As part of Katalyst’s ongoing research into sales team effectiveness we have identified a clear need in the current market for NAM’s, NAC’s and Sales Directors to practice negotiation via realistic role play, gaining an understanding of buyer orientation to negotiation and common tactics used with suppliers. Once the sales team fully understand where the buyer commercial argument is coming from and importantly the behaviours, threats and posturing deployed to take control this strengthens their influence and enables greater leverage in the negotiation to achieve the business objective ! Without this awareness and capability the risk is giving concessions and marginalising client’s commercial opportunity.
The challenge is that many of our clients have invested in high quality negotiation skills programmes which provide the essential skills and process road map for negotiation, however, a vital piece missing from the context is frequent skills practice (Advanced Communication skills and thinking on your feet/positioning the commercial argument). This also includes development of internal “practice culture” lead by the NAC’s as a natural part of the negotiation preparation process.
The challenge is that the retail buyer in Tesco, Asda , Boots, JS, Superdrug, Waitrose, Co-op etc is practicing their negotiation skills far more frequently and intently than the NAM e.g. The buyer might see on average 4-6 NAM’s per day whilst the NAM might only see their buyer once every 4 weeks if lucky and then not all meetings contain negotiation. This potential imbalance places the NAM at a distinct disadvantage as, despite the process training and detailed preparation, without the linguistic skills and practiced thinking on your feet capability they might find themselves on the back foot rather than the front one.
Another factor to consider is the psychological impact on the young profile of client managers and how they deal with aggressive behaviours and rejection from the buyer, building mental toughness and also a preference to maintain relationship at all costs basis. These subtleties play a key role in how negotiations play out daily for client in multiple scenarios. The opportunity is to increase the resilience and mental toughness through live practice and build the confidence platform across client.
To positively address this situation Katalyst has recruited a number of “live” retail buyers from the major multiples. The profile of the team includes Buying Directors and Senior Buyers. The buyers have been coached in giving high quality feedback and insight into buyer commercial argumentation.
We typically run intensive one day Negotiation Master Classes which involve practice sessions and feedback based on live client commercial situations. Prior to delegates attending the Negotiation Master Class they fully complete their preparation for the upcoming negotiation. This includes paper work, PowerPoint presentation, commercial argument, client offer to the retailer and importantly the buyers behavioural profile (our buyers will move into the character defined by the delegate in the buyers brief). Our buying team receive this important information 2 weeks prior to the workshop to study the background context, develop negotiation levers, strategies and tactics
Our buyer pre-work also includes alignment telephone conversation and briefing with the delegate and we also use e-mail to further clarify prior to the workshop. In addition our professional buyers will also visit stores and review category dynamics as part of their familiarisation prior to go live to deliver the most compelling learning experience.
On the day of the workshop we normally have approximately 8 delegates working with 2 professional buyers and 1 Katalyst facilitator. The workshop is designed around client’s specific development requirements and importantly aimed at improving the commercial outcomes on live business opportunities with customers and strengthening the commercial argument and negotiation skills of the sales team with immediate results impact. The delegates learn how to tailor their specific communication and approach to build rapport and counter act posturing behaviours frequently adopted by buyers. Unprepared these can lead to fatal traps for the NAMS, negatively impacting the result.
As part of the workshop buyers will share their role, the importance of the relationship, how they negotiate, what strategies and tactics they use, how to plan and prepare. Our team are able to bring the whole context to life with practical examples and top tips from today’s retail environment.
Each delegate will conduct their one to one negotiation on their live client business opportunity e.g. price increase. The negotiation practice session is split into 2 stages – 1) Exploring negotiation limits using high quality questions to fact find and discover the buyers critical evaluation criteria in order to target the client proposal accurately 2) Presenting the business proposal and negotiating with the buyer. At the end of the role play the buyer will invite feedback from the other NAM’s observing (3 observers) and then provide direct feedback on performance strengths and improvement opportunities with top tips for winning control of the negotiation. The development areas are then linked to the client delegates personal development plan and aligned with their respective line manager as part of the in-role coaching programme.
Client delegates will execute their negotiation live with their respective customer and where possible their direct line manager will accompany this meeting to a) play a key role in the agenda b) observe their direct report to provide in-depth feedback post call to consolidate learning and develop confidence and capability.
Through this approach we also have the opportunity to benchmark results directly as the workshop focus is on maximising commercial value for client based on live business opportunities.
Most compelling value adding learning experience ever
Can’t believe how realistic the whole experience was – they were just like my buyer
Buyer insider knowledge was invaluable thinking about the game of negotiation and how to play it more skilfully
Practise, practise, practise
Very challenging and out of the comfort zone a real wake up call
We’ve done role play before with our line managers which has been valuable with some good feedback, however this moves the agenda on completely – extremely beneficial
Buyers were very professional and knew loads about my category and business – very compelling
The results achieved from this workshop due to the direct nature of the approach and working on live commercial opportunities has step changed results in some of our major customers