Why internal buy-in makes or breaks deals

0:06Welcome back to the Mastering Sales and Negotiations podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Massey. And this week on the podcast, we were joined by Emma Pacey, Trading Director at one of the UK's largest supermarket chains. And in our conversation, Emma lifted the lid on what we called the double negotiation. So the balance between securing great deals with suppliers and negotiating just as effectively inside the organisation to align teams, priorities and strategy. Now, today I'm joined back by Robin Hoyle to unpack the key takeaways from that discussion, from the art of internal persuasion to the traits that separate good suppliers from truly great partners.

0:45And why Robin? Well, he's a leading figure in the learning development space, a regular speaker at global conferences, the author of two books on learning culture and a former sales director who's been in the hot seat of high stakes negotiation himself. In short, he knows his stuff. Let's dive in.

1:09that was really interesting with emma and to have a real feel for what goes on negotiation wise you know in that big supermarket chain world i mean it's just non-stop negotiation isn't it

1:21Robin Hoyle:absolutely and the number of negotiable issues at any point the number of plates you've got to keep spinning and what i thought was was interesting is number one basically her job is negotiation but that's it so she does all day long every day either internally externally with new suppliers with existing partners building partnerships building trust all of those things that people talk about as sort of you know things you should do without any kind of real specifics she's got all the specifics it's about the preparation it's about planning how you're going to use the data that you've got all the stuff that we know is important absolutely And what I thought was really interesting is the transferability of those skills as well.

2:04Robin Hoyle:So she talked at the end there about the idea of having what she described as a kind of squiggly career path, moving around the organization, really learning what's going on. And that level of experience and bringing that to bear so that you can actually understand what the other person's pressures are, what their points of difference are, why they can move, why they can't move, how they could move barriers for you to do what you need to do, but at the same time where you have to accommodate some of the things that they just can't change. That depth of understanding, you can't buy that. You can't learn that anywhere apart from just that real experience, but more importantly than that real experience, a desire and a hunger to learn.

2:50Robin Hoyle:And I think that's what came out of that conversation was that here's somebody who has thought, I'm going to do this really, really well, and that means I'm going to have to put some time and effort in. I'm going to have to work hard and do those things because that way I get better results at the end of it. And, you know, she's had a fantastic career from the bits that she's shared with us today. But also she's got that real understanding of the environment in which she works, and that I think is crucial. one of the things that you and i talked to her about was that idea of you know tying it all back to the strategy and uh yeah that tiny that back to the strategy because she had a real passion for that didn't she absolutely you know she was sort of saying look i tell my team all the time yeah but what what about this and bringing it back into what are we going to do about this together yeah yeah yeah and that thing about and it comes back to the customer yeah yeah and the number of times that she said that I thought was was really indicative of that being a real belief and a real touchstone for her practice not about oh yeah and the customer and and you you kind of get that sense of the customer's a bit of an afterthought but really what we're about is the balance sheet we're about the numbers and we're about the volumes and we're about all of these things that was a real belief I think around that and that almost became a kind of unifying belief because what also impressed me was the idea of her constantly being focused on the problem together not focused on the person who was causing the problem but focusing on how do we move from here and even where you know there are some bad things going on and and there was a sort of belief system at work there she talked a lot about nobody walks away as a loser you know that that idea of we've got to have that that everybody wins but there was also that point that she said where you have to say no and how you handle that.

4:51Robin Hoyle:And what a breath of fresh air to hear somebody say, if you're going to say no, say no and give them feedback, why? Yeah, yeah. You know, and I come from a learning and development background, as you know, and we work a lot. I have worked a lot with HR teams in the past. And one of the things that I find absolutely inexcusable is when people have turned up for an interview and they never get any feedback about why they didn't get the job. we're talking here about building long-term relationships with clients based on that fundamental honesty and that's how we ought to face the world it seems to me and how people work together better in turn internally is that yeah sometimes you have to deliver messages which people don't want to hear absolutely but you do it with a certain grace and a certain honesty and a sense of this is not the end do you think that that comes back to her experience because she's she had this like squiggly line this career path that has taken her from different departments do you think that that's lent itself that's given her the skills to be able to give that feedback because she sees it from all these different angles i think there are some people for whom having had those experiences helps maybe them to understand some of those trigger points there are some people who genuinely think actually the route to success here is to put myself in the shoes of the other person.

6:15Robin Hoyle:And I don't think it matters how many squiggly lines you've had in your career. If you don't have that as a basic, you don't pick up that information. You don't have that empathy. You don't learn that. That idea of saying, what does it feel like to be in the other person's shoes? What's important to them? What's driving them? And what are the things that they just cannot do anything about? And how can I help them? Even though I know there are areas that they can't move in the same way as they know that there are areas where I can't move. that that fundamental honesty and just fair dealing really really came across yeah and i don't think that's necessarily i don't think the experience that that emma's had would have harmed that let's put it that way yeah but i don't think everybody who's had that sort of experience would necessarily have that level of understanding and that level to be able to bring that understanding to bear on the work that she does now so i think i think that speaks more about a set of values which are bigger than the experiences that she's had.

7:12Robin Hoyle:But I also think it's about that real focus of, we talked a little bit about the fact that supermarkets are a pretty low margin business overall, and I know her sector is probably a little bit more flexible than selling tea bags. But fundamentally, that business model has to be very, very closely focused around the commercials, around the numbers, around the strategic way in which we're going to drive up by what seems maybe tiny little percentages. But if you're that big, tiny percentage makes a heck of a lot of difference. Yeah, incrementally they make a difference. It's a huge business. So that idea of really understanding the business and being able to get where everybody else is coming from, recognizing some days you're going to get everything that you want, some days you're going to get some of what you want, some days you're going to go with that very much you want.

8:06Robin Hoyle:but actually understanding why makes it manageable and doable and you get up and you do another day. And that, I thought, was just excellent. I just thought she's a real embodiment of how those skills, the transferable skills, the planning, the preparation, the being very clear, building common ground with people, all those things that we talk about in our negotiation, you don't have to have the word negotiator in your title for those skill sets to be incredibly valuable. Absolutely. Thanks, Robin. You're welcome.