Sometimes during meeting negotiations with suppliers we sadly realize that one or several colleagues from our team look much closer to the position offered by the other side of the table… when that moment arrives you feel to be alone and somehow struggling against all the elements.
Those situations could happen very often and will carry on unless we firmly do anything to avoid it. The fact to arrange some previous internal meetings to align or at least approach positions with your negotiation team are key to this purpose. In most of the cases, it looks to be the technical guy that ‘gets out of the way’ when a price review meeting with suppliers takes place, especially in meetings with competent suppliers assenting that the quality of the offered service or product clearly justifies that high price even out of the market. Undoubtedly quality has a price but it doesn’t make any sense to pay more for something else you don’t need, right?.
If you ever have the feeling your negotiation team does not support your company target, a good advice would always be to immediately stop that negotiation process and meet your team to make clear a common purpose in order to achieve your company requirements from that supplier at a reasonable level of price, otherwise it will be almost impossible to lower your supplier’s strength position and thereby reduce its pricing proposal.
Andres Jordan
Director of Operations
