Pt.2. Collaborative negotiation - what is it?

now I want to talk about two types of collaboration that happen between retailers and suppliers those are collaborative negotiation and strategic partnerships so let's start with collaborative negotiation if you want to engage in collaborative negotiation with your retailer or vice versa we need to start thinking about them differently again as suppliers we often go in thinking about the retailer as somebody I need to sell something to I don't necessarily think about them as my partner and in many ways we sometimes think about them as our adversary but if you go into a negotiation with the mindset that the person on the other side of the table from you is your adversary you will automatically engage in tactics and strategies that are more competitive in nature that create tension but if you engage and start to think about the other side as your partner as somebody you could work with in order to create something new you will start to use consciously or subconsciously strategies and tactics that drive collaboration I heard somebody say earlier that we need to share more information and that is particularly true in collaborative negotiation now that doesn't mean that we share all information and we need to be thoughtful and strategic about what information we want to share and what information we don't want to share but in collaborative negotiation you do want to share more information about your strategies what are you trying to achieve what are your goals what are your priorities what's important to you because if you want the other side to satisfy your needs you've got to tell them what those needs are I work with many buyers in retail over the years and they always would complain to me that the the suppliers didn't bring the what they needed and I always ask the first question did you tell them what you needed and quite often the answer was no so let's share more information instead of manipulating the other side the retailer the supplier about what's possible and not possible in painting the worldview in a way that makes us look like the best option we want to clarify perceptions about what both sides need what will be important if we were to work together more collaboratively I was in a negotiation with a with a company called Kodak you may remember them I'm not quite sure if they're even still around these days but the salesperson from Kodak came in and sat down with me and said I'd like to give you our proposal for working with Target this year it has the pricing it has funding for marketing and advertisements and lays out the whole deal for the both of us and I said you know what before I look at your proposal let me ask you a few questions help me understand what you're trying to achieve at Target help me understand what your goals and strategies are and by the way I'd like to share with you some of targets goals what our strategies are in the camera space in the film space what we hope to achieve and after we had that discussion the salesperson from Kodak turned to me and said can I have my proposal back why do you think they wanted it back it didn't meet our needs as we'd expressed them they had come in with a full proposal to sell me without truly understanding what I was trying to achieve and if we're going to collaborate we need to first understand each other before we actually put proposals on to the table in collaborative negotiation we don't put a position on the table we don't start there because what happens when you put out your positions I put my stake in the ground here they put their stake in the ground here and we fight over whose stake is the right one until we maybe come out somewhere in the middle and believe me the middle is rarely the place either side wants to be so instead of putting positions on the table let's brainstorm together let's figure out how do we meet each other's needs and then get to positions later on in the discussions negotiations in a collaborative form need to create value create a much bigger pie so to speak before we start dividing that pie up [Music]

Channel: International TCG Retail Summit

Views: 473

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 3V3Xp3IeMR8

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019