Posts Tagged ‘ideas’

The Chinese Guide To Sales Negotiation

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Sales Negotiators Need To Learn How To Negotiate With The Chinese

Sales Negotiators Need To Learn How To Negotiate With The Chinese

Pity the poor American salesperson who goes out into the world of business and tries to negotiate. Sure, he/she is probably well equipped to negotiate with his / her American born-and-breed peers. I mean, after all, we share the same vocabulary, culture, and were brought up pretty much the same way. However, what happens when we encounter someone from a different (dare I say foreign?) culture? Like say, China…?

The world is constantly becoming a smaller and smaller place. Current economic conditions not withstanding, this is only going to speed up over time. That means that somehow we need to find a way to quickly come up to speed on how to deal with sales negotiators who come from different cultures. They think and act completely differently than we do and we are the ones who need to learn to adjust in order to make our sales negotiations successful.

Dr. Charles Karrass has spent a lot of time studying not only negotiations but also how cross-cultural negations do or don’t work. When it comes to dealing with folks from China, he’s got some suggestions for us:

  • Get Some Quanxi: Quanxi is the Chinese term for the construction of close family relations, or a joined network of relationships with the emphasis on the individual and informal groups rather than formal organizations. Building guanxi means building relationships. In sales negotiations, this means that by entering into a negotiated relationship, you are actually taking on a lot of responsibility. If things change during the contract, the other side can ask for changes and you are expected to be accommodating.
  • Watch Those Words: In negotiations with Chinese, what a word means is critically important. All too often, what a word means to you may not be what it means to the other side. Both before and during a negotiation, it would be worth your while to take the time to carefully define key words and make sure that both of you are using it the same way.
  • Persistence Pays: All too often in Western culture, we take a “no” as really meaning “no”. To a Chinese negotiator, your “no” just means “no for now” and they will feel free to revisit it over and over again to see if you’ve changed your mind. Many western negotiators have commented on this by saying that Chinese negotiators appear to grind away until they end up getting most of what they want. Chinese negotiators have both consistency and persistence – be prepared!

Yes, a sales negotiator can successfully conduct business with Chinese negotiators. However, you need to be aware that they view the world differently than you do and YOU are the one that is going to have to adjust in order to have these negotiations turn out successfully.

Have you ever had an opportunity to negotiate a business deal with a Chinese negotiator? Did they keep coming back over and over again to issues that you thought were already closed? Were there any misunderstandings over vocabulary words? Did you end up building a quanxi relationship? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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A Sales Negotiator’s Friend: The Telephone

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
A Telephone Is A Two-Edged Blade For Sales Negotiators

A Telephone Is A Two-Edged Blade For Sales Negotiators

What’s your mental picture of a typical sales negotiation? When you close your eyes do you see a lushly carpeted board room with a large oval table in the center and padded leather chairs all around it? If so, then in most cases you are sadly mistaken.

An amazing number of sales negotiations occur over the telephone. Everyone has one and in fact in this day and age of mobile phones we all seem to have more than one phone. Given that by using the phone you can reach someone directly at almost any time, phones have become an important tool in negotiating sales.

However, as with any tool, a phone can be a danger to any negotiator’s hope of success. Using a phone to negotiate can be quick and easy, but that’s actually part of the problem. I’m not telling you to not use the phone, I’m just saying that you need to watch out when you do. Here are some of the things that can go wrong when you use the phone to negotiate a sale:

  1. Deal / No Deal: Because you can’t look the other side in the eye when you are negotiating with them on the phone, it’s entirely possible that you may conclude the call thinking that you have a deal when you really don’t.
  2. Can You Hear Me Now?: What you think that you are saying is not necessarily what the other side is hearing. However, since you are on a phone, there is no way for you to realize that they have gotten the wrong message.
  3. What Did You Say?: Often when we are negotiating on the phone, we are out and about. Although we may reach agreement, it won’t count until such time as we write it down. That may be hours later and what we write down may be different from what we agreed to.

Once again, the phone is a powerful sales negotiation tool; however, you have to be careful how you use it in order to make sure that you don’t get burned.

Have you ever used the phone as part of a sales negotiation? Did you have any communications problems? Were the problems on your side or on the other side? When did you first realize that there was a problem? How did you finally resolve this problem? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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8 Ingredients For Baking A Delicious Negotiation

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
The Results Of A Negotiation Depend On The Ingredients That You Use

The Results Of A Negotiation Depend On The Ingredients That You Use

And who wouldn’t want to bake a delicious negotiation as long as they are going to go through the effort of conducting a negotiation anyway? In order for any negotiation to turn out successfully, YOU have a job to do. Specifically, you need to find ways to build trust, rapport, and satisfaction in the mind sitting across from you at the negotiating table. Got any thoughts on how best to do that?

