Confessions of a Corporate Shopaholic

Dealing with suppliers that are not in any way smaller than your employers is one of the trickiest negotiation scenarios to master.  I cannot believe I still come across senior procurement executives who continue to believe that they are given almighty powers just because they are in the seats of making multi million deals.   More often than not, they are the ones who constantly get themselves hit with never-ending surprises.  I pay no sympathy for them, not even a tiny bit.

I wrote about reciprocal trading last year and that existence is plentiful with large multinational suppliers.  What I encountered recently is the classic example of negotiation leverages – the battle between the lawyers.

A big technology supplier is insisting to use a brand new contract template on a renewal deal, while we believe that it is just going to be a tremendous time drain to review all the terms and conditions again from scratch.  Lawyers of mutual parties refuse to give in, and as in every negotiation, essentially it’s the deal itself that is going to matter.  As long as I gather the bottom line position of my stakeholders (i.e. users), it is now up to me to lay it out on the table by keeping it simple.  Do we need this deal or not?

The answer is always yes, or we won’t get ourselves into this situation in the first place.  If this is a deal not worth remembering, no one would have been bothered by it this much.  As long as the intention is mutual, there is ought to be some common ground that we can all work with.  I usually don’t dwell on matters that are already handled by the lawyers to avoid redundancy.  I focus on the logic portion and point out the inconsistencies I see of the other party’s arguments.  Why is a new template needed?  What’s changed?  What does it have to do with our other similar agreements in other markets?  Why wasn’t this mentioned during bid phase?  Why are we discovering this only now?

In short, don’t take us for a ride.  Our company’s time is worth much more.  I reserve no time for last-minute rip-offs.  Even if we really rely on you, we deserve some professionalism instead of some third grade sleeky salesmanship.

Obviously, I sugar-coat such messages.    Though every seasoned salesperson, or in many cases the Managing Directors, would have gotten my messages.  When I make it a point as to question someone’s professional credibility or even integrity, coupled with logical reasoning and facts, there is no way the other party won’t budge.

Does it work on people on the same side as I do?  You bet.  Did they inspect all the fine prints when they received the quote?  Did they sound way too eager when they approached the supplier?  Did they not make it clear as to what’s important to the company aside from the service only?

I have to say again and again that none of this is rocket science, and those of you reading this must also agree that this is just common sense.  However, you may be surprised just how much time and effort continues to be wasted on such power play.

Perhaps, that equates to job security to many.

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