Each day we are feeling the pressures of the increasing numbers of professional buyers attempting to commoditize our products and services, and putting pressure on top and bottom line.  The need to invest in core competencies, like negotiation, has not been stronger in the last 50 years!  At the same time, having salespeople out of pocket for multiple days of generic "training" is also a challenge.  This is exactly what faced Information Builders, a business intelligence and integration firm.

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.

American corporations spend $7.2 billion* every year on sales processes, account management sills, negotiation and opportunity management training.  That's an average of $347,000 per company, according to SellingPower.  But there is little information available on whether or not those investing the money are achieving a return on their investment that's at least equal to -- if not better than -- their cost of capital.

Most people will agree that a successful negotiation results in a ‘win-win’ from the perspective of the buyer and the seller.  To create a win-win outcome, the seller needs to know the buyer’s issues and their buying criteria so that value can be positioned effectively to meet (or exceed) the buyer's needs.

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.

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.

It seems that most of us, even younger salespeople, were taught to sell by upselling our own products and services. This model is completely outdated given the current demands of procurement agents and business people.

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. 

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!)