It's key to remember there are multiple people on your side of the deal and multiple influencers on the customer's side of the deal, all of whom have trading items of interest.  Rarely do they have all the trade data handy in one place.  By thinking through many of the deal items in advance, you can literally take proactive control of the business negotiation.  Even if you're only 50% to 60% accurate, you still will likely have more data than your customers or competitors.

There is no easy solution to the complexities of a business-to-business deal. But in an economy that demands greater revenues year after year, there is tremendous room for growth for organizations willing to rethink and redefine how they approach negotiation. 

Are you feeling the pain? Many of you told us you were in a recent survey conducted with the Strategic Account Management Association.  Ninety percent of you are facing more professional buyers who are more aggressive then ever, and you're saying there's more at stake, too:  deals are fewer, bigger, more complex and longer term.

Business negotiation has been made more complex than it needs to be, and that's far worse than confusing - it's disempowering. What keeps the deal afloat or makes it sink isn't pulling one perfect response out of a arsenal of a dozen, two dozen or 200 negotiation tactics. It has nothing to do with whether the person sitting on the other side of the table is the strong, silent type, a motor mouth, obsessive compulsive or ADHD.

Most buyers attempt to minimize the complexity of business negotiation by simply saying, "Well, your competitor's price is lower."  Chances are your buyer cannot get the "same thing" cheaper.  In virtually every business negotiation where there are professional buyers on one side of the deal and professional sellers on the other, the business solution being negotiated has virtually no chance of being "the same" as what your competitor is offering.

Our research and global fieldwork have shown that virtually every negotiation, regardless of who's conducting it or where it takes place, can be blueprinted in exactly the same way.  This is extremely important, because we also found that everything that takes place in the course of a negotiation - the planning and the research as well as all the tactics used in the final face-to-face meeting - is ultimately driven by that blueprint.  But what is it?  It's essentially a picture of the entire negotiation, a picture that can be determined by anwering two questions for those on both sides of any deal:

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.

Ryder is a world leader in the supply chain and transportation management solutions industry. After the company completed a four-year restructuring program, and operating in a highly competitive market, Ryder determined the company's organization focus to be:

In fact, after completing negotiation training, negotiators "highly effective" rating jumps to a whopping 6.8%!!! (makes you want to run right out and sign up for one of those courses advertised in the airline magazines, doesn't it?).

It's not unusual to see situations in which neither side has a clear idea of what they really want out of a business negotiation beyond one or two simple items. When people are asked about their negotiation goals, a great many state they have no goals at all.  This is, at least in part, because they approach negotiation with a tactical rather than a strategic mind-set and, as a result, are much more concerned with figuring out how to get there than with where they want to go.  This is a problem because, among other things, not knowing where you want to go can make it very difficult - if not impossible - to get there!