Price pressure is the second most common business negotiation problem we face today.  In fact, it is so pervasive that it has become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.  The more you hear the word price from people who want you to focus on it (to the exclusion of just about everything else going on at the bargaining table), the more you consciously and unconsciously start to think about one and one thing only:  price.

"We're in a rush (a 30-day mentality) to get the business, so we tend to give in to customer demands versus negotiating a win/win situation.  Management is often too impatient to work through a negotiation process.  They take the deal and move on, regardless of the fact that we're impacting future business dealings with the customer by demonstrating that we'll quickly and easily relent to their demands when put under pressure, especially if there is a danger of not securing the business in our time frame (i.e., quarter-end or year-end)."*  Does this sound familiar?

In every successful negotiation we have ever been part of, we have found, and even more important, exploited a gap.  For example, a client that specialized in data management services found themselves in a situation in which one of their customers believed that building their own database would be better, faster and cheaper than buying what they said were the outrageously expensive services of our client.  When we helped them analyze this, we found huge gaps between what the customer needed and wanted and the customer's consequence of not reaching agreement - building it themselves.

• Do you know where the greatest opportunities for profitable growth are within your strategic customer segment?
• Are they new services, new solutions, business value model innovations?
• Is it the globalization of the SAM organization?
• Is it organizing by industry verticals?
• Is it managing the strategic customer's ecosystem differently from the past?

At Nalco Company, it was decided to choose a negotiation solution that would not only tackle the list of concerns they had, but turn a seemingly soft skill - as negotiation is so often tagged - into a hard skill, which is defined as a business process that is measurable and repeatable.  Nalco set out to build both Key Account Manager (KAM) and organizational competency that would heighten courage, reduce outcome variance and produce measureable impact one deal at a time. 

Negotiation is a very strategic issue.  At the highest level, the business deals that a salesperson completes during the year roll-up and actually become that brand. The way you negotiate your business deals around the world is either a deposit to or a withdrawal from your brand equity.

You've all heard this before: "If the opportunity is large enough, then we are more likely to reduce margins without receiving anything in return."  Perhaps that's what happened on the last deal you negotiated!   Only one in five best-in-class sales leaders and professionals will never buckle when a customer demands something for nothing.  Four in five will concede.  In doing so, they trigger irrational competitive behavior and destroy brand equity by revealing to their customers that everything they say about their value is a lie.  After all, 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.

You're not alone! Many people tell us they are fearful of negotiating.  Most are afraid they don't know what data is needed.  Or they have attended a negotiation workshop that provided them with hundreds of tactics, but are afraid they won't recall what they are. 

At it's most basic level, the Strategic Negotiation Process is a step-by-step system that enables you to blueprint a negotiation, making it possible for you to see and understand a negotiation from your own perspective as well as that of your customer. 

Have you been to a fast-food drive-through lately?  If you have, you probably noticed more choices than were there a year or two ago.  Now, instead of just being able to get fries and a soda with your burger, you have a wide variety of menu items to choose from.  You could, theoretically, drive away with the traditional burger, fries and a soda, or you could enjoy a broiled chicken sandwich, side salad and unsweetened tea.  You might even drive off with a soy burger, unsalted pretzels and apple juice.