Nolan Martin :
Hey everyone, thanks for joining us on the Negotiate X Podcast. We are continuing our conversation with David Chapnick of Vantage Partners. If you haven’t already checked out part A of the show, be sure to do it first. Let’s jump into the conversation with David.
Aram Donigian :
Yeah, I love some of the interest work you’ve done, David, around really understanding like deep diving. I’ve seen some of this work with organizations that we’ve done some training with. Thanks to you. And that, just that real deep dive into getting into interests. And is it, what’s your model? Is it the focus model? What’s the model you’ve been using for?
Using The FOCUS Framework To Understand Customer Needs & Prepare For A Tech-Driven Future [00:34]
David Chapnick :
Focus for salespeople. It’s simple, but I think it’s a nice reminder that customers have all of these different interests. So focus, pretty simple, stands for Financial, Operational, Competitive, Underlying and Strategic. Any customer has interests in those five categories.
And using that sort of checklist to make sure you’ve checked all the boxes, right? Do I deeply understand their financial interests? They probably spend a lot of time there, but operationally, what are they trying to do? What are they trying to accomplish? Strategically where are they focused long term?
Where are they going? How does my organization actually help them to be able to do that? Starts to solve some of these. Challenges and also gives you an indication of which questions should you be asking. What case studies should you be bringing? How should you test any hypothesis you might have about their business?
And what your understanding is of that. I really think that whole sales process hinges deeply on that.
AD :
Yeah, agreed. And I love how you’ve brought that back too. All five of those things can do drive the questions we should be asking in negotiations, certainly help helpful in prep.
Shifting gears a little bit, we’re sitting here in 2025. AI is blowing up things left and right, lots of other technology advancements. What are the trends you’re seeing that are gonna shape the future of sales negotiations and how should we be advising companies to prepare for those coming changes?
DC :
I think one of the biggest, and this has been a long term trend and it’s driven by technology in a lot of ways, but also buyers are more informed, more interconnected than they have ever been, right? So they know more about what they want in that first conversation with a salesperson than ever before, right?
They’re not using that first sales conversation to understand deeply about the solution you might be offering. They likely know quite a bit already before they’re showing up, and so they’re cutting to the chase faster. You don’t have the time to deeply understand what they care about, right?
So it’s your responsibility as a salesperson to deeply understand their business. What are your hypotheses about what they’re trying to do? How do you meet them in that first sales call? Where they’re at. So certainly technology drives that. And I think you’re only gonna see that accelerate more and more, right?
From a broad scale sales perspective, you mentioned AI. I think what AI’s capabilities are and the ability to pull information to answer questions is only accelerating by the day. We are using AI at Vantage right now. We’ve invested pretty heavily in the Vantage AI simulation studio where a sales rep can actually have a sales conversation or sales negotiation with a customer.
They can try out these different strategies, try to arrive at a deal, and where we’ve invested is what’s the feedback that they’re getting based on that conversation? This has been very challenging to provide to a sales force of 2,500 people. Certainly you can train them all, but can you give individualized feedback to each and every one of them to use that to change behavior?
And the answer now is yes, you can. It used to be, oh, we could coach a certain number of your top sellers, how we can coach your entire sales team and bring that to them. And so the opportunity for organizational transformation to incorporate these practices in your organization is higher than it’s ever been.
So, I am hopeful that the human skills remain and I think they will become more important in how people learn them as gonna change over time. The ways in which they’re interacting with their customers will continue to change. But at the same time, at the end of the day, I think human connection will be the differentiator.
It will be the driver. People will be operating in more sophisticated ways with their customers, without a doubt, because I for sure, think technology is gonna take some of the lower level activities. But I think that gives everybody the opportunity to level up at the same time, and that’s pretty exciting.
AD :
Yeah. You mentioned that’s, the AI simulation that you’re talking about with an instant feedback. Brilliant. Amazing. And what a great way to get feedback, which is critical to learning to everybody. You also talked about this modality, how we engage with our customer, our supplier might change a little bit.
