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Choose Who You Are Going To Get Down & Dirty With

In order to be successful in your next sales negotiation, you need to make the right decisions before you sit down to start negotiating. If you take the time to make the right decisions then you can end up being successful.

It’s not only the person who is leading the negotiation that you need to select. However, you also have to make the right decisions about the other people who will be on your team. This is probably the most effective way to stack the deck in your favor during a negotiation.

Picking A Negotiation Leader

If there is one decision that can determine the outcome of a sales negotiation, it’s who you select to lead your side of the negotiation. There are a lot of characteristics that you should be looking for in your team’s leader.

The person that you want to have leading your team has to have two sets of characteristics: negotiating skills and team leadership. Just like a quarterback in football, your lead negotiator will be calling the plays that the rest of the negotiating team will be executing.

Choose Your Team

After you’ve decided who is going to lead your side of the negotiation team, you’ve still got a lot of work left to do. Your next task is to choose the rest of your negotiating team.

Just like putting the rest of a sports team together, you’re going to want to build your team so that it will be able to support its leader. Each team member needs to bring their own set of skills in order to support the rest of the team.

Supporting Roles

Good leaders know that they are only as good as the team that is supporting them. When it comes to negotiating, the two most important supporting roles are the listener and the note taker.

The outcome of any sales negotiation is ultimately determined by the quality of the information that your team has. The members of your team who are responsible for listening to everything that is said and writing it down are how you’ll be able to stay on top of what is going on.

There Is Strength In Numbers

In order for your next sales negotiation to be a success, you are going to have to make sure that you have enough (but not too many) people on your team. The key will be to match the other side of the table.

If you don’t have enough people sitting on your side of the negotiating table than you’re potentially going to find yourself overwhelmed. Likewise, if you find yourself with too many people on your side of table and not enough on the other side then the other side may decide to not negotiate with you.

It’s All About Time

Having the right people on your team to successfully negotiate your next deal is an important component of being successful. However, you’ll need more than just warm bodies. You’ll also have to have time on your side.

This means that the members of your negotiation team need to have enough time to do a good job of negotiating. If they are distracted by some other task or if they are trying to do multiple things at the same time, then they’re not going to have enough time to do a good job of getting you the best deal possible.

What All Of This Means For You

Any modern sales negotiation is generally not done by a single negotiator – it takes a team. That means that if you want to be successful, then you need to make sure that you take the time to build the best team possible.

The first thing that you need to do is pick a great leader. Next, the supporting team members who will collect the information for that leader need to be selected. Finally, you need to make sure that your negotiating team is large enough, but not too large.

It is possible to have a successful sales negotiation. However, to boost your chances of reaching a deal that meets your needs, you need to take the time before the negotiations start to build a negotiation team that will put success within your grasp before the negotiation even starts…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What role on a negotiating team do you think is the most important?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Sometimes it’s the littlest of things that can trip up even a professional sales negotiator. In this case, we often don’t want to ask the one question that we need to ask the other side of the table: “how much does that cost”. In the end, this can end up costing us a great deal…

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Negotiator, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: how many people on a team, lead negotiator, listener, negotiation team, note taker, time to do a good job

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It’s Super To Have A Negotiating Team – If You Know How To Use Them

The Challenge Of Managing A Team Of Negotiators

Today’s sales negotiation sessions have become so complex that it’s almost too much for a single negotiator to handle. That’s one reason that more and more sales negotiators are being handled by teams of trained negotiators. This simplifies a lot of the record keeping and tactical details of a negotiation; however, it introduces a new layer of complexity – how to manage the negotiating team…

5 Ways To Manage A Team Of Negotiators

As though a sales negotiator didn’t already have enough to worry about, now there is an added burden of management that needs to be taken care of. Before you throw your hands up in despair, hold on for a minute and realize that your team is a fantastic resource – you’ll be able to get more out of negotiations than you ever have before. You’re just going to have to learn how to get the team to do what you want them to do.

There are five different management actions that you are going to have to take when you are leading a team of sales negotiators. Each one of these actions is fairly simple by itself; however, when taken together they can shape your team into an effective negotiating machine:

