Business

By the time a sponsorship proposal reaches a brand, it already speaks for a lot of people who may not have seen it. Legal, finance, operations, partnership marketing, and leadership have to live with what it promises, and they won’t all read it the way the partnership sales team does. If they see it for […]

When finance asks for another round of savings, you probably already know which suppliers will be difficult to call. Some have absorbed increases of their own; others have helped your team through urgent orders and late changes. You still need a better deal, and you’d like to keep working with them. Finding time to prepare

You can know your product inside out and still struggle with objection handling. A buyer says “it’s too expensive,” mentions another vendor, or asks for more time, and you’re already preparing a response before they’ve finished explaining the concern. Until you know what’s behind the objection, even a polished answer can miss the point. A

You can probably name a deal like this without opening your CRM. The demo went well, the prospect seemed interested, and the opportunity sat at 60% for most of the quarter, looking healthy enough that nobody felt much urgency to dig deeper. Then procurement wanted 15% off, your contact turned out to have far less

If you’re explaining a higher price after procurement has scored the RFP, you’re already late. The customer isn’t weighing everything your solution does differently anymore. They’re looking at 2 bids that seem to promise the same result, and one costs less. So it isn’t hard to guess which way the decision will go.  Defending the

Project managers protect margin by negotiating changing economics early, with evidence, options, and a clear connection to project outcomes.  It’s never the right time to raise a cost issue. There’s always a reason to wait for a calmer week, and the longer a PM waits, the harder the ask becomes because it “should have been

Scope looks wonderfully well behaved in a contract. It sits there in a numbered section with clean dates, neat deliverables, and signatures underneath. Then an input arrives two weeks late, an approver joins halfway through, and somebody asks, “That was included, wasn’t it?” Now the schedule’s moved, the work’s grown, and two reasonable teams are

Leadership can get awkward when you’re responsible for moving a decision, but none of the people who can move it report to you. The work cuts across departments; the final call belongs to somebody else, and much of the room may be judging a proposal they had no hand in creating.  In that setting, influence

Procurement can protect supplier trust while pushing for savings, stronger performance, and better terms. Learn how evidence, clear framing, conditional trades, and disciplined follow through support both the relationship and the agreement.

When customers lead with price, sellers need more than a defense of the proposal. Learn how to uncover the real concern, reframe the discussion around value, expand the negotiables, compare lower-cost options, and make conditional concessions that protect margin and support a sound customer decision.