In the business negotiation field, acute, surface-level pain is often expressed as "our margins are down" or "our salespeople are giving in on price too quickly." Yet these are merely symptoms of a problem that doesn't contain enough information to stage an intervention.  There are many root causes of negotiation problems creating these symptoms and driving this pain - some selling-related, some cross-functional - such as:

If American corporations spend $7.2 billion* every year on sales processes, account management skills, negotiation, and opportunity management training, why aren't these training initiatives being interwoven into the "DNA" of the organization? Interestingly enough, three factors are cited most frequently in our research for failure to implement training initiatives:

A very common trap, one that surprisingly enough is even taught by some business negotiating books, is that we make only one offer.  What does this accomplish?  Since deals always involve making multiple buying influencers happy, one offer most likely focuses on addressing the needs of only one buyer but not all of them.  It communicates that you have assessed their situation and are now in the best position to tell them what they need most.  And it immediately sets up a competitive atmosphere:  if they disagree, they have what they need to shop around, whether for a better price or more features for the same price.

Sometimes a few of your products or services - when compared at the product feature/benefit level - might actually be commodities.  So what do you do then?  Fortunately, when you look at the total business relationship (not just a piece of it) between your firm and the customer, this commodity problem usually goes away.

Sometimes when you're solving a problem, your assumptions are flawed or out-of-date, so problem solving suffers.  If you assume business negotiation is unpredictable, you will be more likely to lose control and lose the deal when the unexpected happens because you approached the problem as unpredictable.

I'd like to invite you to a fancy restaurant tonight.  But this is not just any fancy restaurant.  It is the type of restaurant you read about in the tabloids because celebrities are always there.  It's the kind of place you normally have to book at least six months in advance.  It's the kind of place with three-hour waits and long lines at the valet stand as the paparazzi peer around to look at someone famous inside.  Now, this restaurant doesn't have a fancy name, but I'm sure you'll recognize it.  It's called the Fixed Price Negotiation.

Just how can companies develop and implement strategies that are responsive to today's business negotiation environment, where sellers are facing more complex negotiations, more professional buyers, more irrational competitive behavior, and more internal negotiation?  All of which are making negotiating even more difficult!

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Each and every negotiation completed on behalf of your organization sends a message to customers, competitors and sales forces.  You can't claim you're the value leader when everyone knows that at the final hour your prices will sink faster than the Titanic.   How you negotiate is either a deposit or withdrawal from your brand equity.  Giving away value tarnishes brand perception and signals competitors to do the same, triggering irrational competitive behavior that can obliterate everyone's margins.