Just ask you to make a swag. I guess as you think about the advice, the advising, the coaching that you’re doing with different organizations how many, just for our listeners. Roughly like how many negotiations now, since the pandemic are happening virtually that used to take place solely in person, but now you’re seeing this shift towards we can be a little bit more efficient, we can move faster by doing some things over zoom or whatever it might be.
Redefining How We Build Relationships & Communicate Value [05:47]
DC :
It’s hard to put a number on it, but the number of negotiate, it’s 80% are happening virtually, right? People are just not getting in front of folks face to face at the level that they were before the pandemic for sure. I think travel budgets have been cut. People are more efficient. And one of the things that I love is I used to be on a plane all the time visiting different clients, and I could only see one client per trip, if I was lucky. I could put a couple that were co-located together.
Now I can flip on every day. I can see face to face with all of my clients every day through the pandemic and I had a very regular coffee check-in with one, and it was nice. We were both in our respective houses and having coffee and talking about our businesses and where we’re going.
So you have the opportunity now to also build those relationships. But I think from a negotiation standpoint, it’s a very high number. I wouldn’t be surprised at 80%. I don’t know the exact one it’s worth we have a upcoming customer supplier negotiation study. Probably worth a question in that survey actually.
So I would guess it’s very high. But I think it creates a real challenge too, if on the other side you’re also trying to understand their interest. You spend a lot of time there on interest. If you’re only negotiating over email, right? How do you actually deeply define that? The words you say in that email matter so much, they’re not gonna give you a phone call.
How have you crafted that? How fast have you been able to get to your point, how have you communicated that value that you’re bringing in a written way? It’s a lot harder to do and I’ve now, I’ve had even my own clients as I’m negotiating with procurement on behalf of Vantage, where I’m going back and forth, over emails. Now it is very hard. It is very hard.
NM :
Speaking of difficult, how do you balance collaboration and co competition and negotiations when multiple stakeholders, both internal and external, have potentially differing interests, widely different BATNAs or a bad past relationship history?
Rebuilding Broken Ties: Define Limits, Then Collaborate Freely [08:00]
DC :
Yeah it’s really tough and what we’ve advocated for, whether it is a customer, a major customer, supplier relationship that has gone bad or in alliance that is tanking. They’re not gonna meet that market opportunity. They’re not able to work together. It’s kind of, restarting, right? It’s relaunching that relationship in some way. It’s sifting through, where are we gonna collaborate? And where actually are we competitive? Now, I really like trying to understand.
So in a lot of these alliances or customer supply relationships that depend on information, people don’t want to share with their collaborators, with their alliance partners, that information ’cause they’re worried they’re gonna get their risks slapped or they’re worried they’re going to provide some information that will help them or be used against them competitively. And I love asking the question of what can’t we share? What is all the information that we don’t want our people sharing with the other side? And certainly there’s, certain competitive information or long-term strategy, or maybe it’s some pricing information, whatever it might be.
Let’s put that in a box and we’ll then say to everybody else, okay guys, this is off limits. We know that, but everything else is open, right? Let’s collaborate effectively. Let’s share information. Let’s not go through the cycle of asking permission every time something new comes up, can we communicate. That creates a real partnership tax. If you haven’t done that, it slows you down. It prevents you from actually reaching the goals that you all said you had when you signed the agreement in the first place.
And so if you’re able to open up the communication, then you know, that actually greases the skids and allows these teams that freedom to communicate, to collaborate, to innovate, to work together, that will actually accelerate the work of that partnership.
NM :
Absolutely. I love how the leader is the one that’s building this infrastructure and saying, guys everything, guys and girls, everything in here is off limits, but everything else we like, you have a left and right limit here. Go get it. I don’t wanna be pushing you. You can, you have some freedom to move here, so that’s awesome.
DC :
Yeah I think that freedom to move. You identified, Nolan. That’s where I think that innovation happens, that’s where people build trust. Is when they can communicate. If they’re constantly worried and constantly holding their cards close to their chest, it’s really hard to innovate in that kind of an environment.
