I just received a copy of Improving Corporate Negotiation Performance, a new study published by UK-based Huthwaite International and Connecticut-based IACCM—International Association for Contract and Commercial Management.  Huthwaite, along with other leaders in the area of negotiation like Think Inc! and The Bay Group,  vigilantly drive the critical point that negotiation shouldn’t begin when a company has been selected in a customer buying process.  Unfortunately few companies on the sell-side see things the same way.

Huthwaite and IACCM have a set forth a 5-phase Negotiation Maturity Model along with the percentages of respondent companies at each phase.  If you haven’t seen studies on this topic, the results will be sobering:  80% of the companies surveyed have no formal negotiation process.  The project team looked at companies’ negotiation processes, cross-organizational collaboration, data collection and analysis, preparation and planning, approval and escalation systems, training, success measurement, and other factors.  If you’re getting dizzy right about now, you should probably consider yourself among the 80%.

It’s my job to ... read more >>

The webinar presenter knew his stuff. He didn’t know his audience. He was a technical expert talking with business owners who have more pressing concerns than deciphering his message.

Someone should teach him how to use metaphors to explain complicated concepts in pictures. Which is easiest to remember: a dolphin or a “terrabystalbit”?

Metaphors are preceded by the word “like”. For example, “neuro-linguistic programming is like creating a movie in your mind that changes your behaviors.” “An iPod is like a jukebox that holds thousands of songs.” “Jim is like Tom Hanks.”

If you’re talking with a customer and her eyes glaze over like the deer in the headlights, back up and use a metaphor to put your idea into pictures she can understand.

By Ford Harding & Mimi Spangler

Over the years we have seen the leadership of many professional service firms frustrated by key account programs that don’t work.  There are, of course, many reasons that this happens, but one stands out: firms almost always start with too many key accounts.

A key account is one having such value or offering such potential to a firm that it warrants special attention.  Attention translates quickly into time devoted to the account by account team members, usually partners from a variety of practices and geographies.  The more key accounts a firm has, the more teams a partner is likely to serve on.

There’s the rub.  Partners at professionals must sell work, deliver services and administer the firm.  They are always stretched for time.  The more they are given to do, the more fractured their efforts become.  Assigned to too many accounts, they rationally devote their attentions to the one they are in charge of or the one or two where they see the greatest potential for their practices and ignore the rest.  As a result, many account teams lack the attention of key team members, so key relationships go ... read more >>

Recent posts by BBH-Labs and Edward Boches have inspired a few thoughts in me regarding crowdsourcing. The below items were posted originally in comments but I wanted to share them here as well.1) Crowdsourcing will only help us if we can prune that crowd. I think this is essentially the model that Victors & Spoils is trying to take.

2) You’ll see that the work going into your efforts are high at the left and right ends of this chart. It is first hard to collect a decent number of qualified members of your “crowd.” Once you do, and the project becomes more widely known of, your work becomes harder because you must sift through a higher volume of submissions. There is a perfect number that varies from project to project.

3) The quality of output degrades when the crowd swells to be too large. A broader pool of people brings a greater range of talent and skills, but the problem with having too many is that the most skilled will get overlooked or lost by the sheer mathematics of this equation.

Only 14% blog and 8% tweet. 73% use social networks. Speaking of Twitter, a Pew researcher commented that teens may have a "reluctance to put their thoughts on such a public forum when they can post them to their Facebook page instead". Didn't Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of privacy?  The study released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site.

According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 -- and only 8 percent were using Twitter.

"It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape," Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters.

Smith said the report's authors attributed the decline in blogging to the explosion of social networking sites such as Facebook, which emphasize short status updates over personal journals.

According to the study, 73 percent of teens who were online used social networking sites.

He also ...