There are very few - if any - complete solutions to any problem.  Despite the many benefits of a strategic negotiation process, there are some problems that even it can't solve.  Many negotiation problems, in fact, stem from a poorly executed or nonexistent sales process.  Poor account selection is one example.  If you sell for a firm that prides itself on providing value and solutions versus the lowest cost, and you call on customers who don't share those values, you are creating problems that, though unrelated to negotiations, will nevertheless have an impact on those negotiations.

Despite the creation and implementation of sales processes, there is still one area of sales that was considered, and is still considered, a tactical, reactive, and behavioral art:  the art of negotiating.  Because of the way business was conducted in the past, the fact that no established processes for sales negotiating existed didn't present any particular problems.  However, the same market forces that 20 years ago drove sales to shift from a personal relationship model to a more process-oriented and analytical one are now driving the need for a new approach to negotiating. 

Just as you would never dream of starting to build a house without a conventional blueprint, you can't build a deal that is worth negotiating without a plan to get where you are going.  The processes of data collection and analysis are key steps to what we at Think! call "blueprinting" a deal.  Blueprinting is a convenient way to view data-based preparation and analysis in its most basic and raw form; it essentially describes the steps needed to get your arms around all the moving parts in a complex B2B deal.

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.

• 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.

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.