"Ed provided us with an action packed, fully interactive training program on customer negotiation. 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 2007 Customer Negotiation Toolkit

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

  1. Craft a commercial business case to show customers the costs associated with their requests.
  2. Use a consultative approach in telling them their idea is not cost effective.
  3. Use plus-minus refocusing techniques to "think on your feet" and disarm argumentative positions.
  4. Use Socratic questions and listening skills skills to acquire information on the motivational triggers of the customer.
  5. Respond where it is a "blame" game or irrational conflict.
  6. Understand and identify power positions and how to increase power.
  7. Know how and when to use one of three exchange tools.
  8. Craft a strategy to enhance the relationship after the exchange.
  9. Structure the customer negotiation process to know when to end the discussion.
  10. Describe how they practiced using these negotiating tools during a customized role-play exercise.

You have been awarded the sourcing contract and now your customer engineers, program managers and customer service representatives must keep the customer happy without giving away the farm. This is not easy. The after sourcing 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 sourcing 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 customer negotiation. Their concept of sourcing implementation is to have you do all the testing and other work 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.