Advanced: Negotiation, the Room, Judgment and the Long Game

Part A · Negotiation · 19.5 h

1. 11 Positions and Interests What a buyer asks for is rarely all they want. This module teaches you to look behind each demand for the interest it serves, to trade across issues the two sides value differently, and to hold firm on what matters to you while working on what matters to them. 3.75 h
2. 12 The Zone of Agreement Before you negotiate, know the deal you would take instead, and where agreement is possible at all. This module teaches you to set your limit from your real alternative, to read a quick yes as information, and to check your certainty that the other side will move. 3 h
3. 13 Concession Architecture Every figure you name and every move you make tells the buyer something. This module teaches you how to open, in what form to state a figure or a range, and how to plan concessions so that each one has a reason and, where it can, a return. 4.5 h
4. 14 Price Under Pressure When the buyer presses on price, the pressure is often about the process as much as the figure. This module teaches you to respond to their first figure, to settle opposed issues by a standard both sides can accept, to name a tactic without a fight, and to tell a deadline that binds you both from one that binds only you. 3 h
5. 15 Deadlock and Walkaway A negotiation can stall, and some should end. This module teaches you to measure an offer from your alternative rather than your opening, to move a standstill without giving way, and to walk away when the deal no longer beats what you would otherwise have. 2.25 h
6. 16 Professional Buyers A buyer whose job is purchasing buys in a different way from the people who use what is bought. This module teaches you to find out what kind of purchase they think they are making, to respond when they hold other offers, to deal honestly with claims you cannot check, and to help what the people who will use the purchase have said reach the case purchasing judges. 3 h

Part B · The room and the deal · 14.25 h

1. 17 The Room Most purchases are decided by several people, not one. This module teaches you to anticipate who will take part and what each does, to help what one of them knows reach the others, and to recognise that agreement with each person is not yet agreement between them. 3 h
2. 18 How Spend Gets Approved The people who approve a purchase often see it last, and judge it on the page. This module teaches you to prepare a case for them, to read a decision that goes back a step as a normal part of how organisations decide, and to build a case an approver can believe. 2.25 h
3. 19 Deal Architecture How a deal is put together decides what it can be. This module teaches you to separate inventing options from deciding on them, to find an agreement the buyer can give now when the whole one cannot be reached, and to look for a better deal for both sides after one is signed. 2.25 h
4. 20 Commercial Terms Terms are where the two sides’ different views of the future meet, and businesses often settle a problem by talking rather than by invoking the contract. This module teaches you to take the buyer through what each term means when circumstances change, to settle a disagreement about what will happen with a term that lets events decide, to place each risk and each safeguard with the side that needs it, and to put in writing what each side will do when something goes wrong. 3.75 h
5. 21 Competitive Displacement A buyer with a supplier in place is deciding whether to change, not choosing between two offers. This module teaches you why the present supplier is hard to replace, why being asked for an offer is not being chosen, what holds a buyer to the supplier they have, and how to propose a route from it that the buyer could take back if it went wrong. 3 h

Part C · Judgment · 13.5 h

1. 22 Disqualification Keeping a deal that will not close is a decision, even when nobody makes it. This module teaches you to imagine the deal already lost and test the reasons that come to mind, to notice when being behind your target pushes you towards long shots, and, when you stop, to tell the buyer plainly, without pressure, leaving the door open. 2.25 h
2. 23 Pipeline Judgment A pipeline is many deals, and judging them one at a time misleads. This module teaches you to tell what you know about a deal from what you assume, and to decide the hard questions once, as a rule for every deal, rather than deal by deal, and to set where your time goes against your own record for deals like each one. 2.25 h
3. 24 Forecasting Honestly A forecast is a judgement handed to someone else, and who reads it changes it. This module teaches you to make the forecast before you know what the room wants, to report it with its conditions and the target kept separate, and, once it is given, to move it as the deal changes and say so before you are asked. 1.5 h
4. 25 The Loss Post-Mortem Once a deal is lost, the loss looks obvious, every decision behind it looks worse, and the reasons come too easily. This module teaches you to review a loss from what was known at the time: to judge each decision apart from how it turned out, to test the explanations rather than choose the easiest, and to find the steps you did not take. 3 h
5. 26 Ethics Under Pressure Most dishonesty in selling is done by people who believe they are honest. This module teaches the mechanisms behind it, the small stretch, the choice that stops looking ethical, the gap between what you expect of yourself and what you do, the silence, the thing you would rather not see and the claim you let someone else make, and what to do about each before the pressure arrives. 4.5 h

Part D · The long game · 12 h

1. 27 Referral and Reputation Over a career, much of a seller’s business comes from people who have worked with them before, and from what those people say. This module teaches you to ask for an introduction when a buyer has something to vouch for, to treat every chance to take an advantage as something that will be talked about, and to go back to the buyers you have lost touch with. 2.25 h
2. 28 Account Expansion Growing what you do with buyers you already have is not one task. This module teaches you to find out what kind of buying a proposal for more will start, to settle what is in the buyer’s record of you before you ask, to measure your share of their spending rather than whether they renewed, and to notice the work that stops coming without a word. 3 h
3. 29 Teaching the Craft Watching someone sell well teaches less than it seems to. This module teaches you to teach selling: to name a behaviour, show it done well and badly, and let the learner practise it on their own deals; to shape what they find back at their desk; to give feedback on the task rather than the person; and to keep the skills they use least from fading. 3 h
4. 30 The Twenty-Year Career A long career wears some sellers down and leaves others still curious. This module teaches you to notice exhaustion, cynicism and the sense that nothing you do matters, to find where the work does not fit you and ask for a change, to give generously in a way that lasts, to keep changing with the buyer, and to build what the evidence suggests lasts: knowledge of how buyers decide. Its last lesson closes the course. 3.75 h