Negotiating with Middle Managers

When negotiating with a new Customer, always be sure the whole Customer's team is very well aligned with Higher Managers and CEOs on terms and conditions.

Recently, I had to negotiate a distributors service. We were negotiating with a Middle Manager who is in the Board and in the Leadership Team. After more than 5 rounds of meetings, where I had to find out how could we offer them a good deal, and they could offer me the service I really wanted, we finally get to an agreement... or at least I thought we had one!

It turns out that when we were in the process of signing the contract, the CEO didn't agree with some terms we already had agreed with the middle managers.

So, the lesson is to always make sure the negotiating team is completely aligned with higher managers and CEO.

I now believe this is every negotiator's task, as it could jeopardize the whole business.

Christian