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.

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. 

When it comes right down to it, I don't want stories about how negotiation training improved my salesforce, or to know that lots of smiley faces are appearing on the post-workshop evaluations.  I want hard facts.  And here they are - all in one place.  Proven business results at five organizations:

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:

Do you know what makes a "good" deal for your company? Have you asked Legal, Sales Management, Marketing, Operations, Finance and IT? Representatives from each of these stakeholders group may bring to light areas you hadn't even considered.

Because business negotiation is such a dynamic process, taking an organizational approach to negotiation greatly increases the likelihood of sellers being able to establish and maintain successful, long-term relationships with their customers while achieving their goals.

With more than $4.25 billion in annual revenues, Nalco is the global leader of sustainability solutions for water, energy, and air.  Operating within a global economic environment that translated into margins eroding, account attrition rates climbing and stalled technology deployment and new account production, Nalco chose to transform their own sales culture.  The scope of the case study is Nalco's Water and Process Services segment, and within that segment, the Key Account Management (KAM) program.

Think! Inc. recommended Nalco move away from a series of negotiation training events.  To change culture, this effort needed the horsepower of support from executives who were serious about implementation and fundamentally understood success did not reside with the KAM team alone.