Consumer Packaged Goods Industry
Construction & Engineering
Agricultural Industry
Pharmaceutical Industry
Manufacturing Industry
The Maker Group: A Top Leader in Negotiation Consulting
Your Trusted Negotiation Consultants for Planning and Execution of Negotiation Strategies That Deliver Results
From operationalizing enterprise-wide strategic initiatives to developing negotiation processes and infrastructure, The Maker Group partners with clients through our consulting and advisory services to address their most critical negotiation needs.
Optimal negotiation outcomes are built upon two critical success factors:
THE WHAT — Internal clarity, alignment, and commitment to defined objectives and parameters
THE HOW — A negotiation plan that incorporates strategic, tactical, and behavioral considerations
Unlike other negotiation consultancy firms, The Maker Group takes an end-to-end and hands-on approach with our clients to establish this foundation for success while also supporting them throughout the execution of the negotiation to ensure satisfactory completion.
Our Negotiation Consulting Areas of Expertise
Price
Advisory for planning and execution strategy — We provide consultation on how to get the best outcome for negotiating price increases and changes.
Contracts
Coaching support for renegotiation of contracts — We provide consultation for contract negotiation between CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies and retail companies, covering everything from pricing to performance to marketing.
Process
Co-developing a strategic planning & negotiation process for a sales organization — We help create a unified negotiation process for maximum results.
Transformation
Stress test of engagement plan & communication strategy — We help assess and strengthen your negotiation plan before you put it into action.
Communication
Development of external sell-story & engagement principles for enterprise-wide key initiative — We help clients clearly communicate their justifications for negotiating.
Learn More About Our Negotiation Consulting Services
Pricing
Achieving pricing objectives while maintaining relationships is not always easy. When business conditions require pricing negotiations, it challenges organizations and negotiators to tackle difficult and potentially contentious discussions with their counterparts.
Effective pricing execution consists of equal parts mindset, clarity of objectives, and external engagement planning.
Our pricing readiness and execution engagements ensure that our clients address the necessary internal and external considerations required to realize their price negotiation objectives. We work with our clients to ensure that front-line negotiators have the appropriate mindset as they approach discussions with their counterparties — including understanding how to address common challenges and roadblocks.
Next, we ensure that the organization has an aligned definition of success and clearly defined parameters for execution and decision-making.
Lastly, we help clients map out the strategic and tactical actions necessary to engage their counterparties and implement their pricing changes.
Our experience in guiding negotiators through a rigorous and structured planning process is what separates effective price realization from ineffective execution that fails to meet objectives.
Contracts
Few commercial negotiations carry the stakes and lasting impact of contract negotiations. The terms that are agreed upon during the contracting process shape the dynamics of the relationship, the standards for performance, the recourse for dispute resolution, and ultimately the profitability of the deal.
While organizations enter contracts with the best of intentions, changing circumstances and business dynamics mean that the next contract negotiation is never too far away.
Whether a client is dealing with an expiring contract that requires renewal, a performance issue, or looking to re-imagine a contract to fit the changing nature of their business relationship, negotiation strategy plays a central role in achieving their objectives.
Our end-to-end contract negotiation advisory services focus on addressing all core elements of best-practice contract execution. These factors include:
- Understanding relationship history and performance
- The balance of power analysis
- Defining objectives and desired relationship dynamics
- Variable prioritization and analysis
- Key stakeholder mapping
- Engagement strategy; and
- Tactical approach
Now, more than ever, organizations need to drive clarity, creativity, and proactivity into their contract negotiation process. Those who can do this stand to benefit from better outcomes and more profitable deals.
Process
Building organizational negotiation capability requires an approach beyond just a one-time training event. Best-in-class firms focus on both skill development and developing organizational infrastructure to support and enable desired negotiation behaviors.
Negotiation infrastructure includes:
- Tools
- Ways of working
- Processes; and
- Language for how the company negotiates
Our process development work with clients focuses on developing client-specific deployment of systems and tools for planning negotiations, executing negotiations, and finally, measuring negotiation outcomes.
Negotiation process development work addresses organizational blockers and constraints that can limit the effectiveness of even the most trained workforce. By supplementing capability development with negotiation process work, companies empower their employees to truly embrace new ways of working and thinking about negotiation.
