Savvy buyers Savvy buyers will often leverage market competition to seek pricing in more than one way, or with greater granularity than they may ultimately contract for. For example, buying organizations will ask for a firm fixed fee and a cost-plus management fee for...
Trust is the core quality of any collaborative partnership. Companies with high degrees of trust can spend their energies leveraging each other’s core strengths and creating value, rather than on compliance, enforcement, or worse, fighting metaphorical fires as a...
A stakeholder said in front of the supplier during negotiations, “What the hell does ‘G.S.’ (V.P. of Sourcing) have to do with my deal!?” My coaching client and I had to regain control of the conversation immediately. In this article I’ll explain what we did and ask...
Getting to We is a process. After partners assess the levels of trust and compatibility between two partners, and agree that there is enough trust and compatibility, they are ready to move on to the next step in the process: developing a shared vision for the...
Accurately assessing trust and compatibility is not easy. It is often one-sided: a buying company will evaluate a supplier’s trustworthiness without understanding the supplier’s perceptions of the buying company’s trustworthiness. That’s why professors Gerald Ledlow...
Getting to We is a book about negotiating. It is not, however, a typical negotiation book when compared to the hundreds of other negotiation books. It is a book that opens the way to developing a new mindset and process for negotiating business relationships where...
