Negotiating Through Life: From Family Talks to Strategic Partnerships [00:00]
Gary Ortiz :
Where I sit today, you look back and I will tell you that I think we all start negotiating as children. If you think about it, and children are some of the best negotiators in the world who wants to, when you’re tired at the end of the day, they know every button to push every, so you know, I was that kid, right?
I advance a little forward. I was also that kid who was negotiating various punishments from my brother and I. It was like, all right, and so my parents confused me with an attorney, said he doesn’t need an attorney. I said no. Hold on a minute. So that was me. I was the older brother and we were thick as thieves at times.
So that was my thing. But I’ll say professionally, I think just over the years, little by little I found that I enjoyed it. I think, again, starting personally, it was really car buying. A lot of people hate that. I love it. But meeting people, there’s one person in particular that I would credit for my professional development or startup, I should say.
John Barbie, he was a salesman with Thermo Fill, Sahi, Thermo Fill. And he was just an amazing guy and he had a lot of patience. And, he and I developed an amazing relationship. And he was the one who taught me, you know, relationship is key. Honesty, integrity, trust, and building that was so important.
And it was amazing how well he did it. You know, we worked together for many years. He made me understand that our relationship was always above board and it was always beneficial to his organization and mine and. Yeah, he taught me so much and inspired me to learn so much more to the point where his company brought us up and at his retirement day, and we surprised him, a couple of us, it was a really, he is still a great guy.
I talk to him every once in a while. He’s great. He’s retired, but. He’s the one who’s given me the most that kind of kickstart early in my life. Yeah. So, part of our job as we try to find the strategic relationships we’re dealing a lot with very technical teams. Being an engineer myself, I can appreciate that.
When you have something and you have trust in it, a widget, some sort of silicon. They’re rewarded for going quickly and efficiently, but, making sure, obviously their designs are very robust, so they get comfortable with products, companies, et cetera.
One of the things that I find myself doing is negotiating with them. Trying to get them to change their mind a bit or open their mind more than anything with regards to other products or services or value adds that some of our suppliers have. And, it’s sometimes difficult but you know that is step one, right?
Earning their trust, earning their confidence is really key. So you find yourself doing that. I think when I came to Sonos, one of the biggest challenges is we were just the source of purchasing people and we do everything but that, right? And so I would say that’s some of the main stuff internally.
And then externally, we’re constantly, and you can imagine, and I’m sure we’ll get into that later, just the way in the three years, three and a half years that I’ve been here, how the pandemic has really affected our negotiating and what we’ve had to do. So we’re constantly negotiating and working both internally and externally to balance those things. And it’s, I’ve learned a lot. I really have, it’s amazing. And I still have a lot to learn.
Aram Donigian :
I feel like so often people forget about the internal negotiations that have to occur. You started answering by talking about kind of the internal alignment and that you do. Is that, from where you sit, are those internal negotiations sometimes more difficult than the external or are they just different?
Respect, Trust & Evidence: Keys To Internal Negotiation Success [03:53]
GO :
They can be more difficult. Because you have a group of people who set or have a strong foundation. Now, I say I’m an engineer, but I am nowhere near the capabilities that some of these folks are. So you take that with a grain of respect. So you know, you have to earn their respect.
You have to be able to understand how to influence them. Something that we’ve had to do, I’ve had to do is there, there’ll be pockets of things that you just can’t. They’re immovable. And I think one of the things negotiations have taught me is, helping to increase your areas of influence.
So if I can’t, let me see if I can, you know, get some further support and work the angles that way. And so when it’s not just coming from me and it’s coming from other groups or other functions, it seems to help. And so it can be harder, especially for newer, when you’re newer it becomes, I think, a lot of work.
But it’s what we all say, right? Respect and trust is earned. And, as long as you bring in evidence-based positions, I think that’s really key and critical.
Negotiating on All Fronts: Balancing Deals, Deadlines & Daily Decisions [04:58]
J.B. Andreassi :
So I have two different buckets. The one I can speak to as a real estate advisor, it’s both representing either a seller of a property or a buyer/investor in a certain property.
Both styles of negotiating. I think everyone has their own style of negotiating, but those are the players change. But your style and approach really doesn’t. In my opinion. So that’s one bucket. And then the other bucket is with building.
And I think the biggest time I see myself negotiating besides with trying to, appease the client when we’re building custom homes is with subcontractors, meaning, so if we’re the general contractor on a project, we need to make sure that our subcontractors, whether that’s plumbing, siding masonry different landscapers that they’re all aligned with our common goal, which is to finish a product within, or finish a home in a certain period of time, but also main, maintaining that integrity of the product and what, and I hate to, I’m gonna save money a lot, but what makes our business go is really that bottom line.
And so if we’re able to negotiate with subcontractors to either, either leverage the fact that they can secure our business down the road with future projects, and that means maybe they’re doing it for a little bit less money, whether it’s, you know, again they’re doing the patio outside. It’s usually $25,000, but if you guys do it for $18,000, we secure the next two projects that are already lined up down the road.
So I think there’s two different buckets there, but it’s something Aram I do every day. And it’s, I gotta say it’s exhausting sometimes, it is. Because it’s just, it’s every day, all day. And I think one of the questions that I think we’ll get to is, and it doesn’t stop when you get home it’s you’re still constantly going with the clients and the subs and the guys that work for you, but also in your home life.
And with whether it’s your significant other or it’s your family members, there’s always some sort of negotiation happening, whether it’s in the business world or in your personal life that I’m sure you guys can attest to as well. So to put it simply, there’s a few contract subcontractors that stand out because of their work and because of their accountability more so than others.
So, we may be going back and forth and it could be, I’ll use this guy Silverio, who does our pools. Silverio will say, yeah, JB we can take a discount here, but who are you gonna call and know that they’re gonna show up the next day. He, it’s not gonna be anyone else, it’s gonna be me.
So it is, there is a little bit of back and forth and there is power there. And I think to more simply put the answers, if it goes back to these core values, right? It’s the accountability factor. It’s the trust factor, it’s the relationship between either A and B players within a negotiation.
Yeah, I think I see it more often than not. I typically think they’re gonna fold, but they usually come back with something strong. And then it’s, sort of, finding a compromise and figuring out how to work together going forward.
