Negotiation Influence Starts When???

I hope that you have enjoyed the article "How To Influence A Negotiation Early, Part I."

In teaching our online purchasing classes, I often get questions like "How do you negotiate differently in a really tough negotiation situation?" And I often answer with a question like "What makes a negotiation tough?"

I particularly enjoy when this type of exchange goes back and forth several times and the student becomes aware of a fact: it is not always the negotiation that is tough, it can be the situation that is tough. And the purchasing professional does have influence over the situation, but that influence may need to start days, weeks, months, even years before the actual negotiation does.

With policies in place that constrict backdoor selling (or backdoor buying, really) and facilitate Purchasing's involvement in the design phase, "tough" negotiations can become less frequent. But, make no mistake, putting policies in place can be a lot of work - a lot of time consuming work.

That's why there's no better time than now to start influencing future negotiations - even if they are months down the road.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
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