When it comes to negotiating, one of the most difficult decisions we face is whether or not to walk away from the table. There’s a lot of finality to that decision, and it’s not one to be taken lightly. Recently, we were faced with that decision regarding a piece of business we were chasing. Walking…
Recently, someone called me in a panic about a negotiation they were involved in. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t going well and they needed help, urgently. They had been negotiating with a long-standing client who had become more demanding and wanted deep price concessions. What was once a good relationship had seemed to sour, and…
It’s never easy to be a politician, and particularly over the last 18 months with the pandemic to deal with it, must have been even worse. Not that I have much time for them to be honest, all as bad as each other as my mum used to say. That said two things this week…
Some years ago when I was early in my independent consulting career, I won a substantial piece of work with a prestigious international client in manufacturing. I and my associates were to produce a set of 9 training modules to help their leadership development group to work with the business’s technical development teams to become…
A series on the BBC Radio 2 programme hosted by Jeremy Vine explores what makes us human. In this innovative series, guests are asked to deliver their thoughts on the essence of human existence, reflecting on their own lives. There have been some wonderful guests including Stephen Fry, Brian Cox, Yuval Noah Harari and the perhaps less…
Every year in our Buyer/Seller Survey we ask buyers, “What aspects of your buying process have changed over the last year?” Interestingly, one thing has been dropping over the last few years: the use of RFPs. They have not gone away, but they’re being issued with less frequency than in the past. With that, it may surprise…