Just in case you are still stuck on that old “I’ve got to WIN this negotiation” mentality, how about if we have a quick talk with our old friend George Ross who is Donald Trump’s lead negotiator and ask him how best to do this type of negotiation baking. George suggests that we do the following 8 things in order to achieve our goals of building trust, rapport, and satisfaction:

  1. Locate Common Ground: It doesn’t matter just how far apart you feel that you are with the other side when you first sit down at the negotiating table, there is some common ground between you. Before you dive in and start talking about your differences, you should work with the other side in order find your common ground and then use that as a base to start your negotiations. Small talk, banter, looking at what someone displays in their office are all good ways to help you find this starting point.
  2. Visit The Rapport Store: … and make sure that you buy a whole bunch of rapport. This simply means that you need to make sure that the other side is comfortable talking with you (and that you are comfortable talking with them). This also means that you need to make sure that the other side believes that you can fulfill any promises that you make to them.
  3. Just Be Nice: Umm, this should be fairly obvious; however, lots of people try to put on their “negotiating face” in some sort of misguided attempt to scare the other side into giving in. Give it up. Be nice and you’ll be amazed at what can happen.
  4. Match The Other Side: What makes negotiations so “fun” is that we have to always be adjusting our negotiating style in order to match the other side and the current status of the negotiations. This is clearly a situation where “one size fits all” does NOT apply!
  5. Feel Their Pain: Taking the time to understand the other side of the table and thinking about what they are trying to accomplish. This is a critical part of making sure that you are going to be able to ensure that they will be satisfied as a result of the negotiations.
  6. Prove Yourself Worthy Of Trust: Getting the other side to believe that they can trust you is difficult to do. Once done, you don’t want to lose this trust during the negotiations. What this means is that you need to make sure that you keep any promises that you make during the negotiations.
  7. Bend, Don’t Break: Learning to be flexible is one of the key negotiation skills that the professionals have. Inflexibility spells doom for any negotiation because that can quickly become a deal breaker.
  8. Let Your Reputation Work For You: If you are known as a deal maker, then the other side will come to the table with expectations of being able to successfully negotiate with you. If, on the other hand, you are known as a deal breaker, then the other side will avoid having anything to do with you because they view negotiating with you as a waste of their time.

When you go into the negotiation kitchen, do you use all 8 of these ingredients to bake something wonderful? Which ingredient do you use the most often? Were there any on this list that you never use? Can you think of anything that I’ve left off of this list? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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7 Ways To Be Successful In A Negotiation

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
Successful Negotiating Requires Clear Goals

Successful Negotiating Requires Clear Goals

If only there was some magic formula for being a successful negotiator. You know what I’m talking about, some process that if you followed it from start to finish you could always be assured that you would “win” a negotiation. Well, as we’ve discussed in the past on this blog, the concept of winning a negotiation is a bit unclear. Rather we like to say that you want to come away from the negotiation feeling satisfied. Oh, and since a negotiation takes place between people who are infinitely complex and difficult to fully understand (yourself included), there is no way that any fixed formula is going to yield successful results every time. Rather, you need to be flexible and adapt your negotiating style to the current negotiation.

George Ross, who is Donald Trump’s master negotiator, has come up with seven goals for how you can better your odds of succeeding in almost any negotiating situation. Considering how successful George has been, it sure seems like it might be worth the time to listen to what he has to share with us. That being said, here are the seven goals that you can keep in mind in order to be a successful negotiator:

  1. I Want To Find Ways To Get More Out Of This Negotiation: The act of negotiating is a process of discovery for both sides. If you are able to distance yourself from narrowly focusing on just one point in the negotiation (price) and open your mind to all of the possibilities, then you will have a much better chance of being satisfied by the outcome of the negotiation.
  2. Learn, Learn, Lean (About The People On The Other Side Of The Table): Why are they there? What do they want? Almost without fail what you think are the answers to these questions turn out to be wrong. The only way that you are going to learn about the people who are sitting across from you is to start asking questions. Draw them out of themselves and who knows what valuable information will be revealed?
  3. Where Is The Bottom Line?: At the end of the day, this is the critical question that all negotiators need to find an answer to. The other side has a minimum amount that they MUST get out of the negotiations and you have a maximum amount that you are willing to give up as a part of the negotiation. George calls the gap between these two amounts the “zone of uncertainty”. Establishing the outline of this zone is what good negotiators do best.
  4. What Are The Constraints For This Deal?: You have constraints put on you, the other side has the same. These constraints can be limits on the amount of time that is available to negotiate, how much decision making authority each side has, etc. Discovering what constraints the other side is dealing with can help move you towards a deal much quicker.
  5. Connect With The Other Side: It is one of the great truths of life that we all like others who are most like us. What this means is that you need to find out as much about the other side of the table as quickly as you can. Once you have done this, you can start to interact with them in a way that they will most positively respond to.
  6. Understand The People Who Make Up Your Side Of The Table: Nobody negotiates alone. You have a collection of people on your side while you are negotiating. They may not be in the room with you; however, they are the ones whose support allows you to be there and they all have a stake in the outcome of the negotiations. They may not all agree with the posture that you are presenting to the other side of the table, but it’s your job to hid any internal differences and present a single unified face.
  7. Discover What Is “Fair And Reasonable”: This poor phrase has been so overused by both sides of the negotiating table that it can often be ignored. However, don’t do this. At the end of the day both sides of the table are searching for a deal that they believe is fair and reasonable. Unfortunately, we all define this slightly differently. Your job as a negotiator is to question and probe the other side of the table in order to find out how they define fair and reasonable. Then you will need to make sure that the deals that you propose to the other side meet this criteria so that they won’t be rejected.

Do you agree with all of the goals that are on George’s list? Can you think of something that needs to either be added or dropped off? Which one of these goals did you use in your last negotiation? Which one do you think is more important than all of the others? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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10 Tips For Getting Satisfaction While Negotiating

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

You're In Trouble If The Other Side Can't Get No Satisfaction

Ok, so the title for this post is a bit screwy, but hopefully the point is clear: at the end of the day, negotiating is all about having both sides leave the negotiating table feeling satisfied. They may have had to give in on some things; however, in the end they both got what they really wanted. Now this all sounds fine and dandy, but just how does a negotiator go about making sure that everyone is going to become satisfied?

The first step is to realize that a negotiation is really just a specific type of relationship. Even as the world continues to change around us and new ways of doing business emerge such as outsourcing, strategic alliances, and partnerships one thing remains constant: negotiating is always needed. However, how we actually go about negotiating is also undergoing a transformation. As both sides of the table now often have many partners in common, it makes sense to ensure that everyone has a good working relationship because undoubtedly we’ll be doing business again in the future.

When we use the “R” word (relationship) this means that we are starting to talk about how satisfied each side of the table is with the deal that is being worked out. It goes without saying that depending on your actions you can either be building or diminishing the other side of the table’s satisfaction. It’s way too easy to dimish satisfaction so we’ll focus on building satisfaction up.

There are two quick ways to do this. The first, interestingly enough, is to tell the other side “No” one more time. Whereas this does not at first seem to make sense, if you think about it you’ll see that it really does. In order for the other side of the table to feel as though they “got a deal”, they also need to feel as though they worked for it. If they sat down, made a request, and you agreed to it, then they would leave the negotiating table feeling deeply dissatisfied. The reason for this is because you didn’t negotiate with them – they got something for nothing. Although you might think that this is the best possible outcome, it isn’t . They won’t be satisfied. However, if you say “No” then they’ll need to work to reach a deal. Once a deal is reached, they will feel as though they “earned” a good deal.

The other way to ensure that the other side of the table leaves with a feeling of satisfaction, you need to remember the A.I.R. rule. A.I.R. stands for “Ask for something In Return”. Never give up something for free. By asking for something in return, the other side of the table will feel that they “earned” what you gave to them.

In order to help you with the thinking about how best to ask for something in return, here is a list of things that you could ask for during most negotiations:

  1. Better payment terms
  2. A longer term contract
  3. Who is responsible for delivery?
  4. A freeze on prices
  5. Most favored nation price guarantee
  6. Have them buy additional products
  7. Delivery options
  8. Changes in staffing
  9. Changes in specifications
  10. Warranty

How did you feel the last time you left the negotiation table – were you satisfied? Why or why not? Do you ever take the time to think about how satisfied the other side must be? What have you done during a negotiation to ensure that the other side left the table feeling satisfied? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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