Easy negotiations with difficult partners

Every sales person has their own bogeys. Negotiating partners who make them jump up, run madly or wave airily. Usually these are referred to as those whom “it would have been impossible” to do business with.

What percent of your business negotiations are concluded with success? This question is hard to answer without any self-flattering. Still, if we ask it from the sales staff of a commercial department, 80-90%-s would fly around. Of which we know of course that they are only true in exceptional cases. The reality is rather 12-15%.

All in all, we may encounter 72 types of negotiating partners. This magic number derives from the 8 times 9 classification of personality profiles. Similarly to the other partner, we sit in one of these 72 categories. We choose our basic negotiating strategy according to this, just like the partner chooses his. The two usually overlap in 12-15%. In other words, this is the probability of meeting a negotiating partner with a personality close to ours (or at least not very distant) that we can handle. This is the point when the game starts to get interesting.

In the next zone we find moderately difficult partners and situations which exceed our comfort level but are still instinctively manageable. With a negotiating experience of several years, we may be able to sense these. Although not in a conscious fashion, but we may be able to handle them with success. In numbers, it would mean approximately 40 out of 72. Of course this zone varies from individual to individual.

To move upwards from here will take us learning, practising and a great deal of self-control. To sense the behaviour of the remaining 32 negotiating partners and to instinctively choose a good approach is almost impossible. No, not because the person is an unmanageably difficult partner: much rather because our personality prevents us to sniff out the strategy leading to success.

So, when we ask our sales employees to what extent they are usually successful and we hear 80-90%-s, we may very well have doubts. These results usually do not comprise (1) those partners whom the sales people could not reach (2) who chased them away within a few minutes (3) who kept feeding them promises for months and, of course, (4) those whom our people (mumbling adjectives) simply gave up on.

Even these, however, could be talked with if all the 72 personality-based negotiating strategies were at hand.