Nolan Martin :
Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with The Value Negotiator, Glin Bayley. If you haven’t already checked out Part A of the show, be sure to do that first. Let’s jump into the conversation with Glin.
NM:
What challenges are businesses facing in 2024 when it comes to negotiation and how do you coach them through these challenges?
Enhancing External Negotiations Through Improved Internal Alignment [01:02]
Glin Bayley:
Oh, that’s a good question. I think what I observe and I think, large enterprises specifically, and I think this will hold true or be relevant to smaller ones as well, is often our major counterparts are ourselves and our internal teams. So we erode value because we spend more time having misaligned objectives and KPIs within our own organization and our own teams than we do with an external counterparty.
And the focus is often given to how do we get the best deal externally? And the biggest barrier that I’ve seen to getting the best deal externally is the lack of alignment and conversation and negotiation capability internally. So the infighting between functions, whether it be sales, marketing, finance, supply chain operations, et cetera, each of them have KPIs that can sometimes be contradictory to each other.
And therefore, agendas and needs are pulled in different directions within the team themselves. And therefore any weakness internally has a bearing externally. So, I think my biggest guidance is always look in your own backyard first around your capabilities within your teams, negotiating within your stakeholder groups before you consider whether your bench strength is strong enough to create value externally with external partners, because you want to put your best foot forward externally with partners, but the only way you can do that is if the level of capability in the organization is lifted to the same degree. And I think we invest in sales teams, procurement teams being trained in negotiation.
But the challenge is they’re front-facing and as a result, teams like finance, potentially marketing, potentially HR operations teams don’t get trained in what is traditionally perceived as a commercial skill, but actually it’s a communication skill, so if we trained negotiation internally across all different functions, because it’s a communication skill, I think the power of the organization would be significantly greater in terms of the leverage that it brings to any dialogue because of that capability being built internally first.
NM:
And I think what you said there was so key because recently did a training at a semiconductor company. And what we noticed was that they had a bunch of different functions in the training and so we gave them the opportunity to huddle and think through real upcoming negotiations and getting all the different inputs into the negotiation that they don’t typically get when it’s only supply chain. It’s only sales was invaluable for them as to what they were able to think outside of the box and create value.
GB:
And Nolan, you raised a really good point around that because it gives not only the thinking outside the box, but what you’ve demonstrated there is the opportunity to discover value that you wouldn’t even, otherwise, know was available had you not put all of your teams together to consider where could value be added within the deal and the conversation. So I think that’s a really important point you’ve made.
Aram Donigian:
I think we hear that quite a bit, don’t we? That the challenge, the internal alignment challenge is big, sometimes bigger, often bigger than the external piece. Certainly the external piece is dependent. Do you have an example of a time and it could be, internally facing or externally facing where you’ve been able to really help a team or an organization create value and just bring to life all this, everything you’ve been talking about.
Integrating Cross-Functional Insights For Enhanced Value Creation [05:27]
GB:
There’s not one specific example that comes to mind, but if I think about some of the key areas that I recall from the conversations that I’ve had and the participants’ conversations, this creating value comes first from being able to identify the different levers within a negotiation and often the teams working in isolation don’t recognize that their levers are constrained to their function.
So if it was a retailer, for example, with a team and commercial buying space, they might have the opportunity to pull levers on how much volume of the product they order for their shelves, the pricing, the promotional depth and they might have any rebates that are, or discounts that are available to support that and potentially space. What space gets allocated on shelf within the supermarket, whether it’s an end space, prime eye level shelf space and how much of it?
So there’s a number of levers, but once you’ve got those four, five, six levers down, it’s the assumption that’s all they’ve got to create value. But then when you look at the end to end journey that the supplier takes to getting that product to you on shelf, you’ve got finance processing the invoices and then the payment terms associated with how often does a supplier get paid and how frequently you’ve got the supply chain around how, what times deliveries are made when, how often to where you’ve got the distribution side, the delivery piece, but also the purchasing that if you go down the chain around the purchasing of the packaging that the supplier makes, the commodities that are used in the ingredients.
There’s so many different areas where value can be created. If you expand where you’re looking for them, and this is back to my earlier point. If you can do the internal work across all of the different teams to say what’s valuable to each team, you add more layers and more levers to the negotiation. And then if you consider what type of negotiation you’re trying to have, it’s then thinking if this is truly a collaborative relationship, this is truly a partnership long term, three, five years in the relationship. Should I not consider further down the supply chain to what the supplier is actually using?
