And I am back with my new post on Sales Techniques used against Procurement buyers in Negotiation!As you recall from my last post, I have been reading about sales training that is being given to all the sales managers annually, and there are about four or five techniques that I have seen are recurring ones.
In my last post, I shared the first 3 tips for sales techniques commonly used by sales teams against procurement buyers. Now, in this final post of the series, I'm sharing the last 2 tips to help procurement teams be aware and prepared for these tactics.That brings me to the fourth point and which I believe is my favourite point of the whole five techniques that I was reading about.
And it's about a good cop, bad cop scenario. It's a fairly standard exercise. Now in the training that I was looking at on YouTube and some of the master classes that I was watching, the trainer to the sales guy said to try to identify how the negotiation is going to happen.
And this is what we call the discovery phase of the engagement. So whenever a tender process is issued out, or let’s say whenever the first quotation is pitched, see the kind of questions the supplier is asking the buyers. And some of these questions would be who are the decision makers? What are their designations? We have already spoken about the urgency. Can you draw a timeline for me for when the decision will be taken?
And they're doing this not to make the conversation going. Rather they are trying to identify which decision holder has how much authority and at what point that decision maker will be introduced. So they're trying to, let's say, reserve the benefits of the negotiation deals towards the latter part. All right? So if your boss will only, let's say, enter at the last stage of the negotiation, you can surely expect a very limited amount of discounts or deals or concessions given to you unless that stage is arrived at so often.
I have seen people disclosing every single thing on a very high-level basis, and that's where you would see power centres being defined to take this point a bit more forward. Basically, what they are trying to do at this stage is for the sellers is they're trying to time it, so they will identify who's the bad cop and who's the good cop. All right? And this is where it gets really interesting.
The sellers would like to negotiate with the good cops earlier than the bad cops.
So they will try to get many points. Of course, the price could be one of the points as well, but in most cases, it's not. But for anything other than the price, they would try to agree with the good cops. And whenever the bad cop enters into the negotiation, they will try to leverage whatever agreements were done with the good cop against the bad cop as leverage. So they know that both of you, good cop and bad cop, are working for the same organization, so you wouldn't disregard what has been agreed.
So please, as a buyer, make sure if you are playing the good cop bad cop tactic, you should know whatever decisions are being made should be communicated to the bad cop directly. And my point in telling you this exercise is the good cop bad cop theory works on timing element. As I said, if the seller is expecting a good cop in the first round of negotiation, bring the bad cop in the first round of the negotiation. Do not concede your points, even if it is small conditions in the early part of the negotiation; preserve them for later as leverage.
All right, that brings me to the last part. Most of the sales trainers will advise the sales manager that the procurement teams are experts at market research. They will use whatever your previous information about performance, prices, and comments that you have made; whatever you will say will be used against you. Sort of a narrative in every negotiation. So the sales managers are extremely careful about whatever information is being disclosed. So they will run all the scenarios about how much prices they quoted, what were the round wise discounts given, how they are going to defend if they are increasing the prices by 15%.
So, in short, by design, the sales managers are extremely well prepared. So if you are sending your buyer, who is not prepared, you can see who will take the control of the negotiation. Most likely, what suppliers will do to negate this market research of the procurement Team, is to bring whatever the negative points of the suppliers are, such as high prices, longer delivery time etc.; they will put it outright as part of the first meeting itself. So that as a good cop, if you are a good cop, you don't get to question me on this. Rather, you become a solution master for the supplier, trying to work out, in the spirit of collaboration, a solution. Let’s agree upon additional 30 days of delivery time, or let's try to agree upon lesser warranties, etc.
So these are some of the things that suppliers will use against the good cops in terms of getting those early wins and starting with whatever they are insecure about. It’s by design. That's how sales managers are taught every time a negotiation is being pitched.
Well, these were the five points (combined from my last post and this post) that I found very interesting that I thought of sharing with you.
I will continue to read about or even attend some of these sales webinars and sales training sessions to see how well sales managers are trained to deal with us as procurement managers.
Again, thank you very much for reading this blog.
It means a lot to me. And please share this blog with whomsoever you think can benefit in procurement.
My name is Gaurav, and I run SuperNegotiate, a digital procurement excellence community.
As a Chief Procurement Officer, it's crucial to train your team to be able to detect and counteract these sales techniques. There is no need for expensive training etc. It is 2023, and there is so much content available online already! Use it.So, on your next offsite or Friday noon catchup, ask your team to spend 1 hour and try to read about negotiations or watch the content that I am putting on a weekly basis. If the video format is inconvenient, this series is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your convenience.I will drop the link to Spotify and Apple channels in the comments. Search "Supernegotiate" and you should be there!Seriously, what's your excuse again for not upgrading yourself in 2023?ps: If you want to share your experience or have a chat on Procurement (Spend analysis, Negotiation, Challenges in 2023 and Digital transformation), I'd love to feature you on my next vlog. DM me.
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