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About this blog

I'm sharing in this blog my personal observations, strategies, tactics and tips about what makes a successful negotiation. I derived these from my own, extensive international business negotiation experience. They served me very well over time and helped me win many important negotiations. I have personally tested them for over 25+ years and proved they work across geographies and in various business or personal circumstances. Find more strategies, tips, tactics and advises on how best to prepare, run and implement successful negotiations in my book "The Elite Negotiation™ - The Essential edition". For an unforgettable interactive experience, attend my special 1 or 2 days training sessions.

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The REAL Procurement responsibility

I was recently asked my opinion (as a former Procurement Director) about the REAL responsibility of the Procurement function in a company.Without hesitation, my answer was "The SOLE responsibility of Procurement is to help the company sell more goods".  After the initial shock of my interlocutor has faded, I added that this translates into 2 concrete tasks that Procurement must accomplish, so it helps the company sell its goods:TASK 1: SUPPLY ASSURANCE - this means delivering an uninterrupted supply of the needed goods and services, at the agreed costs and timings. This is by far the most important responsibility, because without having the needed goods and services, the company cannot…

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Just walk away… and win the deal!

I ask many times the participants in my "Elite Negotiator" training what "winning in negotiation" means for them. In 99% of the cases, the answers are about "reaching the negotiation targets". In over 10 years since I started "The Elite Negotiator" trainings, none, and I mean NONE ever said that winning means walking away from a bad deal! I know it may sound counter intuitive, and may hurt the ego of many people, but it is 100% true! Let me explain what I mean:It all boils down to one fundamental rule you must never break: never, ever, close a bad deal for you! A bad deal is any deal that…

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Why being human will help you win

I recently shocked the participants during one of my "Elite Negotiation" trainings when I told them "Being human will help you win".After the initial surprise, I showed them a letter I received when I checked in at DoubleTree by Hilton Wroclaw, Poland, in April 2017 (a fragment is copied here). And I told them that the letter truly impressed me for two reasons: It was a fully personalized letter, personally signed by the Guest Relationship Manager of the hotel. It made me feel cared for and that I truly mattered. This is what attracted me (and countless others) to the Hilton chain across the years - they always knew how…

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The New York Times rule in business

One of the first lessons I learned when I joined Procter & Gamble was part of the "Effective Communication" training, and it was very intriguing at first: "You must always respect the New York Times rule". And while it's been some time since that training, what I see happening in business in the recent years makes be refer to this rule much more often that I thought (and frankly speaking, much more often than I wished)!To cut the long story short, the rule simply says: "If you feel comfortable seeing your picture on the first page of the New York Times newspaper together with what you SAID, DID or WROTE,…

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Learning from pilots how to better negotiate

Flying always fascinated me and, while I did not have the chance to become an airline pilot, I recently started having flying lessons as a hobby. I also started learning much more about what it means to be a pilot - and I realized that, as a business negotiator, I could learn a lot from pilots and step-change the chances of winning my deals. Let me start with one (negative) example: On Feb 21, 2008, Santa Barbara Airlines' Flight 518 taking off from Merida airport in Venezuela and heading to Caracas crashed into a nearby mountain shortly after departure, killing all its 46 people onboard. It was the deadliest accident involving…

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“Don’t leave me hanging!” – a desperate cry for normality

For some time I've been considering writing a post about something that I see increasingly more often and it gets me very worried: buyers never revert to suppliers or salespeople, therefore the negotiations are left "in the air". The title of this post, "Don't leave me hanging", comes from a supplier I met not long ago who literally begged me to give him feedback about his offer, no matter if it was a positive or a negative one. He said it smiling, trying to pretend it was a joke, but I could feel his bitterness, probably coming from previous unhappy encounters. In my 25+ years working in business, most of the…

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Characteristics of the best business relationships

While preparing for a "Elite Negotiator" workshop some time ago, I asked John E Pepper Jr., the former CEO, Chairman of the Board and President of Procter & Gamble, who orchestrated several multi-billion dollars acquisitions what would be, in his opinion, the most important characteristics of the best long-term business relationships.By the way, John's life-long belief (which I share wholeheartedly) is that "Life is all abot relationships", and that people do business with people, not companies with companies! This you will feel "perspiring" from his ideas below.His reply came fast, as always. He said that, from his experience, there are 4 characteristics which will signal that you are on track…

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Hamlet’s dillema in negotiation

A recent call from a good friend reminded me of Hamlet's Dillema: "To be or not to be?" But this time the context was less phyosophycal and more "down to earth": a business negotiation. And it is excellent example of winning negotiations with little power!In brief, here is the background of the situation: the Romanian subsidiary of my friend's company (let's call it "THE Service Provider") has been struggling for some time getting into a "green P/L" and his local team was (understandably so!) very stressed. When a high-budgetclient (let's call them "The White Knight") approached THE Service Provider looking for a 1-year collaboration contract, the team was very excited…

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How a bad internal negotiation could kill a brand

There are many ways to kill a brand, some achieving this deadly result faster than others. Screwing up the customer relationship is, in my opinion, the "most successful" one. I recently had a truly awful customer experience from one of my beloved brands. After the initial shock, I tried to understand why this happened, and the conclusion I reached is that the company manufacturing the brand decided to put the profits well ahead of the customers' needs. We all see this happening increasingly more nowadays,  and I strongly believe that, at the core, the issue is that the financial department won the internal negotiation with the brand team.So, what actually…

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The worst way to sell – and how to avoid it!

Is there such a thing like the "best way to sell"? Or the "worst way to sell"? Personally I believe yes and in this short article I will share my experience about the latter and tell you how to avoid "killing the sale with your own hands". These advices are 100% helping in  the selling process of both services and goods. As most of my business life I've been a client, I attended countless meetings in which suppliers tried to sell their goods or services. In the majority of cases, the potential suppliers made formal presentations, aiming at gaining us as a client.  What differentiated the successful suppliers from the unsuccessful…

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