Business negotiation

Until now, we have examined how to develop and construct (with the client) an offer in response to the objectives and projects of his company(development of the technical and financial proposal).

Then comes the time when you must sit down with the client andfine-tune the conditions under which the offer is to be fulfilled: budget, technical conditions, legal arrangements, planning conditions, etc.Most often, the signal you receive during this «handover» phase is: «make an effort on prices, deadlines, terms, etc.»; or more aggressively«your technical offer could meet our needs, but your terms are entirely unacceptable compared to those of your competitors»; ormore simply that you are in the hands of professional buyers.

Whatever the tone or style employed by the buyer, this is the start of a new stage: you have moved from a selling process (the client hasacknowledged that your proposal does meet his technical needs) to a contracting process (he wishes to clinch the deal under the bestpossible financial conditions - as he sees them).

We shall see that successful negotiation is a matter of:

• Context: tailoring your preparation and the resources to be used to the importance and type of the business, and the personality of thebuyer.
• Methods: stick to a structure for your preparation, conduct and conclude the work at each stage using landmarks and reflexes.
• Behaviours: coping with pressure, disagreement, «adrenalinesurges», all of which require special qualities of cool-headedness,clear-sightedness, and daring.

On each job, the skill is adapting to different types of negotiators even if each of us has his/her own habits.