Business negotiations – goals versus relationships with suppliers

Many times we wrote about business negotiations – the importance of adequate preparation and training to avoid “traps” sets made by “the opponent”. This time we will focus on determining and achieving the goal.
Do you always should ask yourself the highest goals? Is it worth focusing solely on your own interests in the negotiation process?

The importance of the goal

Setting the goal of business negotiations is often a more difficult task than the actual negotiations. Especially when the management of suppliers has a huge impact not only on the company’s costs, but also its comprehensive competitive strategy. And that is why the process of goal setting should be preceded not only by a detailed analysis of the market and of the performance of current suppliers, but also by an analysis of the impact of the actions taken on creating market advantages – for example, raising the company’s innovation level or building positive customer experience.

Market practice shows that the analysis of the value that the supplier provides us and on the basis of building the appropriate relationships with him has a huge impact on the entire functioning of the company. Therefore, when determining the goals of negotiations, it is also extremely important to recognize the needs of the supplier. At the same time, it should be noted that “maintaining appropriate relations” should mean adapting them to a long-term cooperation plan. Depending on the supplier, this may translate into offensive, defensive or partner negotiations.

Negotiations and business relationships with suppliers

Relations with suppliers are also built during negotiation meetings. Can achieving an ambitious goal, one time win have a negative impact on them? It turns out that yes.

A study conducted in 2013 by American researchers led by Lei Lai from the University of Tulane showed a dark side of achieving high goals in the negotiations. Research has shown that they can cause discomfort to suppliers and strengthen their reluctance to the buyer’s organization. This significantly limits the possibility of developing relationships, transferring cooperation to higher levels – and as a result, further increasing the company’s competitiveness.

Fortunately, there are a number of techniques to minimize the feeling of dissatisfaction among business partners. According to the Eveneum Negotiation Method, each negotiation should end with the SATISFACTION of each party.

But we will write a separate article about it.