You’re constantly worried you’re gonna share something you shouldn’t have. It’s really hard to innovate. And if we’re building an alliance or creating this customer supplier partnership or whatever it is we’re trying to do with a different organization and we’re not sharing information. It becomes such an incredible weight and tax on that. And no surprise, they’re pretty hard and they fail at a pretty high rate.
AD :
David, you’ve done work on customer centricity. This is fairly popular these days. Consulting firms even take it so far to the nth degree, that they’ll say the customer’s never wrong. Obviously that’s driven by the concept where we need to minimize customer attrition.
How can account managers ensure they create value for both their company and the customer without sacrificing other things, profitability or so forth by overcommitting or by adding to the scope of a project every time the customer comes back and wants more or wants something different or something like that.
Customer Collaboration Begins With Honest Conversations [11:44]
DC :
Yeah, I think I would be very clear. Customers are people and they can make mistakes too. The customer can be wrong, in fact. And it’s actually not super customer centric to not let them know when they are, right? That there’s plenty of customers who have done things that lead to inefficiencies, that lead to value coming out of some of these different contracts or what they’re trying to do or failing to leverage the expertise of your own firm.
So, the customer absolutely can be wrong. It’s a little bit, how do you tell them that they’re wrong though, and how do you actually collaborate with them and help them understand the right way? So I think that certain folks focused in customer service, whether they’re sales, whether they’re customer success, whether they’re partnering on some technology in R&D, right?
They have this viewpoint of kind of what is great customer service. And say something comes up where you know this is gonna cause a problem in our delivery, so you don’t wanna tell the customer ’cause you don’t want to deliver that bad news. And so you try to really well-meaning you try to figure it out over time.
And you delay telling them, oh, this is gonna happen. And ’cause you’re really worried they’re not gonna they’re not gonna that message, oh, you’re gonna be late on delivery. Or, you can’t get that certain person, or you can’t get that particular factory component in time.
It’s gonna slow them down. It’s different than what you’re, you’ve committed to them and so you just don’t tell them while you try to figure it out. I wouldn’t say that’s actually that customer centric you’re missing that opportunity to jointly problem solve together and say, Hey guys, here’s what’s happening at the moment. I would love to figure out what the right solution is. Obviously it’s not ideal. And you guys have some experts on this. Let’s talk about this. Let’s figure this out together. Let’s come up with the right plan.
I think even in those moments, you build more trust by doing that versus delaying and then trying to show up with your Superman cape on and say, oh, save the day. This didn’t actually happen. Well, three weeks. Oh, you could’ve told me three weeks ago that we were gonna have the delay. Are you kidding me? So it’s things like that where you do things that feel customer centric, but actually result in challenges that aren’t.
Maybe you also will, like reflexively say yes. The customer wants this or they want that. Yes, absolutely. Mr. Or Mrs. Customer, we can for sure do that when actually, you say, I would love to do that, and let me check about how that will be feasible, or let me talk to that expert on my team who’s done this a whole bunch of times.
Oh, maybe there’s a different plan that we could do instead that actually would better meet what you’re trying to get done. And so I really think that’s the more customer centric way of working with them. And, surprise, that actually contributes to building trust. Customers wanna work with you again when you’ve engaged them in that kind of joint problem solving.
When you go off and then come up with a solution, say, oh, here I am to save the day, and they don’t like it and you’ve burned a bunch of time and they’re not bought in, that’s not gonna feel super customer centric. And you know as much as you can collaborate with them through that process. I would really encourage you to do.
NM :
Absolutely. In the military, we always say that news doesn’t get better with time. Or bad news doesn’t get better with time. Sounds like it applies here as well.
AD :
Yeah. Nolan, I was thinking the same thing. I love that because I. And, and David, the way that you frame this, the missing of an opportunity the actually leading you down a different path is respectful.
