Sales Team Negotiation Training: Customized Case Studies

The Negotiation Experts make extensive use of case studies and negotiation training games in training sales negotiation teams. Simulating commercial sales negotiation training scenarios customized to our client’s business reality is the best way to assess sales negotiators’ strengths and weaknesses. There’s no better method of rapid feedback. Mistakes in role-playing don’t end up costing sales revenue or sales margin, and role-plays are highly engaging.

In this article, Professor Bob March illustrates why customized case studies hold a favorite position in his sales negotiation team’s training repertoire.

How do we learn to be better international sales negotiators? Most believe that trial and error, rather than academic study, is the best way to learn. I agree, but this trial and error method comes at a significant cost to the organization‘s bottom line profit. Fortunately, there is another way, one I have been using for 25+ years all over the world. I call it “competitive role-playing.” I began using it in 1979, in sales negotiation training courses between teams of Americans and Japanese in Japan. [You can read about my first use of the method in the author’s book, The Japanese Negotiator (Tokyo: Kodansha International), pages 8 – 10.]

Negotiation Case Studies and Role-Play

Competitive role-plays are competitions between two teams: One domestic (in this case Australian) and the other foreign. Both teams are given a comprehensive briefing document on or before the best negotiation skills training seminars that identifies team members, objectives, and background. They include a history of encounters, the environment of the negotiation such as third-party interventions (especially government), industry associations, etc. Each role-playing team takes time, sometimes several hours, for business negotiation preparation. The time they take usually indicates thorough preparation, provided the sales negotiation teams have invested training on how to prepare effectively. This can prove to be important in international negotiation, where preparation is (almost) everything.

The learning comes from several sources in the training. Perceptive observers follow each team in all of its meetings. When each side completes the sales negotiation (or we run out of time), each member of each side comments on the performance of the other team and its members. This is unique training feedback we would never receive in real life. It bears upon personal communication style, the effectiveness of strategies, perceived trust/believability, and team cohesion and solidarity.

Case Study Example

A recent sales negotiation skills team role-play training exercise took place between a team from SB Research in Sydney, and an external team. It included members of the AJBCC. It was based on the real-life situation of woodchip negotiations between Stones Ltd., and Daishowa Japan. Neither side knew the woodchip industry, so I provided them with a comprehensive briefing.

The one twist was that the briefing material was for the year 2000, when a particular problem arose between the two teams. I had, in 2000, as a consultant to the Australian woodchip negotiator North Forest Products Ltd. (since sold on to Gunns Ltd.), been privy to that situation. I gave each negotiation team detailed insights into the main players (albeit fictionalized characters, but based on reality), and their personal and team attitudes.

The Impact of Case Study Training

Comments by AJBCC member Bob Seidler, The Seidler Law Firm in Sydney, a member of the team opposing SB Research, sometime after the training:

“I had the privilege of participating in the fictional sales negotiations between Stones and Daishowa. With many years of negotiating with Japanese teams, I accepted the invitation with considerable curiosity and some skepticism. I was curious about the concept of fictional negotiation and the advanced negotiation training challenges it posed while being skeptical of this method as a learning tool. My skepticism stemmed from coming through the ‘experience’ school still bearing all the psychological scars as a graduation certificate.

The sales negotiation team training was fascinating and great fun. I am now a convert. Our opposition was the best prepared and most formidable team that I had encountered. Their knowledge of Japanese group cultural and business practices was very good. The team functioned as a unit, with each member playing a complementary but contributing role. They knew what they wanted to achieve and went about it in a professional and determined manner.”

The review process was valuable as personal feedback to all of the participants. Also, for this author, the process gave an insight into the role-play training as a teaching method.

These lessons are shared on The Negotiation Experts’ sales training in Los Angeles.