"Ed provided us with an action packed, fully interactive training program on customer negotiating. He was able to effectively engage our customer engineers and program managers and provide them with many takeaways that can be used immediately in our daily negotiations. Ed focused our Associates to: understand the Guiding Principles, apply techniques to manage the negotiation process, and to "think on our feet" to disarm argumentative situations. I have already seen our staff putting the training to use in their daily negotiations. It was time well spent for our team."

V.P. Engineering - major Tier II supplier

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Customer Negotiation Skills Training

Maintain Margin and Relationships with the Customer Negotiation Toolkit
Delivery methods:
  • Instructor lead on-line training
  • One-on-one coaching
  • National / annual associate meeting topics with break out sessions
  • Classroom instruction emphasizing technique practice with role-plays and case studies

At the conclusion of this customer negotiating skills training workshop personnel will be able to:

  1. Respond to a customer's request as if it is the first "move" in a negotiation
  2. Use effective negotiating tactics and gambits to achieve a Win-Win resolution
  3. Use refocusing and reframing techniques to "think on your feet"
  4. Balance the needs of the customer with needs of the company
  5. Use questions and listening skills skills to acquire information on the positions, interests and options
  6. Respond where it is a "blame" game or irrational conflict
  7. Understand and identify power positions and how to increase power
  8. Know how and when to use negotiating tools of: tradeoffs, concessions, walkways
  9. Craft a strategy to enhance the relationship after the agreement
  10. Make them feel like they won
  11. Describe how they practiced using these negotiating tools during a customized role-play exercise

You have been awarded the supplier sourcing contract and now your company's customer engineers, program managers and customer service representatives must keep the customer happy without "giving away the farm." This is not easy. The post-agreement Associates are not as commercially focused as account or sales managers yet more and more costs and charges are being addressed in every part of the contract implementation. And negotiation with various customer types: purchasing specialists, buyers, commodity managers, technical managers, design engineers, release engineers etc. is difficult. They are savvy, educated and know the tactics and gambits of business negotiation. Their concept of vendor implementation is to have you make all the concessions at no additional cost. Effective customer negotiating skills requires preparation, customer insight, creativity, ability to "think on your feet", courage, persistence and emotional control. Our customer negotiation process is designed for the business to business negotiation environment where long term relationships are important. The customer negotiation toolkit includes tools to prepare for the daily requests and a key performance indicator (KPI) measurement system to gauge just how well you are sharing the implementation and maintaining the relationship.

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