And maybe we’ve got commodity purchasing power that they don’t have. And what if we were to align our purchasing of that particular agreement together, because they could benefit from lower pricing and then we could benefit from lower product costs in store. But that level of high level thinking doesn’t happen because we’re still focused on what’s the area that’s only within my remit and control.
And beyond that, I don’t see it because I’m not consciously looking for it. So I think the biggest areas where I found my adding of value is one to help people think, not just outside the box, but it’s, can we just go outside the building for a minute and have a look at where the value might be hiding if we step outside the building, but also back to the identity piece of who are you choosing to be in this conversation and this dialogue?
Because if you’re truly someone who’s going to create value, then what would I recognize about you that would be distinct and different to someone that isn’t interested in value. And I think that often then becomes for me, certainly a shortcut in the way someone can consider, or what actions do I need to take? Cause you know we don’t remember process steps very easily, but if I can remember the kind of person I want to be, then my actions are ultimately guided by the identity and it’s a really powerful way of short cutting what an organization needs to choose in terms of the way they show up at a collective level and an individual level.
NM:
Absolutely. How do you engage with or manage emotions during negotiations, especially when those feelings are making us feel uncomfortable negotiating?
Harnessing The “Joker” & The “Ace” For Effective Dialogue [10:27]
GB:
That is the hardest area to practice, and I would say there’s two aspects I’ve got, I’ve described it in my book as the emotional joker, the wild card that comes out, otherwise known as our ego that loves to take a seat at the table when there’s an emotion being triggered.
And then we have our Ace, our trump card, and that’s our authentic conscious expression. And the difference between the Joker and the Ace is that the Joker is impulsive, is reactive, is self-oriented. And we never know how it’s going to show up because it’s a wild card, right? Sometimes it can be instinctual and in our favor and other times, not so much.
The Ace, however, is always consciously choosing how to express itself by taking time and space before it responds. So it’s the rational overlaid, the overlaying the emotion. The key way to access your Ace is one to plan for your Joker to come out so that you recognize your Joker and not just your Joker, but the other party’s Joker. So I often say who’s at the table and, someone will the table and they’re at the table. I’m like, okay, there’s two of you, but there’s actually four of you because you’ve got your Joker. and their Joker. So have you considered who you become when your Joker’s at the table? And have you considered who they become when their Joker’s at the table?
And how would you recognize it’s your Ace, i. e. your authentic conscious expression or the joker that’s at the table? And I think by being able to write down who you become when you’re emotionally triggered, one, you can begin to recognize it. And again, that awareness allows you to consciously choose how you respond.
And then secondly, practice, role play environments, putting yourself in the conditions of stress allows you to start seeing how your Joker comes out and what happens to trigger your Joker. And I think without that simulated practice, we’re putting yourself into uncomfortable situations more regularly to build up your sensitivity and tolerance levels.
I think we can speak about it at a theoretical level and everyone can say, yeah, I’m going to be calm because I recognize my Joker and it’s fine. But awareness is the one thing, but the environment where it’s going to be tested is the other. And I think choosing safe environments with your team, with your colleagues, with your family members, friends, asking them, who do I become when I’m emotionally triggered?
What do you see? What do you notice happens just before the Joker comes out to play and getting that awareness and then practicing to say, okay, how can I prevent this from taking over and breathing becomes a key part of that strategy is to slow your breathing down, use silence more than you use your own speech.
So silence over speech and giving yourself that opportunity to step back and observe as if you were hovering above the situation, looking down, thinking, oh my God, this is getting wild, how do I zoom out and then calm down, but it has to come from a self first so that, the nervous system needs to be deactivated from a stress zone into it. It’s a normal sympathetic state so that it doesn’t respond under undue stress.
AD:
And Glin, that is great advice for emotions. Does the same thing, is it just, is it the same sort of general advice or would you change anything when you’re thinking about just being under tremendous pressure, whether that is time pressure, it is magnitude of the deal, pressure whatever the source of, pressure might be that might cause me to feel like I need to move quickly or something. Any different advice? Or is it a lot of the same sort of things with how I need to self regulate?
