In our work with major buying organizations we find that very few purchasing decisions are made based on price alone.  Virtually every purchasing organization we have experience with evaluates suppliers with a matrix and price is simply one of the many criteria.  In most instances, the lowest priced supplier does not get the business.  Buyers are charged with supplying their organizations with the lowest total cost of ownership solution.

You can't claim you're the value leader when everyone knows that in the final hour your prices will sink faster than the Titanic!  Negotiation is no longer about pulling the perfect response out of an arsenal of a dozen, two dozen or 200 negotiation tactics to make a procurement officer magically buckle.  Negotiation is not a soft skill that's strictly the domain of sales professionals.  It's not a necessary evil that concludes the sales cycle.

Would you agree that most companies believe negotiation is an organizational competency?  Of course!  But how many procurement departments (or companies) are clear in the steps needed to create this organization competency, versus individual experts?  And I'm not saying individual expertise isn't needed, but rather longer term results are driven by a negotiation process that is used by everyone.  Planning and teamwork are critical. 

While having general agreement on a particular way to negotiate deals is beneficial to the entire organization, what is more beneficial is providing individual negotiators with ample flexibility to address their own situations within those guidelines. 

Selecting the right sales training provider for your organization can be a challenging and complex undertaking.  Choose the right one, and your sales productivity accelerates.  Choose incorrectly and your organization loses time and money.

Has this ever happened to you?  Those 138 tips and tactics you memorized at the negotiation seminar... you can't remember one.  Your mind races to determine which negotiation personality type you could categorize this hard-bargainer under and all you can come up with is 'jerk.'  (Unfortunately, this fifth personality type wasn't discussed!)

Where will your training dollars be spent in 2012?  Will you achieve a high return on investment from those dollars? 

Supply Managers agree the single source negotiation often results in the Supply Manager feeling less than powerful, and/or an opportunity focused Supplier makes them feel like they have been taken advantage of.  One-sided negotiations seemingly expedite even the best Supply Managers to thinking they are in a very difficult to win situation.  Indeed this very line of thought creates a very powerful fear, and one of the most persistent myths in negotiations, the assumption of a fixed pie negotiation.

"The Internet is rife with webinars, but they are often scripted and contain more promotion than knowledge. We want to provide a forum for real discussion and differences of opinion," comments Dave Stein, Founder and CEO of ESR.   It's ESR's mission to help those seeking sales performance improvement solutions to find the right long-term partners. Stein is moderating this unscripted, unedited panel discussion on today’s hot button sales issues.

Do you believe good negotiators are born, not made?  Do you think it's a matter of using tips and tricks to counteract every move the other party makes?  What if negotiation is an analytical process by which you gather data and test its accuracy?  And the more data you collect, the better deals you make!