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? 

I was struggling with a concept this morning and a friend of mine sent me this quote:  “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments.

That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh

What we’re hearing today from procurement professionals is a desire to “increase internal share of spend and reduce rogue buys.”  As a salesperson if you’re not sure what this means, you need to know.

We know that face-to-face communication is a rich medium because we transmit both visual and vocal cues, while e-mail communication has neither. On one side e-mail may seem to be a more “business-like” approach, but it also eliminates rapport building and subtle body-language communication as well. Studies have shown that e-mail negotiations have five major implications: