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5 Ways To Get The Most Out Of A Negotiation Team

Friday, January 29th, 2010
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It’s Super To Have A Negotiating Team – If You Know How To Use Them

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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To Team Or Not To Team, That Is The Question

Friday, January 22nd, 2010
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It’s Easier To Make It To The Finish Line When You Have A Team

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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Posted in team | 2 Comments »

Gang Negotiating: Does More People Make For Better Deals?

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Image Credit If You're Going To Play The Negotiating Game, Then You Need To Balance The Teams...

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?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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Shut-Up Is What Sales Negotiators Need To Learn To Do!

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Sales Negotiators Need To Learn To Just Keep Their Mouth Shut!Negotiation is all about power. The trick to walking away from a sales negotiation feeling satisfied about what you were able to achieve is to make sure that you walk IN to the negotiation with more negotiating power than the other side has. Sounds easy doesn’t it? I’ve been amazed  over and over again to see sales negotiators just give away their negotiating power to the other side time after time. They just don’t realize that they are doing it. Let’s see if we can put a stop to this…

How Do Sales Negotiators Lose Power?

Negotiating power can be a be a funny thing. You can have a lot of it and not even know it. Likewise, you can give it away and not be aware that you are doing so. There are a lot of ways to lose power but the #1 way is for you to run your mouth too much. Ultimately negotiating power is all about having more information. Whichever side of the table has more information about the other side has the power. Information can be used against you, so you want to hold on to it as tightly as possible.

How To Hold On To Power During A Sales Negotiation

If only it was as easy as keeping your mouth shut! Nope, there are actually a number of things that you can do in order to ensure that you keep the upper hand when it comes to negotiating power during you next sales negotiation:

  • Don’t Talk Business: In the small talk that occurs before the start of any sales negotiation, don’t talk about business. You might be able to not give away any secrets, but maybe you’ll make a mistake. Stick to weather, sports, family – anything but business.
  • Let The Other Side Do The Talking: Even better than you talking is getting the other side to talk, and talk, and talk. Just as you can leak power to the other side, the more they talk the better the odds that they will say something that will give you more negotiating power.
  • Keep Your Timeline A Secret: At the end of a fiscal quarter, negotiating with a salesperson who has already met his / her quota is completely different from negotiating with one who hasn’t. If you are this salesperson, don’t let the other side know where you stand – also don’t mention if business has been slow, or if you’ve got product piling up all over the place.
  • Don’t Start With Discounts: All too often salespeople will start a sales negotiation that they are anxious to close by offering a discount or some other enticement to the other side right off the bat. Don’t do this – although it might have worked in some other negotiation, if you start this way then the other side won’t see the value in your offer and you will have lost power even before the negotiations have begun.
  • Tell Everyone On Your Team To Shut-Up!: Even if this discussion sinks in to your brain, you can still lose power by comments that the engineers, procurement staff, and even the lawyers on your team make. Take the time BEFORE the sales negotiation begins to huddle with your team and explain to them that the more they talk, the more negotiating power they will be giving away to the other side.

Final Thoughts

Things that we can’t see are hard for most of us to get our hands around. Power in a sales negotiation is one of these things – it can be hard to tell how much of it you have and if you’ve lost some of it. Remembering to keep your mouth closed and working with your team to make sure that they do the same thing will allow you to close better deals and close them quicker.

Questions For You

Have you ever been in a sales negotiation when the other side revealed something that gave you power? Have you ever made a slip and given power to the other side because of something that you said? Has your team ever said something that weakened your position? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking. Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

People are either honest or they aren’t right? Umm, well not exactly. Look, in a sales negotiation everything is not as it seems. I hate to use strong words like “lying” or anything like that, but let’s just say that a healthy dose of skepticism is often a sales negotiator’s best friend…

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Succeed By Bringing The Ghost Whisperer To The Negotiation

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

Don't Look Now, But You're Negotiating With More People Than You Think You Are

Don't Look Now, But You're Negotiating With More People Than You Think You Are

So there you are, sitting across the the table from the other side starting a negotiation. If only you are able to use your considerable negotiating talents to convince them that what you want is best for them, then you’re sure to get what you want – right? Nope, it turns out that although you might think that it’s just you and the other side talking, it turns out that room is actually crowded with negotiating ghosts that you’re going to have to learn to talk to…

The other side of the table rarely represents just themselves. No matter if you are trying to buy a car from them or sell them a house, you are really talking with someone who is really part of a larger organization. This can be a whole company, a spouse, kids, a banker, etc.

What this means to you as a negotiator is that the other side is going to have to satisfy the demands of their extended team (upper management, sales, the union, the spouse, etc.). They are going to have make sure that everyone on their side has their needs met before they can reach an agreement with you.

Although there can be quite a mix of people whispering into the other side’s ear, there are four common characteristics that all of these impacted parties will share:

  1. Not All Will Agree: This means that there will be conflict among members of the same team. If they can’t agree, then this will impact the other side’s ability to agree to your proposals.
  2. Nobody Is The Same: All of the different individuals that the other side is representing have different needs and different priorities. This may be why the other side seems to be changing their direction so often.
  3. Not All Are Equal: Although there may be multiple parties whispering into the other side’s ear, not all of them have an equal role to play when it comes to making a final decision.
  4. Not All Benefit The Same: Just as all are not equal, so too not all will benefit the same amount from whatever deal you are negotiating.

All of these Ghost Whisperer issues lead you, my dear negotiator, to one simple conclusion: you need to come up with a way to deal with all of these “negotiation ghosts”. Here are four tips for doing so:

  1. You need to find out who is really making the decision on each issue in the negotiation. Keep in mind that it might be a different person for each issue.
  2. Make sure that you get commitments from the people behind the other side when it comes to the value of the thing that you are offering and the validity of your offer.
  3. Have the fundamental realization that the other side will be unable to give you the “yes” that you are looking for until his people allow him to give it. This means that your job is really to help him to get them to give him permission.
  4. Oh yeah, you’ve got the same issues – you are really negotiating on the behalf of many different parties. You need to be a good enough negotiator that you are able to get your people to approve your ability to reach an agreement with the other side.

When you negotiate, whom do you have whispering in your ear? Have you even negotiated with the other side when you didn’t know who they needed to please? How did you handle this? Has a deal ever been agreed to and then nixed because some outside party’s approval was not given? Leave me a comment and let  me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in authority | 1 Comment »

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