Worried about that target on your back?
It’s that time of year. A lot of my clients are starting January with a 2024 target on their backs.
Targets are a fact of business life. They’re essential for business planning, they set expectations for performance and, as long as they are set appropriately, they are motivating for commercially-minded people. But even if you’re in a high-performing team, it’s appropriate to explore every way you can to hit that number.
Maybe you began to think about and plan for your 2024 targets months ago. But if you have not yet considered the impact that addressing your negotiation processes and capability will have on your performance, now is the time to do it.
More than one client has called me in July, looking for help to improve their chances of hitting target after a poor first half . They might have closed plenty of business, but revenue and profit are lagging due to poor negotiation. By helping them make a plan, enable their team team and transform performance over the last two quarters I have helped them to improve results, but imagine the year they would have had if they had done the work in Q1!
Here are the steps to take.
1. Uncover the hidden value.
Look look at the deals you have done over the past 12-36 months and quantify the value opportunities. For each value driver in your deals, where are you negotiating effectively and maximising value and where is poor negotiation resulting in lost value? What would maximum value look like and what percentage are you recovering?
Then look at the root causes behind that lost value. Are you trading effectively, negotiating price appropriately and taking every or opportunity to demand more? The aim is not to point fingers, but to identify the improvements to prioritise and target, to maximise your value.
Lastly, plan how to measure the impact, make the changes and monitor progress.
2. Enable the change and kick off
Ensure your people are properly equipped to deliver the change you have planned. Are they properly trained? Do you have agreed negotiation processes, metrics and language?
Sometimes we encounter client teams who have already benefitted from world class negotiation training, but the trainers didn’t properly show them how to apply what they learned to meeting your business objectives. Rather than reinvent the wheel we can work with the foundations laid by top class negotiation trainers to deliver benefit that can be measured (on your terms) and sustained.
If training is needed, Reciprocal will deliver world class training and market leading value. If your negotiation processes are not fully developed, we can help you develop them.
Negotiation trainers love to talk about the “art and science” of negotiation, but art and science will not transform your business if they are not backed by process and metrics.
Once the team have the tools to deliver the change, plan a kick-off session in which the learnings from the opportunity analysis are shared the process, and the plan using the tools and tactics they have been trained on to hit their targets is shared.
3. Monitor, review and manage.
Throughout the year progress and performance need to be reviewed regularly (at least quarterly).
In this process, review performance against the targets set for specific negotiation variables as well as overall target performance. Troubleshoot issues and analyse performance so you can course-correct under-performance and share the learnings of high performance across the team. This is all communicated to the team in quarterly negotiation review meetings. At Reciprocal, we work with our clients to co-prepared and facilitate these sessions, acting as partners in performance.
The negotiation process thus becomes part of the cadence of commercial performance and the conversation in your commercial teams. Performance improves, issues are corrected and benefits compound.
It’s never too late to start this process, but why wait? The sooner we start, the more we can achieve.
Call or email Reciprocal today. Together we can get that target off your back.