The Journey Towards Mastery In Self-Regulation [15:11]
GB:
Yeah. The self regulation is very much about the awareness of what’s going on in your body. Often we end up being overtaken by it. And so we’re a victim to our own nervous system. But that awareness piece of around what’s happening so that you can almost have this dialogue with yourself where you can go, okay, my, my heart rate’s getting faster. What does that mean? Oh, that means I’m getting stressed. When my heart rate’s moving faster, my speech is going to get faster because I’m nervous.
And I’m going to say things quickly. And I’m going to say more because of stress. And I want to get things out. And even just the act of slowing down your speech and taking a moment to say what needs to be said in a more steady state. Can take you down, but it’s knowing what happens. It’s back to that awareness, what happens when, and with that awareness, we can make choices, but it requires practice, like nobody’s going to get this first time round and apply it a hundred percent of the time consistently.
But it’s to what extent do you want to get to mastery? I look at myself and think, gosh, I am so emotionally regulated when it comes to work but my poor partner at home definitely cops the unregulated emotional Joker Glin that comes out. So I’ve still got work to do, until I can maintain that emotional regulation state in all facets of my life, I’ve still got practice to get to a level of mastery. And I think accepting that we’re on a journey becomes part of it so that you don’t beat yourself up when you don’t get it perfect the first time round.
AD:
I’m waiting. That’ll be playbook Volume II, how we apply this at home to make sure we’re bringing value to, we’ll look for that. No, listen, a great deal of value we’ve taught been talking about, you gets lost between when the deal gets signed and when the terms actually get implemented. How do you ensure that the implementation actually captures the value that was created?
Strategic Planning & Clear Communication In Negotiation Agreements [17:42]
GB:
The key thing is to make that agreement when you’re at the table around how are things going to be implemented, who’s responsible for what aspects of the deal, what KPIs are going to be used to measure. And what’s going to, what will be the situation that triggers a renegotiation?
No, I’ve seen this happen a lot in business where you settle on a price increase for a particular product because commodities have moved and you’ve got a deal, you secured the volume. It’s supposed to be a three-year arrangement and then commodities move through the roof and people are back at the table renegotiating and they’re getting really gnarly and upset with each other because we gave you a 5% increase only 12 months ago, and this is a three year deal. And you’ve come back to us again for more.
It’s because we’re not doing the same thing that we would, we should be doing prior to the negotiation is to think about what’s the next step in advance of the next step happening. So under what conditions would we come back to the table? Under what conditions would this partnership need to dissolve? Under what conditions would we reevaluate the way we’re working together under what conditions would I recompensate you for? What I’ve already paid you and we, those questions are uncomfortable because we’ve just struck a deal with friends. We’re feeling great.
And those conversations require us to face into the potential for things not working out as we perceive them to be. Like a prenuptial agreement prior to a marriage, in the love upstage, you might not think you need that, but when, or if things turn nasty, you’re going to want that agreement in advance that’s determined how you’re going to allocate assets and resources to each party.
And I think the same is true in a negotiation is. It’s a mature way of looking at agreements is to say we can convince ourselves the world is all rosy and everything’s going to be fine, but we’re actually going to be doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t maturely acknowledge potential for things going an alternative path to what we both want.
And if we can identify the worst case scenarios, we’ll have been better equipped to determine what needs to happen next. So I think putting that time in right at the beginning of the negotiation to say, here’s the deal that we might strike, but before we close out, whether we do it in the same meeting or we do it in a subsequent meeting, where we still continue the dialogue around. So how do we make sure this actually gets implemented? It’s like, I liken it to sales calls, I’ve never been in sales, but one of the key things I’ve recognized through my time being in a small business entrepreneur role is that feedback and that guidance from the sales coach that says never leave a meeting without booking your second meeting.
So if you’re sending a proposal, book the second meeting to discuss the proposal. If they’re going to need time to think about the proposal book, the next meeting, discuss their feedback, and it’s the same thing here is don’t leave a meeting without locking in another meeting to discuss the implementation phase. Cause if you’re in true partnership agreements with each other, you owe it to each other to do that due diligence before things get gnarly.
AD:
Very nicely said. And I think that it goes back to something you said at the very beginning of the podcast around relationship, but in order to have worst case scenario discussions, we need a little bit of that rapport and trust. The relationship is going to be tested just by our ability to say, you use the word mature. There’s a maturity in this conversation of, hey, we certainly want this to go well, and we recognize we live in an imperfect world. We don’t know what’s right around the corner. It could be another pandemic. It could be whatever. What are we going to do if everything falls apart?
