Negotiations Skills Training

With over twenty-five years of proven industry experience, the Negotiations Training Institute of America is the recognized leader in negotiations training, consulting and performance coaching. Through public open enrollment seminars and private on-session training sessions, we have helped leading corporations, non-profit organizations and governmental agencies improve their ability to negotiate better outcomes for their constituencies. First-time negotiators as well as those with the greatest competitive drive and amount of first-hand experience and negotiations wisdom can benefit from our time-tested workshops. Whether focusing on negotiating a contract with a vendor or jumping in to the often-stressful car buying process to deal with a dealership, our courses provide useful skills, proven techniques and various classroom role plays to help you become more aware of negotiations that you must face on a daily basis.

For more information on our negotiation skills training courses please contact us.

Negotiations Training

Getting the Best Deal for Your Company:
Negotiation Tips When Dealing with Vendors

We've already talked about the importance of negotiating the right deal for your company when dealing with vendors. This is in contrast to an approach most people take - negotiating for the cheapest deal. Now we will look at the proper way to negotiate with vendors and supplies so that the right deal becomes the best deal.

For the most part, negotiating with vendors is no different than with other parties. While some people like to think that purchasing departments have vastly different needs than others who negotiate, the reality is that the skills required are essentially the same. Purchasing departments must go through the same negotiating processes, must deal with the same types of personalities and face the same pitfalls of negotiating with dishonest negotiators.

Granted, more care is required from a preparation stand-point as a greater emphasis is placed on the selection process before a negotiation takes place. Otherwise, purchasing departments must ensure that their personnel are well-trainer negotiators, not well-trained purchasing negotiators.

However, there are a few tips that will help purchasing departments with the negotiations they must face on a regular basis.

* Taking an Account of Where You Stand - Negotiations take place not only with new vendors but also with existing ones. From time-to-time, purchasing departments should review their existing relationships to determine if the current prices, terms and conditions they have in place are still comparable with the market. Has the price of a particular item or service gone down since your last contract was signed? Have interest rates fluctuated to the point where it makes sense to renegotiate terms? It's up to you to determine how often you should review your vendor agreements. For Fortune 500 companies with a large number of vendors, the time between reviews may be much longer than a mid-size company.

* Comparing Apples to Apples - When considering a new vendor for an existing product or service or deciding to purchase a new product or service, many companies build requirement docs to compare vendors and services. In many cases, an internal meeting will first take place to determine what requirements should or must be met for a vendor to be selected. These factors should include applicable items like budget, product/service specs, terms, shipping, ability to customize a product/service, delivery dates, payment terms and so forth.

* Make Wise Decisions - Again, getting the best deal is more important that getting the cheapest deal. Do your due diligence to make sure that a cheaper product or service is the same as other options. It helps to prioritize those items that will factor into a decision. Your requirements doc should be used to compare options, not to make a decision. It is up to you to determine which of the factors will weigh more or less in your ultimate decision.

For Negotiation Skills Seminar information please contact us.

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