Coaching · Live negotiations
Some negotiations freeze: the emails go round in circles, every meeting wrings out one more small concession, and nobody has the distance left to lay the case out flat. Negotiation coaching creates that pause, at regular intervals, on your real negotiations, with customers as well as suppliers and subcontractors, and with the people responsible for them.
A negotiation depends on five capabilities: creativity to invent options, assertiveness to put them forward and hold your position, quantifying every concession, anticipating the next moves, and the ability to see the case through the other party's eyes. Under day-to-day pressure, instinct pushes the other way: answer quickly, give in to unblock, reason from your own position alone. These capabilities are built through repetition, on real cases, with someone who makes you stop.
Every possible concession gets a value, in euros, in days or in risk. What is quantified can be defended, and what is given without a figure is often given for nothing.
Your alternatives, the other side's, the zone of possible agreement and the likely next moves on each side. An outside view assesses them more coolly than the team that has lived with the case for months, and helps you step into the other party's shoes.
The best ideas are often already in the heads of those who negotiate. The work is to bring them out, to dare to put them on the table, and then to hold them.
What was said, agreed and conceded is captured as the talks unfold. The history of the negotiation becomes a company asset, available the day the discussion resumes.
When it is useful and agreed with you, the coach joins the negotiation meeting itself. It is the most real application of what was prepared in session. The coach is introduced as such and observes without intervening during the session. During a recess, the coach talks with you to adjust what comes next. The debrief takes place the same day: first what the person saw for themselves, then what the coach observed, then the next move, agreed before parting.
For each case, we build a copilot with you inside the artificial intelligence tools you already use. It brings together the exchanges, the constraints, your alternatives, the list of quantified tradables and the concession log. After each meeting, the transcript produces a briefing within the hour: what moved, what was given, what was obtained, and the next step. Before the following meeting, the copilot helps prepare the scenarios and can play the other party. No session starts from a blank page.
On a time-and-materials basis, negotiation by negotiation, with the person or small team responsible for it. Each case starts from a written baseline: the initial position, the deadline, your ambitious, realistic and minimum objectives. Preparation always follows the same structure, summarised in the diagram below.
Before every meeting that matters, the case fits on this diagram: your three objectives, your floor and the other side's likely ceiling, the zone where agreement is possible, and the balance of what has already been given and obtained.
From left to right, from the lowest price to the highest.
Every concession is quantified before it goes on the table, and nothing is given without something in return.
| Given | Obtained |
|---|---|
2% discount on list price€18,000 | Three-year commitment€36,000 |
Delivery two weeks earlier€6,000 | Payment at 30 days instead of 60€9,000 |
Team training included€4,000 | Guaranteed minimum volume€10,000 |
Total given€28,000 | Total obtained€55,000 |
Negotiation balance + €27,000
Illustrative example, seen from the sales side. On the purchasing side, the diagram reads in reverse.
Sessions are short, face to face, remote or in the field, and timed before the meetings that matter. Each one ends with a dated commitment. When an opportunity followed in deal coaching moves into negotiation, the file and the copilot pass from one to the other without a break.
On the customer side: a key account that has been blocking for three meetings, a price revision, the renewal of a framework contract, additional work to be recognised.
On the purchasing side: awarding work packages to subcontractors, a strategic supplier imposing its terms.
The tools come from Negotiate Smart, our commercial negotiation module. Upstream, deal coaching supports the opportunity up to the negotiating table. And this coaching can be part of a Sales Transformation Program, dosed to your team's needs.
An important negotiation in progress? A first conversation is enough to see where it stands and what an outside perspective can bring.
Let's talk about your current negotiations