The Importance Of Addressing Contingencies In Partnership Agreements [22:22]
GB:
I think it’s like your partnership here, right? You’ve embarked on this beautiful journey to develop this podcast, but again, under what conditions would you dissolve this partnership. Under what conditions would one party either choose to continue or would you choose to separate the agreement, what happens to the assets around the recordings, et cetera, like this every day to day examples that allow.
We go into partnerships with good faith, goodwill, and all of the positive intent. But, if one party got sick or had a health scare or priorities in family shifted, not through any fault of either party, but what would you do then? And we don’t, I don’t know, and it’s hard, but we don’t often allow ourselves to play out those situations because they are uncomfortable.
But I think the strongest relationships, whether that be professional relationships or personal relationships are tested when you can maturely have those difficult conversations and get uncomfortable and say, okay, yeah, I get it under this conditions this would trigger us to have a conversation about our agreement with each other.
NM:
You’re a distribution partner for our advanced Artificial Negotiation Intelligence.
GB:
Annie, yes.
NM:
What is that? And how do you see it helping companies with their negotiating strategies?
Annie: Revolutionizing Negotiations With AI-Assisted & Autonomous Tools [23:50]
GB:
Yeah, Annie is a phenomenal tool helping organizations leverage AI to do two things, either use AI as a negotiation coach. So you can see it as a co-pilot in the planning and execution phase live in dialogue.
So, if you want to, imagine it’s like having each of you as negotiation specialists in the organization’s pocket, and you’re having a dialogue directly as if it was a human, but it’s trained in Negotiation Intelligence. So it can give you guidance on what to consider, what questions to ask. You can feed it information, whether that’s documents, whether it’s T’s and C’s, whether it’s the proposals and it will help you use the algorithm to actually create new proposals that ultimately optimize the Pareto value, which is, getting to the optimum point of the deal where it doesn’t harm the other party.
So it’s not a tool used to have an unfair advantage and beat your suppliers or customers over the head with, but it’s a tool to optimize the deal in large complex deals where a human brain just can’t comprehend the multiple, the different iterations where value could be generated. So it does that automatically in the system, but you’re acting as a co-pilot with it, to go, oh, okay, no, that variable is more important to us, so if we want to fix on that variable, what would the deal look like?
And it gives you options of what the deal could look like. So it’s super powerful in that context. In the other context, it’s used as an autopilot. So, where you’ve got low value agreements, you’ve got a large tail of suppliers that you’re interacting with, and you can’t have that personal touch, but it’s important to negotiate.
You can essentially set Annie up to negotiate on your behalf. So it has a portal, the supplier registers to the interest in the product or the service and the system, essentially you’ve set the parameters of what is an acceptable level for you, but the system automatically uses negotiation principles and guidance to negotiate directly with the other party autonomously.
And get to an agreement and when it gets to an agreement that the other party can accept, it then presents that back internally to say, hey, the supplier’s agreed to X, Y, and Z it’s within the parameters of what we’ve already defined as acceptable, but are you okay to approve this? So instead of having to do the negotiation or just not negotiate at all, it gives organizations the opportunity to create value across the lower end of the bend, the large tail that most organizations have but still extract value from it.
So yeah, it’s incredible what technology is doing. I think it does present questions around people’s capability to leverage it. Cause again, it’s requiring us to act very differently in the way procurement teams and sales teams operate in order to leverage the technology effectively, because it’s not as we know with generative AI, it’s not traditional AI, which is, just feed the data and simplifies the data.
It’s dynamic. It learns through your vocabulary, it learns through what your organization deems to be important. So it’s a dialogue-based interaction, which I think is very different for the large majority to still get their head round and yeah, my experience to go by is corporates do not yet know how to leverage it fully and decision-making is very lengthy. So it highlights to me that there’s going to be a real shift in the way people can think about Artificial Intelligence generally in order for it to be leveraged effectively and ethically. I think that’s the key thing ethically.
AD:
Fascinating. Just the use, application and what’s happened just in the last couple of years, much less what will happen in the next couple of years.
GB:
Oh! Indeed. Absolutely.
AD:
Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. We’re getting ready to wrap up and want to ask you for maybe a couple of final thoughts. And I’m going to, so two-part question here, Glin. But you’ve got Noah there with you. So I have no doubts that you can handle a two-part question.
