Prepare for Negotiations More Effectively
Better preparation leads to better outcomes.
Contributors
3 anonymous contributors
- IT budgets are increasing, but many CIOs feel their budgets are inadequate to accomplish what is being asked of them.
- Eighty percent of organizations don’t have a mature, repeatable, scalable negotiation process.
- Training dollars on negotiations are often wasted or ineffective.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Negotiations are about allocating risk and money – how much risk is a party willing to accept at what price point?
- Using a cross-functional/cross-insight team structure for negotiation preparation yields better results.
- Soft skills aren’t enough and theatrical negotiation tactics aren’t effective.
Impact and Result
A good negotiation process can help:
- Maximize budget dollars.
- Improve vendor performance.
- Enhance relationships internally and externally.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should create and follow a scalable process for preparing to negotiate with vendors, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Before
Throughout this phase, the 12 steps for negotiation preparation are identified and reviewed.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a twelve call advisory process.
Call #1 - Establish and categorize goals; develop negotiation ranges.
Call #2 - Discuss alternatives and how they impact the negotiation.
Call #3 - Identify and evaluate assumptions being made by the parties.
Call #4 - Discuss critical research components and sources.
Call #5 - Identify key relationships that help and hurt your negotiation.
Call #6 - Discuss the two-team approach to negotiating and how to utilize it.
Call #7 - Identify and assess the leverage of each party.
Call #8 - Review timeline questions and the impact the answers have.
Call #9 - Develop a strategy based on the 16 key factors.
Call #10 - Draft an agenda to implement your negotiation strategy.
Call #11 - Develop sound questions and answers to preserve leverage.
Call #12 - Review tips and best practices for rehearsing before the negotiation.
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: 12 Steps to Better Negotiation Preparation
The Purpose
- Improve negotiation preparation.
- Understand how to use the Info-Tech Before Negotiating Tool.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A scalable framework for negotiation preparation will be created.
- The Before Negotiating Tool will be configured for the customer’s environment.
Activities
Outputs
Establish specific negotiation goals and ranges.
- Sample negotiation goals and ranges will be generated via a case study to demonstrate the concepts and how to use the Before Negotiating Tool (this will apply to each Planned Activity)
Identify and assess alternatives to a negotiated agreement.
- Sample alternatives will be generated
Identify and evaluate assumptions made by the parties.
- Sample assumptions will be generated
Conduct research.
- Sample research will be generated
Identify and evaluate relationship issues.
- Sample relationship issues will be generated
Identify and leverage the team structure.
- Sample teams will be generated
Identify and address leverage issues.
- Sample leverage items will be generated
Evaluate timeline considerations.
- Sample timeline issues will be generated
Create a strategy.
- A sample strategy will be generated
Draft a negotiation agenda.
- A sample negotiation agenda will be generated
Draft and answer questions.
- Sample questions and answers will be generated
Rehearse (informal and formal).
- Sample rehearsals will be conducted
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
