AGREE - Negotiating Collaborative Agreements

Do your salespeople really get the most profitable deals?

Is your sales force equipped to negotiate throughout the sales process?

Can your sales force win deals without resorting to price discounts?

But is it really that simple? Not for most organizations. We all negotiate. But how many of us, as salespeople,
really have a negotiation process that we could clearly teach or explain to a colleague? Most of us are intuitive, experienced negotiators… we don’t really know why we are successful at it, we just are!

Intuition and experience are important, but they are not a best practice.

What is the best practice for both new and experienced sales negotiators?

It all happens so fast. The sale is going great, the client is enthusiastic about your solution, and you think the deal is done. Then the sudden demands for better prices, better terms, and a different set of products or features than you were prepared to offer. You really need this sale, especially these days! Do you agree to
all of their demands? Push back hard and hold your ground? Call your boss?

• What if there was an innovative, intuitive, negotiation process to use in parallel with your existing sales process?
• What if your sales force had a specific process for dealing with “difficult” negotiators?
• What if your sales force had a ‘roadmap’ for creating and executing a negotiation strategy that is proactive, not reactive?

AGREE can equip your sales force with a powerful, intuitive approach that will preserve the profitability of your deals and improve the working relationship you have with your best clients.

What is AGREE?

AGREE is a powerful framework for systematically looking at all parts of a sales negotiation. The framework
is a simple, effective way to thoroughly prepare for and conduct sales negotiations. This two-day workshop
will equip your sales force to:

• Proactively plan their sales negotiations. Waiting to “see what the other side does” is not a plan!
• Thoughtfully integrate their sales process with their negotiation process. Negotiation is not always at
  the end of the sales process, and it’s not just about the price.

WORKSHOP DESIGN

We begin by meeting with your Sales teams to gather information about who they commonly negotiate with and the typical topics they negotiate over. By examining some of the current negotiations your sales force is involved in, we gain a general understanding of how your company’s negotiation process is being executed by your sales force. From this information we determine how we can improve upon your existing process. This information is then incorporated into the AGREE workshop’s design and case studies to ensure the workshop content and methodology meets the targets you’ve set for improving your company’s negotiation outcomes.

• CURRICULUM DESIGN. Based on our findings, we adapt the AGREE framework by building specific teaching examples. These help students more fully grasp how AGREE fits their specific environment. We next build or customize the case studies needed to further tailor the AGREE workshop to your needs.
• DAY 1 – DEFINING THE AGREE FRAMEWORK. Participants are introduced to the AGREE framework through a combination of provocative exercises, lectures and case studies. At the end of Day 1, our target is for students to have discovered their current negotiation strengths and weaknesses and they can apply the AGREE framework to improve how they negotiate.
• DAY 2 – PRACTICING THE AGREE FRAMEWORK. By using a combination approach of interactive, tailored lectures along with case studies of various lengths, participants learn strategies for using the AGREE framework in a variety of settings. Strategies for dealing with challenging negotiators are introduced and practiced using brief lectures and case studies.

BENEFITS

AGREE provides selling organizations with a solid methodology for negotiating with external customers, suppliers and internal stake holders. AGREE is a universal approach to negotiating that is not limited to a specific sales setting (such as negotiating with purchasing). Our goal is to leave your sales force with a simple yet powerful negotiating framework and the strategies for using that framework in a broad range of sales settings.

BENEFITS TO YOUR ORGANIZATION

• Instill a negotiation language for your use in internal conversations about the status, process, and strategies of negotiations
• Provide a strategy for building long term relationships as well as strategies to gain the most
  profitable deals possible
• Build strategies that enable you to effectively ‘walk away’ from negotiations with minimal
  damage to the long term relationship
• Generate specific negotiation tactics that will work to improve your company’s real world
  negotiations.

BENEFITS TO YOUR SALESPEOPLE

• Develops confidence and effectiveness in your overall sales process
• Provides a systematic way to plan for and to approach negotiations of all types
• Provides specific negotiation moves that may delay or prevent pressure to lower prices