So in terms of final thoughts, final advice that you would give. The first one is for the individual. The person who wants to become a more effective Value Negotiator, what would you say to them? And then the second piece is really more at the organizational level. If you were talking to the leader of a team, the leader of a company and saying, if you really want your people to go capture value for your firm, here’s what you got to do. Here’s the support you need to provide to them. So two different questions. Can you answer both of those for us?
Aligning Personal Aspirations With Organizational Values For Effective Negotiation & Growth [29:26]
GB:
Yeah. For the individual, I’d always start with who do you want to be? Not just when you grow up, but how do you want to be remembered? When it comes to the end of our years and it’s quite a deep philosophical, reflective question, but I think it encourages us to think about who we are at a human level to then say, okay if this is how I want to be remembered, and this is what’s important to me, how will I need to adapt the way I’m operating today to ensure that I achieve that outcome?
So if I give a personal example for me, as I said, in my twenties, I was probably more combative, more ego. The Joker definitely played the wild card. And I would say some of the ways I carried myself in my corporate career in the early years were just uninformed and I’m somewhat embarrassed by the raging high heat conversations that I’ve had with colleagues. And I look at myself then and I look at myself now and I think, oh my goodness, the growth that I’ve had through investing in developing my emotional intelligence, my understanding of the world has helped me become more compassionate and considerate of others. And I think that in turn allows me to think more effectively about the impact that I’m having.
So starting at an individual level, who do I want to be? Who am I being a role model for can allow us to then determine where our gaps are from the future desired state, and then seek to close those gaps. As I said, with a lot of the women I worked for, they wanted to be a great role model for their children and for their family members. But when I, you asked the question, so when was the last time you negotiated your salary or for the opportunity that, you’re capable of delivering, the hesitation and the lack of confidence, it’s like, oh no, I couldn’t do that. And it’s if we hold both together, which is going to encourage you to take the difficult steps to move towards the outcome you want.
And it is choosing your identity. If you choose the identity as I have of The Value Negotiator, I know now anything that I do that is counter to that identity, I’m essentially diminishing myself, my sense of self, and that’s far too painful. So, it keeps me anchored to the journey that I want to take.
For the organization, I would say it’s a similar question, but at a slightly different level in terms of the macro level is what’s the value that you want your organization to bring, not only to its people internally, but to the impact to their customers and suppliers externally as well. Because when we know what the values of the organization are, most organizations typically have espoused values on the wall and in brochures and on websites, but it’s asking, if you were to actually step into the identity of those values, what would your customers see, what would your suppliers see, what would your employees see, and with that in mind, how would it influence your negotiation strategies with what you were doing?
So if you’re an organization that had the value for customer experience, being top priority, any supplier interacting with, are you asking the questions around, how do you value customer experience? If I interacted with you, what can I expect from you? Because our organization stands for this.
And based on that, the suppliers that we want also need to marry the values that we deem important to our community. And I think, so the identity piece for me, it’s, as I said, quite a philosophical angle, but I think it does drive a shortcut to understanding your behaviors because it’s not, here’s a step by step process. It’s a, who are we being, in the organizations that we work for? And is there any disparity between, or a disconnect between, who I say this organization is and what we stand for and then the way we actually operate in reality.
And if that’s important to the leadership, I think that there’d be people that would want to work with consultants like us and people like us that genuinely are interested in making that difference. And if they’re not, then I’m afraid I’m not the person. I care too much. So I wouldn’t be the person that would just be transactional and, I think over time through age, wisdom, maturity, we all have our little a-ha moments or things that help us remember what’s actually important in life and how we treat each other is a significant measure of that level of impact that we have.
AD:
Well, Glin, that was a marvelous response. And what a great challenge for both the individual, then also the macro organizational leader, who’s concerned about executing strategy and building culture and seeing negotiation as an arm of those things. So thank you. Thank you for the work you’re doing. We’ve got to find an excuse to bring you a state side sometime. And good luck with the release of your book. We’ll be excited to point folks to that. And again, just thanks for taking the time to be with us. Appreciate it.
GB:
Thank you for taking the time to spend with me. I really have enjoyed this and I honor the work that you’re doing. So thank you very much.
NM:
Well, that is it for us on today’s episode. If you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast and we’ll see you in the next episode.