1. Areas Of Expertise: all too often a sales negotiating team will just be thrown together with the right number of bodies in order to “match” the number of people on the other side of the table. Don’t do this! Instead, construct your team based on each person’s individual area of expertise. You should work to minimize the amount of overlap between team members in order to maximize the amount of expertise that you can bring to the table.
2. Specific Jobs: just having people on your team in order to bring your numbers up is a waste of both their time and your time. Instead, make sure that you take the time to plan for the negotiation. Each member of your team should have a specific job that you have assigned to them You’re going to need someone to take notes, to do research, etc.
3. Clear Communication: having multiple people on the same team can quickly lead to a communication nightmare. It’s not just that you can end up sending mixed signals to the other side of the table, but rather that you may get confused even within your own team. A simple way to deal with this issue is to take time before negotiations start and have the team agree on a set of hand signals that everyone understands. The most important of these signals will be the one that tells someone who is currently speaking to “shut-up!”
4. Information Gathering: the basis of any negotiation is information. You’ll arrive with some information and then you’ll be constantly collecting more information as the discussion progresses. You will need to assign someone on your team to act as the information hub through which all information passes. If they haven’t blessed it, then you can’t rely on any information that you may have.
5. Logistics: although this is the simplest of all team-based responsibilities, it often turns out to be the one thing that can trip up a team. Everyone needs to know where and when the negotiations are going to be taking place. As important roles have been handed out to different team members, you are going to need all of them to be present and accounted for when the negotiations start.

What All Of This Means For You

In addition to working on perfecting your negotiating skills, when teams of sales negotiators are involved you are also going to have to have management skills. Just having people on your negotiating team isn’t enough, you need to find ways to maximize their contributions to the negotiation.

In order to do this, you will need to develop multiple team leadership skills. These will include learning how to pick the team with the right skills, assigning them individual tasks, establishing clear communication, etc.

All of these management skills are easy to learn. What’s important is that you will need to remember to do them as your next negotiating session approaches. If you can do this, then you will have harnessed the true power of team negotiating.

What skill is the most important in someone who is leading a team of negotiators?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Man, what a hassle negotiating is. If you have to negotiate every single vendor relationship each time you need to have something done, it sure seems like you’re going to end up spending your time negotiating and won’t have any time left over to do everything else. There has got to be a better way…

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Post tags: areas of expertise, assigned specific job, communication signals, information gathering, information hub, logistics, negotiating team, team

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It’s Easier To Make It To The Finish Line When You Have A Team

Don’t you just love movies? Whenever there is a negotiation going on in a movie, be it with hostage takers or closing a big business deal, there is always the picture of the noble solitary sales negotiator doing his / her best to close the deal against almost impossible odds. Can you tell me what is wrong with this picture?

Say Hello To Negotiating: The New Team Sport

The arrival of the 21st Century has brought with it a great deal of complexity. This is especially seen when it comes to sales negotiations. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that almost all sales negotiations were carried out by a single negotiator – teams of negotiators were reserved for extraordinary deals.

However, due to the complexity of deals and their often technical nature, teams have become more of the norm instead of the exception when negotiating sales deals these days.

Why Bother Creating A Team To Handle A Negotiation?

There are a number of advantages of doing sales negotiations using a team of negotiators. Not all of these benefits may be obvious upon first glance. Here are a few of the most important reasons for using a team to negotiate your next sales deal:

• Knowledge: As smart as a single person may be, a team will always bring more raw knowledge to the table. It’s just a fact of life that a team of negotiators will have had more experiences and more diverse experiences than any one single negotiator could possibly have had.
• Creativity: In order to reach a deal with the other side of the table, the ability to create a novel deal that works to the advantage of both sides is a critical skill. In order to make this happen, the creativity of the entire team is going to have to be harnessed in order to search out all of the possible solutions to the issues that will arise during the negotiations. A single negotiator will hit a brick wall when a team is still going strong and creating ways around issues.
• Details: It’s a fact of life that it’s the little details of any sales negotiation that can result in a deal that is good or bad for either side. The challenge in modern negotiations is trying to stay on top of a sea of constantly shifting information and understanding just what the ramifications of each agreed to change will be. This is too much for one person and perfect for a team where responsibilities can be divided up amongst the team members.
• Risk: research into how negotiating teams operate has shown that as a group, teams of negotiators will generally set higher goals for a negotiation and will take more risks during the negotiation in order to achieve those goals. The flip side to this behavior is that when the stakes grow too large, when they threaten the organization, teams will become more conservative than individual negotiators.

What’s Wrong With Using Teams To Negotiate

Although the advantages of using a team of negotiators to complete a deal is generally a better idea then relying on one single superhuman negotiator, there are some drawbacks to the team approach.

The single greatest drawback to using a team is that it requires a strong leader. You might be scratching your head at this issue, but it is really the heart of most negotiating team problems: poor leadership. The reason that it can be so hard to get a good leader for a negotiating team is because the skill set needed to be a good leader is so large.

Negotiating team leaders need to have several characteristics in order to be successful. In order to accomplish the goals that the team has set for the negotiation, the team leader has to be both flexible and firm. Ultimately the team leader needs to act like a conductor and make sure that the negotiation continues to flow in a direction that will result in a deal being reached. He / she can’t allow it to get hung up on small issues or get lost in a discussion about some issue that is not relevant to reaching a deal.