It’s actually helpful to the substance. I loved how you framed that. And I really think that’s helpful for folks who feel like they’re pressured. Also, I just have to comment because you said it and folks that are listening, you go back and listen to how David framed this. He can’t help it because he’s so well trained and ingrained in the things that he teaches.
The phrase that you used was. Eh, love to do something like that and beautiful use of, and is the conjunction. Okay. And I’d like to talk to one of the experts on our team and see if there aren’t some, isn’t something we might consider doing differently, right? I love it. It’s the Yes. And it’s the allowing the customers still okay. The customers. Just ’cause they have different ideas and not wrong. Okay. And there might be some, maybe a better way we can do this, we can solve this for you.
DC :
You’re so spot on, Aram. And I didn’t even catch myself doing it, yeah, no, it’s been tattooed back in there. Yeah. Probably isn’t coming out anytime soon.
NM :
David, you’ve been deeply involved in training frontline sales leaders to be more effective coaches. What’s one piece of advice you always give sales leaders about coaching their teams through difficult negotiations?
No Strategy, No Win: Why Preparation Is Everything [17:01]
DC :
I am, Nolan, it’s a very good question, and I am always stunned by these giant deals, multi multimillion dollar deals, tens of millions of dollars, and how little time is spent on the strategy.
Like what are we actually going to do here? And how are we going to do it? How are we going to align a whole bunch of people around what that right idea is or around this negotiation? How are we gonna make sure leaders are lined up with what we are going to offer to them and why we are gonna offer it, seeing so many deals killed because we’re moving fast.
So many clients come to us and say, oh, we’ve got this negotiation and we’d love to help you, have you guys help support. And I’m excited. Okay, we’re like two months out. Like I would be so excited for a giant deal to have two months. It is so rare that you’ve got that, so rare.
And so I guess my advice is get your team together. Think through, what are we going to do? What are the scenarios that we are okay with? What are the scenarios we can’t agree to? What do we really want to have happen? How do we actually guide the conversation in a way that moves to an outcome that’s optimal for us and for our customer?
It reminds me of a deal that we worked on. It’s been a little bit since it was a really large med tech company. They have a leading product. I think they had something like, $60 million in sort of the Northeast, if you imagine that market. Huge deal. Their customers came together and formed a group purchasing organization and informed them that we’re going out to bid.
You’ve got too much. We are going to all your competitors. We are going to take this business away. And they basically had nothing to gain from this, right? They were going to come out much worse. This was gonna get carved up with their competitors. They had everything to lose and nothing to gain, and it took getting that team together, really thinking through, okay, what’s the response to this RFP?
What’s the value we actually provide to this hospital system? How does that add up in terms of, oh, nurse time saved in terms of patient outcomes? In terms of, for this particular client one of the things they were able to do was minimize patients coming back to the hospital after they get sick after a surgery. How are we able to minimize that from happening? What’s the value of that? And adding these things up to create a value story. That super well met the interests of what they were trying to get done. Building that into the RFP response coaching, choreographing thinking through, okay, what are the scenarios?
What are they going to do? What do we come back with? Who do we have to have in line internally to make sure that we can say yes to whatever that is? And at the end of the day, they ended up taking share from their competitors, right? They took they were already the leaders. They became even bigger leaders because they were able to stand on the value that they already knew and then what they already created and they landed in an $80 million deal, right?
It was huge for that organization and it’s because they actually took the time, right? Slow down to go fast to organize themselves, to think things through. And they won and they won big. And so if I were coaching any leader, spend a minute on this, right? The value is exponential.
The ROI is huge. If you are gonna optimize your outcome at the end of the day, right? Have you actually done everything you can to win that deal? If the answer is no. Then well, maybe we should do at least some of those things. How do we actually optimize our chances? Yeah, I’m always stunned by how little time is given and I’m not surprised everybody is pressed on a million different fires on any given day.
Yeah, it’s important, but it’s not urgent. But doing that bit actually will result in a bunch of value for you, what you’re taking home that day as well as for your organization, and I think it’s worth it.
