Atkins is not just particularly choosy about workspace comfort. Rather he is managing partner at The Gap Partnership, a company specialising in negotiation training. As such, his behaviour starts to look much less eccentric, and indeed is something many in print would do well to observe.
Atkins advocates this process, which can of course be done figuratively, for getting inside the head of someone you’re about to meet. “You need to plan the meeting from inside their head. Think about what they want and why they’re there; think about the pressures they’re feeling,” says Atkins.
He explains that many in business fail to do this. Further, many fail to realise that the meeting they’re going into will contain elements of a negotiation. Negotiation skills in fact come into play, in business as in life, far more often and in a far broader range of scenarios, than many realise, and as such it’s crucial to get them right.
“There are few people in an office that wouldn’t benefit from negotiation skills,” says Matthew Parker, who as director of Print and Procurement regularly runs negotiation courses, including in-house consultancy and courses for the BPIF. “Apart from those who are purely manufacturing and production focused, a lot would benefit.”
“I think we negotiate every day with colleagues,” agrees David Rees, negotiation trainer for the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD). “We call them meetings but often there’s an element of competition or problem-solving- so it’s my budget versus your budget, my targets versus your targets.”
Print perspective
In print, the list of people who should be well-versed in negotiation apparently includes HR professionals, schedulers, those procuring from suppliers, and of course senior management and sales, with scenarios that demand such skills ranging from placating a disgruntled employee, to negotiating terms for acquiring a company.
Perhaps the most critical negotiation printers engage in – or at least the one you’d expect them to be most keen to get right – is selling. And yet many in print are still failing to negotiate effectively here, or even realise that these interactions should be taking the form of negotiations, reports Parker.
This failure contributes in no small part to print’s perennial problem of selling only on price, reports Parker. “I do accept that there are buyers who also make it all about price. But printers are often so concerned to make sure they have the most competitive price that they forget to negotiate, and a lot of sales people I speak to say they’re in no position to negotiate,” he says.
“But if someone tries to drive me down on price, the first thing I do is try and come up with an alternative solution that means I don’t budge on price but they may get a better deal as well.”
Parker explains that variables that could be added to the mix here might be schedule, volume and technical specifications. “I’ve seen printers say ‘rather than reduce the price I can give you a better paper stock,’ which has worked for the client and has been paper the printer was desperate to get rid of anyway.”
The key to getting this right is knowing the client, and what will make them happy, inside out, says Parker. And this can only be achieved by listening.
“People think that they’re great negotiators because they can talk the other party into submission. It’s not about that, it’s about listening to their needs, understanding their pressures and how you can find a solution together,” agrees Atkins.
As Atkins’ technique of getting inside the other party’s head suggests, preparation, even before you’re in front of the other party for the first time, will be key.
“Do detailed prep,” agrees Nick Devine, AKA The Print Coach. “It’s not a surprise these days that the client is going to put pricing pressure on you, and yet a lot of sales people act surprised. All clients do it, so prepare the different scenarios.”
Crucial to knowing what you might negotiate with a person is knowing as much as possible about their role at the company. “A lot of print conversations are with relatively junior and inexperienced negotiators,” points out Atkins, adding: “You need to understand how someone’s being measured as an individual, how they reach their targets.”
Then it’s about understanding not just someone’s professional role but their personality too. “One of the things I research is how people are likely to negotiate, what strategies they may use, so I’m prepared for all the curve balls they throw at me,” advises Parker.
“There are people whose negotiation tactic is to always be as aggressive as possible. So if I mentally prepare for this I know they’re just being their normal negotiating selves rather than being aggressive specifically to me.”
By putting in this kind of research and mental preparation, negotiators can then formulate a rough process they can rely on in the meeting. “Plan moves ahead of the negotiation, don’t plan them in the meeting because the meeting will be stressful,” says Parker.
