Negotiation
For CEOs and leaders going into deals that matter, and for sales teams who negotiate every day
You can never be too good at negotiation. I’ve spent four decades on every side of a deal, buying, selling and partnering, across North America, Europe and Asia and often in the other side’s language.
I learned the discipline from Ingemar Dierickx, who created INSEAD’s Negotiation Dynamics program, and I’ve used his approach with sales teams, management teams and boards ever since.
How I think about negotiation
Many people don’t like negotiating because they think it means haggling, and haggling feels like conflict. The real work happens long before anyone talks about price, and that preparation is what makes the price conversation straightforward.
Most of that work comes down to information. The more you have, the more places a solution can come from, and the more creative you can be.
Price is the obvious example. People get hung up on the number and forget that timing, terms, volume and next year’s business can all be negotiated too.
A good negotiation starts with knowing what you want, which is the step most often skipped.
Then there’s knowing what the other side wants. The best way to find out is simpler than you’d expect: just ask them. People tell me the other side won’t say, and maybe they won’t, but the worst case is that you ask, they refuse, and now you know something.
Once you stop dreading negotiations and start treating them as problems to solve creatively, you get better at them fast. You might even start to enjoy negotiating.
Coaching leaders
For one person, preparing for one specific negotiation
When you’re going into a negotiation that matters, I work with you on preparation: what you actually want, what the other side might want, which variables you haven’t thought to use and what your alternatives are if this doesn’t close.
We all run on instinct most of the time, especially under pressure. Talking it through with someone else slows you down enough to think clearly about your own goals and why they matter.
It might be a few sessions in the week before a deal, or it might run for months while a negotiation plays out. It’s confidential either way.
The best time to call is well before the first meeting. Once talks start, many of the options that good preparation would have opened up are already gone.
Training sales teams
For sales, business development, purchasing and partnership teams who negotiate constantly
I work with teams on how to prepare, what to ask, how to find the variables nobody has put on the table and how to hold a line without damaging the relationship.
That might be a half-day workshop, a program running over several months or focused work ahead of one must-win deal. Teams can also keep me on retainer as their negotiation coach, someone to call whenever a deal gets stuck or they want to rethink their approach.
If you’d like to see how I work first, I can give your team a short talk on negotiation, at no charge.
“Even under tough time pressure or in important negotiations, Arjen stays calm. When he makes a point, it is always well-supported by good arguments.”