AD :
Yeah, hard to be purposeful at the table if you haven’t been purposeful in preparation.
DC :
Oh, for sure, Aram. For sure.
AD :
Now, David, you’re a veteran of the Vantage Volunteers team which partners with various nonprofit organizations. I’m just curious how some of your experiences in that space influenced your general thinking, your overall thinking about negotiation, leadership and collaboration?
Purpose In Practice: How Pro Bono Work Sparked A Career In Negotiation [22:26]
DC :
Yeah, I’m fortunate to have been with Vantage Volunteers. I think I joined the kind of core team that creates volunteer opportunities for folks in our firm. You know, focused very much in the greater Boston area, trying to help out our neighbors as much as we possibly can. Partnering with a whole bunch of different nonprofits over the years.
I think the one that stands out the most, that was maybe the most impactful for me personally was some pro bono work I had done for Vantage Volunteers with the Mass Coalition for the Homeless. So the Mass Coalition for the Homeless negotiates on behalf of their clients who maybe can’t pay their rent that month.
Or maybe their heating bill or their heating bills are overdue. They’re gonna have the heat turned off in the middle of Boston Winter. These case workers, social workers do not get negotiation training necessarily as part of their education, although they are negotiating every single day.
And so, it was actually my first vantage training experience. When I was a junior associate, now not far out of college. It was my job to put this training together for them and to deliver that training. And it was, a shout out to another one of my former colleagues who’s doing great work, and continues to be in the negotiation field, Joe Bobman. I believe it was both of our first times delivering and negotiation training. And it was for this purpose to help them negotiate on behalf of their clients.
And, we did that and we were hugged. So this is what we were gonna do for the rest of our lives as it turns out. Vantage volunteers having that pro bono experience, really set us on that path.
So I have to say that’s the most impactful one. I love where we can create those opportunities for young people who are working at Vantage today. Where they can level up. Maybe they’re often preparing the training, but they’re not actually getting to deliver it. Can we give them those opportunities to deliver?
If they’re doing the research, can we actually have them do the work to prepare the training? How does everyone in the organization get that opportunity to level up and have it impact and, certainly, have an impact on me. I hope I helped those caseworkers that day or those couple days. But but yeah, by far, by far.
NM :
We believe that it’s had an impact definitely on many communities as you and Joe Bobman continue to do that. So thank you that for that. If you could give one final piece of advice to business leaders looking to elevate their negotiation capabilities and make it a true competitive advantage, what would it be?
Skill-Building Takes Time—Invest in Your People For Lasting Impact [25:26]
DC :
This comes up every single day, almost Nolan, invest in it. It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in a two-hour course. I have a very good client who’s since retired, John Noble. He says, I would love to have a Harvard MBA in a weekend, but they don’t offer that, and it’s true, right? To be able to learn this, to transform your organization to actually support and enable your people. Give them the time to be able to do it.
Give them the time to be able to learn. Hopefully they can pull some nuggets out of a short two hour course. Nothing wrong with that. But if you’re actually going to do it, it’s a little bit of a journey. It’s a few, it’s a little more time than that two hour session. In-person training has gone with COVID in a lot of ways.
We still do plenty, but. Maybe not enough. I’m always impressed by the impact of that. Let your people get together, invest in them, and give them that support to try out these new strategies, these new skills. It’s not how they’ve been doing it necessarily for a really long time for many of them. So give them that space.
AD :
David, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today. As we read in your bio, you’re clearly busy. And yet, I can’t think of a time in the, I don’t know, decade or so that I’ve known you, that you haven’t been very generous with your time. And thanks. Thanks for that and sharing your insights as well.
DC :
Oh, absolutely. Aram, Nolan, it’s been great to chat with you guys. Aram, thank you. I’ve learned so much over the years from you as well. And the opportunities you’ve given me to come work with you, whether it’s at Tuck or with Navy Seal, so I really appreciate it.
NM :
Well, that is it for us on today’s podcast. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the Negotiate X Podcast if you haven’t already, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
