You live in changing times, and your decisions with your strategic accounts need to be faster, smarter and relevant to key decision makers.
Read MoreWhen faced with challenges that call for new thinking, how can you come up with fresh ideas, providing breakthrough thinking and innovative solutions?
Read MoreHave you ever found yourself in a negotiation frustrated when the other side is unwilling to move on an issue which appears to you to have limited importance to them? Perhaps you are facing a Straw Man?
Read MoreAs humans, how do we change our minds? How do we change our behaviour to negotiate for a new product or a new service? Like it or not we need to change because of artificial intelligence (Ai).
In 2015 the world of Ai changed forever because for some tasks the accuracy of Ai now exceeded the accuracy of humans. After this change, many leaders and industries realised that there was now an urgency to change.
Read MoreCompetition in the B2B world has never been fiercer. With more companies fighting over every contract, the sales teams are now laser-focused on the next sale and holding on to each customer, whatever it takes. How organisations measure their employees, and what behaviours they reward add to the laser-focus on short-term gains.
Read MoreMany executives wish they could get their organisations to make decisions faster and get things done faster. Wishing they could get people to work together and make critical decisions to get projects completed. In many organisations, it is hard to get teams to move faster, but there are ways to get teams to decide faster and act faster.
We have a one day process called Solve Your Impossible Problem (SYIP), so I was fascinated to read this book. What’s different and when should we use the Sprint process?
Read MoreIn July, CEO Sigma Healthcare Mark Hooper announced losing a contract worth $1.7 Billion and in the next financial year earnings would half to $50 Million. Sigma distribute products to 400 stores for My Chemist and Chemist Warehouse and could not negotiate a new contract with their biggest customer.
What does this mean for Sigma?
Read MoreI love seeing successful professionals at work: watching a great tennis player return an unwinnable shot, or a swimmer come from behind to win the greatest race of her life.
It’s the same as when in a tough negotiation someone asks a great question that unlocks value, breaks a deadlock or achieves a great outcome.
Read MoreMany managers are not good at solving problems. What do we mean? Well, many managers don't dig deep enough. In their haste to prove they can solve problems, they react to the first possible cause of a problem.
Read MoreWhen changing made-up minds, we looked at some Cialdini tools and the power of stories. Once you understand the foundations of persuasion, there are many insights from persuasion research that can help in specific practical situations. The book The Small Big written by Steve Martin, Noah Goldstein and guru Robert Cialdini is a fantastic source of ideas. The idea of the book is to share some small things that can make a big difference to persuasion. There are 50 short chapters each devoted to an idea supported by rigorous research.
Read MoreA small group of organisations are serious about increasing their performance using innovation. A larger group pay lip service to increasing their performance using innovation. Those that pay lip service are unaware of how their policies and practices can discourage innovation. What can discourage innovation? We explore some wisdom from the book, Seeing what others don't: The remarkable ways we gain insights by Gary Klein. Who?
Read MoreCustomers you can't afford to lose are those customers who supply a good portion of your revenue or profit. Or they can be customers who are growing faster than the rest of the marketplace. The thought of losing one of these customers scares you so much that you might feel tightness in your stomach.
Read MoreFor those cases when you face people with made-up minds, we continue to give you some ideas to get unstuck and to get other people to change their minds. In part 1 we used some of the ideas of persuasion guru, Robert Cialdini.
Many powerful ways to change made-up minds use emotion. Business psychologist Peter Sullivan often explains that the word emotion can be written as e-motion and explains this as e is the electrical force that puts us into motion.
Read Moren business, we are bombarded by information telling us that it’s the end of the financial year. Go to the mall, and JB Hifi and Harvey Norman shout at you too. We’ve even created a new word EOFY.
So what does that mean for you? Well, there are some opportunities to negotiate good deals. Why? Because you know that the other person is negotiating with a deadline and they need to get the sale.
What do we mean?
Read MoreManagers constantly want to get better results, better results for themselves and better results for their organisation. One way to improve performance is to get improved performance from individuals. For managers to improve their own performance and their organisation’s performance, they need to know a secret.
Read MoreRegularly, clients ask how to change others minds, especially when it appears the other person has made up their mind and seems unlikely to change. Sometimes this is because you are not trying to persuade the other person, you are just giving them your opinion and then getting frustrated because they don’t agree with you. But let’s assume you have tried some professional ways to persuade and you are stuck. In a series of blogs, we will give you some ideas to get unstuck and to get other people to change their minds.
Read MoreWhat things rob you of time on a daily basis?
Whether you are talking about a live negotiation or a major community project, there are times when you need to take decisive action. Use time, yours and others, more efficiently and effectively.
Read MoreWith the SAMA annual conference in Florida fast approaching this is a good time to share an insight from our book Managing B2B customers you can’t afford to lose about managing rewards and insights within strategic account management (SAM).
Read MoreSaving costs is good, improving productivity is good, increasing sales is good, executing strategy is good, more growth is good and more profit is good. Well, experience shows it’s easy to make savings on a spreadsheet, it’s a little harder to announce the changes, and it’s tough to deliver the improvement in profit.
Read MoreTodd Snelgrove now Founding Partner at Experts in Value, was previously the Global Vice President of Value for SKF. During his 20 plus years in the industry, he has identified five reasons why companies do not take the time and effort to quantify their value and equip their sales teams or account managers with the tools and techniques they need to discuss value with customers.
This extract is taken from The Creative Negotiator by Stephen Kozicki.
Why can’t you quantify and prove value?
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