Your ability to negotiate is the biggest single factor in the profitability, and ultimately the value, of your business
If your business operates on a 30% profit margin, and your sales person gives a 10% discount, by how much does turnover need to grow to break even?
The answer is it needs to grow by 50%, and you'd be amazed how few sales people would get that right if you asked them. We know, because we've done exactly that, many times over.
Every penny you leave on the table when you're selling to a customer or buying from a supplier, comes straight off your bottom line. Beyond that, most mature businesses are valued based on a multiple of earnings, which means you're not only taking an annual beating on profit and dividends, but you're also constraining your ability to raise investment, and you'll be giving away a fortune if ever you decide to sell the business.
We've advised businesses both small and large through high-stakes negotiations, as well as training and coaching commercial buyers and professional sales teams in tactical and strategic negotiations. If you think there's the need or the opportunity to improve your business profitability, then investing in your negotiating capability is probably the single fastest way to make a return.
What we do:
- Provide unlimited confidential expert advice to business leaders, professional sales teams and commercial buyers during key negotiations to mitigate risks and maximise the value of their deals
- Help you develop the tools and processes to integrate research and data from multiple sources to create powerful insights and compelling rationale, to refine and underpin critical negotiation plans
- Work with your team to develop robust negotiation strategies and plans for high-stakes and complex negotiations, across multiple phases, variables, interdependencies and points of contact
- Work across your organisation to develop comprehensive portfolio strategies for suppliers and / or customer groups, including for large-scale price and trade terms changes and relationship rebalances
- Develop and coach you and your team to build insight, confidence and the suite of skills and techniques required, to develop and execute their own high-impact negoiation strategies and plans
What clients have said:
“Martyn, thank you for all the support, you really pushed us to think differently. This is the most prepared I have ever felt going into a negotiation”
Elizabeth Sowter, Buying Manager, Alliance Boots
"Our negotiation was extremely successful, and that can be put down purely to the process, and the negotiation strategy day that we did with Martyn"
Graeme Lilwall, Director Sales and Marketing, Periproducts Ltd
"The point of today's session was to get Martyn in to help build my team's confidence in some difficult negotiations that are coming up, to think differrently about how they can add value to the buyers that we're seeing, and they got that!"
Paul Adrian, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, King of Shaves
Case study: David beats Goliath in high-stakes negotiation