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Negotiating Financial Partnerships
Download this course description (pdf)
Business Issue - Building strong relationships in business is the key to success in a competitive marketplace. Knowing this, most relationship managers rely on developing high-impact sales skills as a way to expand their customer relationships. But an equally important skill in maintaining strong professional relationships has often been overlooked: successfully negotiating the terms of the sale after the customer signals he or she is ready to commit. This is when the stakes are highest in a relationship—when there is the most to gain and the most at risk.
Omega Performance’s Solution - Negotiating Financial Partnerships teaches relationship managers a straightforward method for negotiating winning outcomes for both parties—what is called principled negotiation. Relationship managers learn how to prioritize and state the bank’s needs in a negotiation and how to uncover and prioritize the customer’s needs as well. By clearly focusing on both parties’ needs and creating options to meet as many of those needs as possible, an agreement is reached that makes sense professionally and makes your customer want to do business with you again.
What Is Included
Negotiating Financial Partnerships reflects extensive research in the field of negotiating, including the Harvard University negotiation study project. The workshop takes these theories and points of view and translates them into a comprehensive methodology for conducting successful negotiations:
Prework - participants come prepared for the Negotiating Financial Partnerships workshop after completing assignments in the Resource Guide.
Introduction - the leader reviews differences between principled and positional negotiating.
Life Styles Inventory - participants work in small groups to share insights about negotiating behavior.
Clarify Needs - participants review questioning skills and use the Solution Systems case to practice questioning to obtain in-depth information about business and individual needs.
Plan - participants learn to use a Negotiation Planning Worksheet to prepare for negotiation.
Meet (with Video Demonstration) - participants learn how to conduct an effective negotiation meeting.
Negotiation Meeting Skill Practice 1 - in pairs, participants plan and conduct a negotiation meeting based on Solution Systems six months later.
Creating Options - a nonbanking problem is presented for the group to work with to apply a tested process for creating options. The process is then applied to banking situations.
Tactics - much of positional negotiating is driven by tactics. Video modeling and feedback is a learning technology that Omega Performance has found to be unparalleled in changing participants’ behavior in the shortest time.
Plan Your Own Negotiation - participants plan for a real negotiation that is coming up for them.
State the Bank’s Needs - bankers are often uncomfortable, or needlessly blunt, in telling customers what the bank needs in negotiation.
Negotiating Meeting Skill Practice 2 - participants use one of three case scenarios to prepare and conduct a 20-minute negotiation, applying the meeting model and handling tactics to keep the negotiation centered.
Wrap-Up - the group identifies key learning from the skill practice and summarizes workshop concepts and skills.
On the Job - the final step in the workshop is the assignment of an on-the-job activity that requires participants to plan an upcoming negotiation, working closely with their coach or manager.
Delivery Options
For an effective workshop, it is necessary that participants take their preparation assignment seriously and complete the work before they arrive. This ensures that the two-day workshop is spent actively practicing new skills and processes.
Results You Can Expect
Negotiating Financial Partnerships helps your relationship managers and sales specialists:
- Uncover and prioritize the needs that lie beneath negotiation issues for the customer and the bank
- Conduct and manage meetings that build solutions in a way that enhances the relationship
- Use a creative process to break through impasses when others would give up
- Respond to tactics and keep negotiations centered
- Adjust their personal negotiating style to most effectively build relationships
- Use principled negotiation to get better outcomes for the bank
Who Should Be Trained
Negotiating Financial Partnerships is for commercial relationship managers and sales team members who have substantial front-line experience, including negotiating credit and noncredit commercial deals. Commercial sales managers will also benefit from learning how to coach their people to negotiate successfully and enhance relationships. Others who support the business development effort will be able to apply Negotiating Financial Partnerships skills to find creative and productive solutions that meet customer and bank needs.
Prerequisites
Participants should have completed basic sales skills training—Omega Performance’s Selling to Achieve Results (STAR) or the equivalent. They should also have some experience with needs-based selling.