What All Of This Means For You

Each sales negotiation is unique. It has its own set of challenges and its own opportunities. One of the first decisions that needs to be made is if you’ll approach the negotiations by yourself or with a team of negotiators. More often than not the right answer is going to be to use a team.

A team of negotiators can accomplish much more than a single negotiator can. From such practical issues as being better able to keep track of all of the details of an ongoing negotiation to also being better suited to creating creative solutions to obstacles that pop up, teams are almost always a better approach.

As long as you can supply a skilled negotiating team leader, you should be in good shape. This means that if you want that job, you’ve got some studying to do. Negotiating is hard. Successfully leading a team of negotiators is even harder!

Do you feel more comfortable negotiating by yourself or as part of a team?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Today’s sales negotiation sessions have become so complex that it’s almost too much for a single negotiator to handle. That’s one reason that more and more sales negotiators are being handled by teams of trained negotiators. This simplifies a lot of the record keeping and tactical details of a negotiation; however, it introduces a new layer of complexity – how to manage the negotiating team…

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Negotiator, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: creativity, details, individual, knowledge, leader, leadership, risk, team, tracking details

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If You're Going To Play The Negotiating Game, Then You Need To Balance The Teams...

The next time that you are facing a situation that will require a sales negotiation, I’d like to ask you to stop for a moment and consider one important question: should you go it alone or should you bring others from your side along with you?

Although you might think that you know the answer to this question, it just might surprise you to find out that you’re probably wrong. For you see, this really isn’t just one question, but three separate questions that you need to find the answers to…

How Big Should Your Negotiating Team Be?

So there you are, the customer has agreed to meet with you and you know that this is going to be your best opportunity to really roll up your sleeves and hash out a deal with them. Stop. Should you go it alone or should you stack the deck and bring more of your team along with you?

It turns out that this question has been fairly extensively studied and the answer is that you should bring others along . The reasons; however, are not what you may think that they are.

The studies have shown that when we are going to be the sole negotiator, we generally do a really lousy job of preparing to negotiate. Basically we just grab our stuff and go. When we are part of a team that is going to enter into a negotiation, we take more time to coordinate with the rest of the team and we actually do a much better job of preparing for the negotiation.

An additional interesting point is that the more people that you have on your negotiating team, the longer it’s going to take you to close a deal with the other side. This makes sense because when there are multiple people on a negotiating team, they will all have to reach consensus before a deal can be struck. This often results in a much better deal than a single negotiator could have reached.

What Happens When You Have An Audience?

Sometimes it’s all too easy to picture your next sales negotiation as happening just like they like to show on TV: in a big board room with you on one side of the large polished oak table and the other side opposite you. However, often times reality doesn’t look like this. Instead, you’re there, the other side is there, and then there’s a peanut gallery of various onlookers. Does this change things?

Interestingly enough, this changes things a lot. All sales negotiators (this means you) have a deep-set need for approval. What this means is that we will be highly aware of everyone who is in the room when we are negotiating and we will change our negotiating style simply because they are there.

The biggest impact will be on how we negotiate: we’ll take a much harder line than we would otherwise because we’re showing off. If the other side shows us up or surprises us then we’ll take it badly and we’ll start to throw up walls to resist the other side at every turn.

Likewise, the other side will react the very same way if they feel that we have caused them to “lose face”. This means that you are going to have to be careful how you negotiate when there are others around because your opponent’s behavior will have changed.

What To Do When You Are Outnumbered

If you show up for a sales negotiation and there are more people on the other side of the table than on your side, you will automatically start to feel intimidated. The behavior of the side that has more warm bodies will also change.

Teams of negotiators who have the numerical advantage have been shown to be more willing to make bigger claims for what they and their companies will be able to deliver. Confidence can make us say the darndest things.

My recommendation is that you always try to get a roster of who will be attending a negotiation session before it starts and then make sure that your team is at least equal in numbers to the other side’s. A level playing field always results in a better-balanced deal being struck.

What All Of This Means For You

The right time to determine how many people that you need in order to conduct a sales negotiation is before the negotiations start. Your goal should be to make sure that you have the same number of people on your side of the table as the other side has on theirs.

When it comes to making sure that a negotiation is done fairly, I have no problems leveling the playing field before the negotiation start. I’ll request that anyone who is not a part of the actual negotiations leave the room or I’ll ask the other side to kick a few people out in order to balance out the team sizes.

Of course this doesn’t work the other way around. If my negotiating team is larger, then I’ll be very happy to keep my mouth shut and not bring my advantage up. Sometimes silence really is golden.

Do you feel more comfortable going into a negotiation by yourself or with a team? Why?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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Post tags: balance of power, feeling intimidated, need for approval, preparing to negotiate, scribes, single negotiator, solitary negotiator, taking a hard line, team, team negotiating, team of one, teams, time required to close a deal, time to close a deal