Your world is changing, and changing fast: characterised by turbulence; shifting regulations, evolving technology, economic uncertainty, and competitor movement and changing customer needs. These fast changes mean that you and your negotiation team needs to be more agile in response to these drivers.

As we continually say in our books and blogs, competitors are becoming more aggressive – favourite weapon of choice price. Customers are becoming more demanding, and shareholders are demanding increasing profits: so companies must either increase revenue or increase productivity. However, increasing revenue and productivity is getting harder.

The success of a negotiation depends on the planning and preparation done beforehand for each of the four distinct phases of the negotiation process:

Do your account managers have the capabilities for planning strategically?

Managing accounts strategically is different to managing accounts operationally. Some of the differences are highlighted in this blog.

How do you use data to persuade senior executives?

Analysts feel pain while trying to convince senior audiences with data. There is a great article that states the solution when persuading executives with data is to frame your message using one or more of the following four topics:

Revenue & market share
Efficiency & costs
Customer loyalty
Talent & capability

Gary Peacock, PersuasionGary Peacock25 May 2017Data, Big Data, Persuade, Persuading for Results, StorytellingComment

What is the critical skill for your Account Managers?

You can find lists of competencies for account managers, for example from the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA). Many of these list the technical knowledge needed. However the most critical skill an account manager needs is persistence.

Should innovation be left to your creative teams?

Innovation is not just about ‘out of the box’, ‘blue-sky’ solutions. Sure, we need to use some right-brain thinking to free our imaginations and find creative answers. But, you need to match this with a left-brain process and hard work. Organisations can do a great job and spend lots of time solving the wrong problem. So, it’s important to take the time to understand the real problem that needs to be solved and to make sure the real problem is well defined.

How do you define your problems?

Business Problems, Gary PeacockGary Peacock12 May 2017Innovation, Creativity, Problem Solving, Right Brain, Left BrainComment

How do you select Strategic Accounts?

Typically, when deciding which accounts to manage strategically, companies use revenue as the main criteria. This makes some sense. Managing accounts strategically requires a large investment in time and resources, so receiving adequate revenue to justify this investment is valid.

However Strategic Account Management (SAM) is about managing the accounts in your business strategically. Managing to achieve your company's strategic objectives, there are many other factors that influence whether an account deserves you investing more time and resources.

Do you have a negotiating framework for major deals?

In B2B settings negotiations are more complex than ever before. Most companies know how to prepare for and negotiate effectively but don't have a strategy or framework when negotiating with their top 10-20 accounts. They negotiate based on who is the 'top gun' negotiator.

Why is this?

What are the barriers to organisational change?

The first barrier to change is most people don't like change. They tend to stick to what they know and what worked before. However, change is happening: like it or not.

Should you use handouts?

Do you ever consider whether handouts add anything to your presentation?

Pitch to win: picture the competition

You must pitch for some business. Where do you start? Most managers answer this question correctly: with the customer and what they want. However most managers get the answer to the next question wrong: What should you do next?

What is the correct answer?

What's your strategy for 2017?

We ended 2016 with a real wake-up call for everybody in a leadership, executive or management role – the status quo of business was disrupted.

Over the holiday break I would take a book down to the beach to read which inevitably attracted conversation from other beach goers, firstly on me being the only person reading a book with everybody else on some device.

I liked the book because it challenged some of my concepts around leadership and self-motivation and that is always a sign of a great book.

How to win your pitch? Pitch with Cialdini.

How do you make sure that your pitch is effective? Make your presentations relevant to your customers. Robert Cialdini, persuasion guru has been researching persuasion since 1970. In his 2016 book Pre-suasion, he explains when to use his six universal principles of influence. But how should you apply these during your pitch?

Gary Peacock, PersuasionGary Peacock10 March 2017Persuasion, Persuading for Results, Pitching, Cialdini, InfluenceComment

A delegate's view of keynote: Negotiate or Perish

Guest blog by Graham Godbee
www.learndevelop.com.au

I recently attended a business conference in Sydney and was fortunate to attend the session: Negotiate or Perish by Stephen Kozicki. As an experienced practitioner in executive management development programs, I found the session highly motivating and am keen to use some of his practical examples in my business negotiations.

Negotiation, Guest BlogThe Gordian Team8 March 2017Negotiation, Substantive Issues, Value, Relationships, KeynoteComment

How can you become a successful negotiator? (Part 3: Principles of Negotiation)

In a previous blog, we looked at the outcomes of negotiation. To reach these outcomes you need to take into account your own principals and those of the parties with who you are negotiating.

Negotiation, Stephen KozickiStephen Kozicki3 March 2017negotiation, Principles, Agenda, Planning, Preparation, Walk-awayComment

How can you persuade a customer you can't afford to lose (Part 2)

So, you need to persuade a customer you can't afford to lose? Where do you start? If we ask persuasion expert Robert Cialdini how to persuade your customer to act, he would suggest a few ways. Two are scarcity and consistency.

Scarcity is the best known technique, Consistency is not well understood and under-used.

Gary Peacock, PersuasionGary Peacock23 February 2017Persuasion, Persuading for Results, Cialdini, Scarcity, Consistency, CustomersComment

What changes would drive you to manage your accounts more strategically?

The business environment is constantly changing. These changes in markets, competition and technology are hurting the results of many companies.

The priorities for companies are to create superior customer value, retain high-value customers, be more innovative and be more efficient. However, there is immense pressure to drive down operating costs, compete increasingly on price, and respond to rising customer demands.

Many companies find it impossible to respond to change and simultaneously pursue strategic priorities. So, they end up mainly reacting to change.

How can you use these changes to your advantage and find opportunities for improving your business results?

How can you persuade a customer you can't afford to lose? (Part 1)

Donald Trump would probably say: Just tell em!

In the real world it's often not appropriate to just tell em! So, we need to have more sophisticated tools available.

At the end of 2016, Persuasion guru Robert Cialdini published his latest book Pre-suasion. To condense his 300 page book into two sentences he says:

What do you do before you persuade customers can have a major (hidden) influence on their decisions.
We and our customers assume that what we are focusing on is especially important.

So, what's so important about Pre-suasion?

How do you compete in tough markets?

Imagine you are in an Australian industry with about 200 competitors, how do you compete and grow? Back in 2001, that's the problem faced by John Casella of Casella wines. He quickly concluded that he needed to be more strategic than his well-resourced competitors.

But how did he do it?

Account Management, Gary PeacockGary Peacock3 February 2017Competition, Value, Competing on Value, Strategy, PlanningComment

How can you become a successful negotiator? (Part 2 - Outcomes of negotiation)

In a previous blog we looked at the types of negotiation, but it is equally important to choose your outcomes before you begin negotiating. Let's take a look at the different outcomes.

Persuade with Data - Sculpt your Excel Charts

It is not just the volume but the complexity of data being collected that makes it difficult for us to analyse and interpret in a clear and simple way. As we are bombarded with data, most people still reach for excel to create charts to explain this data. After all, it's easy. Select our table of data, find the command for insert chart, chose one of the types of chart and then choose one of the options for that specific chart. That's easily done.

But as Samuel Johnson may have written over 200 years ago: charts created without effort are read without insight.

So, with a little time and effort how can we create charts to be read with insight and pleasure?

Gary Peacock, PersuasionGary Peacock10 January 2017Persuading for Results, Persuasion, Data, Big Data, Excel, InsightsComment