Contract Negotiation – 1 Day

Overview 

This course provides you with an understanding of the fundamental principles of contract negotiations required across all aspects of contracts, from the initiation of a contract ideal, through to in-contract dispute management and finally the negotiations required in closing out a contractual relationship.

It also considers approaches to building the commercial relationship, the importance of partnership in a relationship approach and provides for different negotiation styles and strategies that can be employed to reach mutually beneficial outcomes. It will give you the confidence to manage relationships internally as well as internationally and the skills to support management of costs and risk.

The program is specifically designed for professionals who interact in a commercial context. The program focuses on delivering contemporary best practices information which will equip the student to participate effectively in commercial negotiations and does so in a manner which the student will find interesting and immediately useful in both their personal and professional life.

Intended for

Individuals involved in or directly supporting commercial contracting and who want to improve their commercial negotiation skills.

Objectives

The course will give you a full understanding of:

• Commercial negotiations across the entire contract lifecycle how to minimise value leakage at all stages
• The processes involved in negotiating and managing commercial relationships in a professional working environment, to maximise mutual benefit and minimise loss
• The customer’s and supplier’s perspective of commercial processes and how each drives the other’s behaviours during negotiations
• How to negotiate effectively across all stages of the commercial relationship
• Relationship management and its importance in achieving successful outcomes for both parties, whilst reducing disputes and claims.
• Stakeholder management skills for effective commercial benefit

Program Outline

Session 1 – Introduction to Commercial Management
• Overview: what is a commercial management?
• The top 10 mistakes in commercial management and overcoming them
The stages of negotiation
• Pre-negotiation planning
• Formal negotiations
• Post signature negotiations
Characteristics of Expert Negotiators
• Common traits of expert negotiators.
• Preparing for Negotiations
• Understanding the objectives of both parties.

Session 2 – Managing stakeholders
• The identification of stakeholders and their prioritization and understanding their need
• Tools and techniques for understanding and negotiating across stakeholders
• Communicating effectively with your stakeholder community
• Negotiation approaches to help align stakeholder interests
• Thomas-Kilman conflict mode instrument
Reading commercial contracts and scopes of work to reduce your risk exposure
• Understanding how contract terms can be viewed and their role in driving good and bad commercial contracts and misaligned negotiations
• Active terms (terms that affect cost and schedules) and passive terms (terms that affect risk)
• Ensuring all parties align the negotiated terms and conditions to the required behaviours of both parties for the commercial relationship
• Negotiating SLAs and KPIs to meet your stakeholders needs

Session 3 – Interpersonal skills for successful negotiations
• Understand the internal inhibitors to successful negotiated outcomes and how to control them
• Presuppositions of negotiations
• Developing a negotiations strategy
• Communication strategies, effective question and answering techniques.
Understand the options for negotiation approaches
• Understand advantages and disadvantages of each
• Define the most common negotiation styles and how each may be influenced and managed.
• Identify your natural negotiation style and recognizing that of others.
• Consciously altering your negotiation style.

Session 4 – Building a power dynamic
• Understanding motivations in negotiations
• The use of experts in negotiation
• Issues of relative power and the balance of power
• Opening the negotiation
• Responding to an opening offer
Tactics, Counter-tactics and Breaking Deadlocks
• Various tactics, tricks and ploys
• Counter-tactics to re-align the balance of power in negotiations.
• Selecting appropriate tactics to suit your unique circumstances.
• Common causes for deadlocks and techniques to avoid them, and the process to work through them to reach agreement

Session 5 – Tips and tricks for closing out, and overcoming obstacles in, a negotiation
• The “Last gap” and approaches to close a negotiation
• Best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) and the consequences of loss
• Goals, fall backs and
The role of negotiations during contract performance
• Contract targets and other measurements
• Regular management of the contract
• The role of evidence to enhance your power
• Initiating and documenting change
• Contract claims, disputes and their cause
• Resolving common operational disputes
• Avoiding a dispute and the formal dispute resolution process walk away positions

Duration: 1 Day

Cost: £295 + Vat