CREATE A WORLD-CLASS NEGOTIATING ORGANISATION
Executives, Salespeople, Purchasing professionals, Account Directors, Project Managers, and HR specialists constantly negotiate with customers, suppliers, major shareholders, colleagues or alliance partners. Although the outcome of any single of these negotiations may not make a significant impact on your company’s fortunes, the hundreds of negotiations undertaken every day by your organization, and the respective teams, have in combination an enormous impact on your company’s market position, its strategy and bottom line.
How your organization engages in on-going negotiations across the board makes all the difference between hitting and missing revenue and profit goals in the short, medium and long-term. With the changing nature and importance of negotiations, organizations that seek to achieve optimal returns from their negotiation efforts have to make deal making a core competency.
Our negotiating approach and methodology are largely focused on helping companies instill the best in class negotiation capability across the enterprise, form and manage successful and profitable business relationships and on improving the value of their sales & supplier negotiations and relationships. Organisations that seek to create a sustainable profit growth and to unlock maximum competitive advantage can benefit from our unique expertise in turning an individual negotiation competency into an organizational negotiation capability.
What does the organizational negotiation capability development look like?
Below are some of the key building blocks for creating a world-class negotiating organisation:
ORGANISATIONAL NEGOTIATION CAPABILITY ASSESSMENT (ONCA) – The first step in building a company-wide negotiation capability is to assess current negotiation performance. We work closely with key stakeholders to understand negotiation issues, challenges, processes, as well as current learning strategies. At this stage, we utilize the BNA Strategic Negotiation Model to diagnose gaps in individual and organizational capabilities and benchamark negotiation performance, processes and procedures against best and leading practices.
INDIVIDUAL PROFILING – research shows that the most successful people share the common trait of self-awareness. Those who understand their natural behavioral preferences are far more likely to pursue the right opportunities, in the right way, at the right time, and get the results. Here we assess a number of negotiation and communication competencies, as well as performance at an individual level.
A VISION FOR THE FUTURE – we will deliver clear and specific recommendations for how to achieve and sustain performance improvements across the board.
DEFINITION OF DIVISIONAL/ COMPANY-WIDE NEGOTIATION STRATEGY & PROCESS – a formal negotiation strategy and procesess document outlining:
- a fit-for-purpose functional/company-wide negotiation strategy
- mandate, roles and responsibilities for negotiation
- the process for determining objectives for each negotiation (objectives for each negotiation should be tied to larger organisational goals) and evaluating potential deals
- the process for preparing for the negotiation
- the process for conductig the negotiation
- the process for reviewing the negotiation
- operating procedures for cross-organisational alignemnt
- department and deal level metrics – measures of success incl. leading and lagging indicators of change aligned with corporate objectives
- common negotiation standards
Establishing an organisational negotiation capability requires putting in place effective, real-time processes, new tools, procedures, and measurements of success to enable organisations negotiate more profitable agreements across the board; and negotiators and executives to better manage and support negotiations.
Those who will be utilizing the respective negotiation strategies, processes and tools must have the necessary skills to employ the ‘new way of negotiating’. Developing these skills within the context of the newly established organizational negotiation framework is critical.
Our approach to implementing an organizational negotiation infrastructure is based on 15 years of experience in building negotiation capabilities, in 34 countries, and it is designed to empower negotiators with the focus, training, and accountability they need to achieve the consistent results anticipated by Client Sponsors and Key Stakeholders. To accelerate your results and maximize the ROI, we deploy a multi-layer and comprehensive approach that involves, but is not limited to:
- A Comprehensive Training Program for Champions, Sponsors, and Managers, supported by individual and group coaching
- A Comprehensive Training Program for negotiators and cross-functional teams: Sales, Account Management, Purchasing, Supply Chain Management, Operations, PMO, HR etc. (supported by individual and group coaching)
- Coach the Coach Champions and Managers
- Virtual Negotiations Centre of Excellence
- The New Way of Negotiating Tools and Templates
Business Negotiation Academy supports Client Sponsors and Key Stakeholders in all aspects of change management and communications to ensure successful implementation and adoption of the new approach.
EVALUATING IMPACT & ADDRESSING PERSISTENT BARRIERS – Once the new organizational negotiation infrastructure has been established we will work with you to measure outcomes and impact. Jointly, we will define leading and lagging indicators of change, define metrics and tracking processes that produce information on 4 levels:
Reaction- Learning Gains
- Behavioral Impact
- Business Results
Evaluating results, measuring impact and tackling persistent challenges and barriers is critical to protecting long-term success and returns on investment. It is important that organizations implement a systematic method for knowledge sharing and knowledge retention (e.g. Negotiations Centre of Excellence) to mitigate risks associated with staff turnover.
We help our Clients sustain their competitive advantage by deploying end-to-end capability development solutions and embedding them into Talent Management and L&D initiatives across the organization. These typically include:
- on-boarding new employees into the New Way of Negotiating and Managing Relationships
- comprehensive training programs and support
- ongoing coaching
- consulting
- assistance in preparing for real life negotiations
- refresher training
Organisations that identify and support effective negotiation practice enjoy an enormous competitive advantage, particularly in a hypercompetitive world.