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Dear Mr. Kapil,
Firstly It depend on your position compatitive to the person with whom you are negotiating.
Secondly, In my opinion Negotitaion should be ended with the win-win situatiuon.
So, its better to go with the soft approach first.
Very good question.
There are two main sides to this question. As a Buyer or Sales Manager ?
I will answer this question as a Retail / FMCG Buyer.
This is a major issue for Buyers and a choice they have to make that will reflect their reputation managment.
What kind of attitude and approach you should adopt with Sales Managers and Sales people?
Initially a lot depend on your personal relationship with the Sales Manager. Depending on "the" Sales Manager you are meeting, the approach is already in your mind set.
As a buyer, you can milk the sales manager to the maximum and get him to pay listing fees, shelf space, insertions, posters, gondola ends, volume discounts,sales or return and many other types of trading discounts.
I have always believed and promoted a win win situation that at the end of the day has brought great results in terms of getting the best deals on the market but relationships plays a very important role in the type of approach you will adopt. Customer service and Respecting commitments are the pillars of the relationship.
Depends on the deal, if the deal is in your favor you can opt for Hard-negotiation, which means your other side has left not much choices. That'd a win-lose, since you are asking them to either take your deal or leave, when they will have to make the compromise.
If you go soft-style, there are two chances,1. you might end friendly with the others into a win-win2. the others might find your position into drawing the most out of you in their favor.
I'd suggest that prior to your nrgotiation, try to reseearch and assume their various positions, but always know what their jugular is. Luck of the Best!
Big deal hard negotiation.End of story.
Hard or Soft?
If you always use soft without success, stop! Try hard...
Don't keep repeating something that fails, it may fail again. Stop planning to fail, try the hard approach but remember, Hard or soft is different for everyone (what you find hard, I may think is very soft!)
If you want to secure your supply, first you should establish trustfull relationship, second your supplier should be satisfied what he get for his product. So you should go to the win-win situation whenewer possible. Remember, price is not the only thing you should negotiate on...
If you work on one time purchase, than you could go hard...
In negotiations we do not take a stand on how to act and react, whether soft or hard. Each party we negotiate with have different appraoch, skills and knowhow. Consequently, you deal with it at the time. Our strength in negotiation is how and when we we adapt to the person's atittude during the negotiation.
I never plam how to act when I negotiate. I react according to the person's attitude, and my success because of this is amazing.
Most impoertant always show repect to the person regardless of the situation.
This is my opinion from my experience.
Wish you all a nice and pleasant day.