But printers should also be wary of over preparing warns Steve Jones, director of negotiation training consultancy Focal Point Negotiation. “There’s a saying: ‘your battle plan’s fine until the first shot’s been fired’, after that it all starts to get a bit difficult,” he says. “Skilled negotiators focus on outcomes, so if the negotiation goes around the houses they don’t worry about it. Whereas the average negotiators look for a linear plan.”
All of these tips translate directly to most other forms of negotiation, besides sales meetings, says Jones. “I would say that generally I would negotiate in the same manner whether buying or selling,” he says of the particular similarities between these functions. “Best practice is best practice. I’d prepare in the same way, I’d behave in the same way; I’d be equally assertive.”
Moving forward
Tips on how to structure the actual negotiation itself, as with preparing for it, will also be largely the same no matter what the scenario, he adds. Top tips he advocates include placing your stake in the ground early on. “There’s loads of evidence to show opening offers create an irrational anchoring effect. People tend to move towards what the other person is offering,” he advises.
Jones also advises people give their rationale for a certain decision or offer before delivering it. “The reason is you get a freezing effect otherwise. If I say to you ‘I’m going to charge you three grand’ you just panic and don’t listen to the reasoning,” he says.
“We say metric the message and specificity sells,” adds Devine regarding how this rationale should be delivered. “So I can say ‘I can grow your sales,’ or I can say ‘when we work with a client we typically improve their gross margin by 6% and top line by 70% in the first 12 months’. Which is more powerful?”
Rees adds that there are plenty of techniques that can be employed where a situation is getting too heated. He recommends tapping a foot or closing a book to show you’re unhappy with someone’s aggression, or calming phrases such as: “thank you I can see you’re passionate about that, now it’s my turn to present the issues”.
He adds that negotiators shouldn’t be perturbed by a final heightening of emotions towards the close of a negotiation. “There’s always a final spike – that seems to be almost human nature. Otherwise we feel cheated. Sometimes that can be literally over pennies,” he says.
There’s plenty to bear in mind, then, in perfecting the art of negotiation. Which is perhaps why those in print should be giving the skill more thought. Whether an account director persuading a client to place work at a more convenient, less busy time, or a HR manager dealing with a despondent employee, it seems all could benefit.
Brushing up might well involve attending the sorts of training, or enlisting the sorts of in-house consultancy services, that The Gap Partnership, Focal Point Negotiation, the CIPD, Nick Devine and Matthew Parker offer. But at the very least it should involve making negotiation a much more conscious skill. And of course observing –whether it involves musical chairs or not – Atkins’ top tip of: “plan, plan and plan some more.”
Negotiation training: Jenny Roper assumes the hot seat
“A member of the team, Jo, has handed in her notice, and is leaving immediately because her new job is with a competitor… Your boss has told you that she’s very disappointed with your planning of this vital product launch.”
As words to read of a Tuesday afternoon go, these aren’t great. Luckily for me, they’re printed on a worksheet in front of me rather than in an email regarding my position, or lack thereof, as manager at a training company.
Nonetheless, the fictitious situation causes me to break out, ever so slightly, into a very much non-fictitious sweat. It’s my job in the last role play of the day on this Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD) Effective Negotiation Skills course, to persuade another employee, Chris, that she should cover Jo’s seminars…. Rather than go to Barbados. On the family holiday she hasn’t had time for in years. Gulp.
In the minutes before ‘Chris’, AKA fellow course-delegate Fiona, comes back into the room to start the role play, I consider my options. Bribing Chris with my own money, pleading, weeping… breaking the fourth wall of the role play and insisting I’ve enlisted a second employee, conveniently not mentioned in the brief… None of them seem likely to score me very highly.
In fact it’s my panic about my lack of power in this situation that’s led to my undoing, even before the negotiation process begins.
As my mind races, wondering how this situation could possible end well for me – “Your boss is on your back- your career and job is on the line; you fear the loss of customers and sales”, the worksheet summarises, helpfully – I’ve, in just a few of seconds, completely forgotten everything our tutor has spent the day hammering home. Principally that a first meeting should never be about solutions, only laying both party’s issues on the table.
