your job as a negotiator is to understand exactly what everybody wants out of the process. You will succeed when you reach an agreement with terms that satisfy all involved. In subsequent posts, we will discuss the mechanics of articulating value. But for now, let’s focus on negotiation as communication. In most…

The Principles of International Negotiation: Finding Universal Value in a Complex World

January 25, 2012

The combination of technology and the evolution of global markets has created exciting opportunities to forge successful relationships and seek lucrative deals globally. While the world has indeed become smaller and a lot faster, culture from country to country, region to region - and even company to company - is far from uniform. With dazzling new opportunities come more potential pitfalls. Even without the culture variable, negotiating in business is already a complex process. Culture, language, and fundamental, unspoken approaches to business can all make international negotiations more complex than domestic negotiations. While acting in a way that would normally create a good impression in your culture, you may inadvertently create the opposite in someone else’s culture. For example,…

Define Value, Win Credibility and Respect at the Negotiation Table

December 21, 2011

Define Value, Win Credibility and Respect at the Negotiation Table with a Few Simple Questions Have you ever heard this from a customer during a discussion? "We’d like an additional 10% discount. If you give this discount to me, we can close the deal." Sellers hear this all the time. More often than not, sellers concede immediately in the interest of getting the fast close. But is this the correct response? Let’s consider the advantages. As a seller, if the deal really closes after you give the quick discount, you can count the revenue and move on to the next deal. And maybe the client likes you for that moment. But how do you know it will close? Your customer might start thinking, "This was too easy. I should have squeezed them for more." All-too-common scenarios like this are the…

Shaping Your Value Argument

December 7, 2011

Shaping Your Value Argument: Know Your Internal Audiences on the Client Side and Close the Deal Relentless and thorough preparation is where negotiators on the vendor side shortchange themselves. It’s a major point of focus during our negotiation training, and one of the most critical aspects of this is considering the various groups of stakeholders across the table that need to understand and buy your value argument. Crafting your value argument - the ultimate answer to the question, "What’s in it for us?" - can fall flat and jeopardize the deal if your argument is presented with only one kind of stakeholder in mind. The diagram below shows the relationship between roles, motivations (measurement concerns) and relative numbers of people that are typical at many lines of business. Note…

Negotiation Tactics: Discovering the Hidden Value in Client Requests

November 23, 2011

While at the negotiating table, sometimes the rush to provide a client with whatever he or she has requested without discussing the value of the request is a study in blown opportunities. This is illustrated by a recent discussion we had with a client regarding the case scenario below. Our client was in negotiations with a customer about adding some content to an existing contract. The sales team wanted to close it by end of May. The customer’s procurement organization was involved. In the first week of May, the procurement director stated: "We might be interested in closing before the end of the month." The sales person responded: "That sounds good. What will it take to get that done?" Negotiation Games: Spotting and Neutralizing Five Tactics that can…