Complex Negotiation Training

When a client threatens to take their business to a competitor, avoid an emotional reaction. The task is to check how real their alternative is, understand their motives and reassess your own balance of power and approach before the next offer.

Should you accept a concession just because the client asks for it? No. A concession only makes sense if it gets you something in return or protects a strategic stake. In complex deals, every concession must be part of a give-and-take, and the price is rarely the only variable worth negotiating.

To negotiate with several key decision-makers around the table, identify each person’s role, interests and level of influence. The strategy then consists of building alliances, handling objections and gradually trying to win support for a win-win agreement.

Then come the objections. Treat them as information rather than attacks: an objection on price often hides another question — budget, risk, a comparison with a competitor. You will develop the skills to rephrase, explore what is really at play, and respond with a trade rather than a discount. Your clients’ most frequent objections can even serve as material for the cases played over the two days.

A negotiation becomes complex when several factors combine: several decision-makers with diverging views, interrelated issues, large contracts, an unfavourable balance of power, an international context, or a crisis that changes the rules overnight. Methods that work for a simple sale no longer hold: you have to explore scenarios, adapt your communication to each counterpart and know, as a negotiator, when to stop negotiating and walk away.

The one-day negotiation training helps you develop a four-step method and the reflexes of a value-creating agreement. This advanced course assumes you have mastered those basics and want to develop your skills further: it covers the balance of power, conditional concessions, multi-party deals and crisis situations. The two programs complement each other as a development path, but each can be taken on its own.

Day one is aimed at experienced negotiators, key account managers, sales managers and buyers dealing with complex deals and contracts. Day two is for commercial directors, executives, leadership teams, purchasing managers and senior negotiators. Two different audiences with one thing in common: people with solid commercial experience who want to take the development of their negotiation skills further.

The prerequisite: having taken the negotiation training, which lays the foundations, or significant hands-on commercial experience. If in doubt, a first conversation with the facilitator will help identify the right level for each participant.

In practice, you will learn to analyse the balance of power before entering a negotiation, to make every concession conditional, to map the people who influence the decision and to explore fallback scenarios. The learning objectives also include an effective command of advanced concepts — BATNA and ZOPA first and foremost — and the practical skills and techniques to hold your line and your communication under heavy pressure. Each objective is tied to a case and to individual feedback, so that everyone can apply the skills practised straight away.

They combine eight cases and two games. Before each round, sub-groups analyse the balance of power; during the game, participants who are not negotiating fill in an observation grid; afterwards, the facilitator gathers the observers’ feedback and leads the debrief, comparing the initial analysis with what actually happened. The cases grow in difficulty, from simple business deals to the tensest multi-party negotiations, where successful outcomes are hardest to reach for any negotiator.

How lasting are the results? Assessment relies on three practical tools: the observation grid used in every exercise, the balance-of-power analysis each sub-group prepares and then compares with what actually happened, and an individual development plan for a real upcoming negotiation. That plan is reviewed with the facilitator in follow-up sessions, with personal feedback, to check that the skills developed are used effectively in the field.

Both days are led by Marc Prager, facilitator, trainer and executive coach. After starting his career in sales at Rank Xerox, he held commercial director positions and then ran subsidiaries abroad, where negotiation was part of the job at leadership level. This experience matters especially on day two, devoted to strategic deals: it gives the feedback a perspective that methods alone cannot provide.

The two days follow each other for teaching reasons, but each can be taken separately or a few weeks apart, depending on the dates and location chosen. The first suits teams who want to hold their ground on balance of power and concessions with clients; the second, executives and senior negotiators handling strategic deals. The price and delivery arrangements then depend on the number of days booked.

No. Each session takes place in person, in Europe, at a location agreed with you. There is no online or virtual classroom version: in our view, online programs suit theoretical input, but they are not an effective way to practise negotiating with several decision-makers, where everything plays out in glances, silences and side conversations. Classroom practice with the whole group builds the skills that make the two days successful.

No open courses either. Unlike many negotiation programs, online courses and virtual workshops, both days bring together only people from the same company, so that cases and feedback are based on its own deals and contracts; an open group would mix unrelated sectors. There is therefore no public classroom schedule: dates and location are agreed with you.

The program can also be tailored to the context of your commercial negotiations, your clients’ profile and your most frequent objections. A first conversation with the facilitator gathers this information and your view of the priorities, so that the delivery fits your business and helps your team develop, without changing the teaching approach: the tailored course keeps its progression from day one to day two. The detailed program is set out above on this page.

The program costs €5,000 excl. VAT for both days and for the group, up to 20 participants, with no minimum number of attendees. Location, dates and practical delivery arrangements are agreed in a first conversation.

The course does not lead to a certification. Most people leave with a clear development plan, practical techniques they can apply to their next deals, and a shared approach that helps the whole team develop, work effectively and reach successful agreements.