The result: I find myself hinting at possible solutions (pay rises, holiday compensation, offering up my first born…) even while ‘Chris’, steely faced, terrifyingly in-character, is patiently explaining that she’ll need to find out what her husband and travel agent have to say. If this was a hostage scenario, I’d probably have bumbled my way into promising the country’s gold reserves... possibly its political sovereignty.
The problem negotiators often have – whether attempting to broker peace between nations, or between Jan in sales and Clive in IT – is that far too often no process is applied, explains our tutor, CIPD negotiating trainer of 15 years David Rees. “It’s a regret of mine that the IT world has stolen the word process,” he says. “People go through processes as well.”
What this lack of process means is that people not only offer solutions too quickly without listening to the issues, but also default too heavily to their natural personalities. That’s right. I’m just far too nice.
This, or perhaps more accurately my lack of backbone, has become apparent in an earlier role-playing exercise. The scenario is in fact one taken from real life, with Rees approached for advice at a barbecue (I wonder if Rees is ever tempted to lie to friends that he’s in fact a bin man), by a friend keen to buy an opticians but struggling to seal the deal.
Told the shop is a small local business owned by its 60-something-year-old founder, I immediately come up with a long list of soft, or ‘emotional’, issues that may be holding the deal up: his concerns about how his staff will be treated, his anxieties about retirement, an underlying desire to get more cuddles in life…
Turns out at this stage of the process, my softer side has come into its own though. “There are always ghosts in the machine, usually emotional ones,” says Rees. “It’s one thing having a process, but when you bring people into it, it gets messy.”
Rees’ advice, then, is never to underestimate egos and emotional baggage brought to the negotiation table. He advises a process whereby, even before a meeting, you make a list of all potential issues and motives using what you already know of the situation. These should include hard issues such as money and timescales, softer issues, and those which fall into the grey area in between.
“If you’re not prepared for those your body language is like ‘you what?’” says Rees.
Then it will be a case of coming away from a first meeting with a list of actual voiced issues – hard and soft – that need to be taken into account when offering possible solutions at the next. “There may be as many as 17,” says Rees. “And you need to think of three different solutions for each. One you like, one you quite like, and one only they’ll like – just so you’re prepared.”
The 52nd option (maths, keep up), should be what Rees terms a BATNA- a ‘best alternative to negotiated agreement’ option. Or rather an option which means you can walk away completely. (“There’s a BATNA.com website,” says Rees. “I’m so sad I actually visit it!”)
This is the trick up the sleeve, apparently, that ensures softies like me don’t sign their lives away in their willingness to please. (I make a mental note to devise a BATNA for when next negotiating cleaning rotas with flatmates… time spent visiting home with parents…)
Then you can have a thrashing-a-solution-out meeting.
Rees is under no illusions though that such a structured process will make negotiations, particularly specifically problem-solving ones, easy exactly. “I have someone who helps get me back from a battered state after a meeting to getting my head around getting the options in place,” he says.
The other delegates, who range from a sales professional at Ford to a HR consultant at a council dealing regularly with school-union disputes, nod knowingly. “All I get all day every day is ‘no I can’t do that’”, says one attendee. “So this is therapy for me!”
I take heart from this. Clearly this stuff is tough and getting better is a case of recognising this and learning tricks to stay calm and interact in emotionally intelligent yet methodical ways.
So do I leave the day cured of my fear of confrontation, and negotiating like a pro? Although I’ve certainly learned a lot about the negotiation process and some handy psychological pointers, not quite. Getting the hang would certainly take a few more days of training and more practice day-to-day.
Unless of course you’re my mobile phone contract provider, housemates or mum. In which case one day is all it took. Consider yourselves warned.
For details on CIPD’s two-day Effective Negotiation Skills course (the first day about process, the second day about dealing with particularly difficult situations), visit: www.cipd.co.uk