Transformation
A changing economic, political, and social landscape means that companies have needed to adapt in the face of accelerated disruption and innovation. The pace and scale of change have led companies to take a hard look at their operating models and how they engage with their customers and suppliers. Ultimately, any kind of transformation project leads to the need for negotiating externally.
From rolling out a new go-to-market strategy to modernizing and harmonizing universal payment terms to launching a new pricing model with your customer base, our enterprise-wide transformation projects focus on helping our clients operationalize their enterprise-wide key initiatives.
We help companies clarify and stress-test WHAT they are trying to achieve and ensure that their negotiating teams understand HOW to drive the necessary outcomes. These projects begin with an internal stress test of plans against The Maker Group’s Readiness Assessment framework to identify areas that need to be addressed from a negotiation point of view.
Next, we help clients with the internal rollout of the initiative, communicating details to front-line teams and helping them understand how they will engage externally.
Lastly, we work with negotiating teams to translate the high-level objectives into specific negotiation strategies for executing the change with their counterparties. This end-to-end approach ensures that organizations deliver on the objectives required to transform their business.
Communication
Effective communication is essential when managing fruitful, long-term business relationships. Mastering external communication means that a negotiator needs to understand clearly:
- WHO they are communicating with and influencing
- WHAT key messages need to be delivered; and
- HOW those messages should be carried out
Whether a client needs help developing an external sell-story for a key initiative, pre-conditioning a counterparty for change that is coming, or engaging a counterparty on a potentially contentious negotiation issue, The Maker Group is your trusted source for developing comprehensive external communication strategies.
Our communication-focused engagements ensure that our clients are able to articulate key messages clearly and with confidence to effect the change they need with their counterparties.
Our Negotiation Consulting Services Drive Successful Negotiation Outcomes Through Integrating Cross-Industry Best-Practices, Process-Based Methodology, and Domain Expertise and Experience.
Best Practice
We utilize cross-industry learnings and benchmarks of negotiation approaches and considerations to guide effective negotiation.
Proven Methodology
Our strategic negotiation planning framework and tools provide a clear process for planning and execution of negotiation strategies.
Experienced Perspective
Our negotiation consultants have decades of combined practical experience in advising and negotiating critical commercial deals.
Our Process for Customized, Effective Negotiation Consulting
Our process is simple. Book a consultation to share information about your negotiation consulting needs. Once you’re ready to commit to our process, we will get straight to work scheduling introductory calls, meetings, and interviews with key stakeholders to learn more about your negotiation and pain points and challenges that need to be solved.
Based on this information, our negotiation consultant will help create a customized plan and provide tailored solutions to help you achieve your objectives and drive profitability through negotiation.
Negotiation Consulting: Industries We Work With
Our negotiation consultancy services span across a multitude of industries and organizations. Although the strategies, approaches, and methodologies that we use in our consulting engagements are universally applicable, the specific challenges and opportunities that you and your team are dealing with are unique to you. Therefore, we have developed a broad spectrum of industry expertise to better address each and every problem and opportunity that may come your way.
Read more about some of the industries we work with and the bespoke negotiation consulting approaches we take when working with teams in that industry.
Chemicals Industry
Media & Entertainment Industry
Oil and Gas Industry
Healthcare Industry
Lawyers Industry
Sales Professionals
FAQs About Our Negotiation Consulting Services
What Makes Your Negotiation Consulting Approach Unique?
At The Maker Group, we understand that effective negotiation is not a cookie-cutter process. While other negotiation consultancy firms simply offer a standard approach, we work with our clients one-on-one to build an effective negotiation strategy from the ground up based on their specific situations, pain points, and challenges.
How Much Do Your Negotiation Consultancy Services Cost?
Since we work with clients on a custom case basis, the costs of our services are also custom by nature. Contact us today for more information on pricing and to book a consultation.
Why Should I Hire a Negotiation Consultancy?
A lot can ride on negotiation. One wrong move and you can end up on the losing end. Effective negotiation is an iterative process — it requires a combination of practice, guidance, feedback, and repetition. A negotiation consultancy can help create an airtight negotiation strategy and help you prepare to navigate potential roadblocks that may occur during the negotiation process.
How Do You Effectively Plan a Negotiation?
Along with our consultancy services, we offer a planning tool called the Maker Framework Process. This product is unlike any other product in the industry. Within our user-friendly interface, you can create a roadmap for your negotiation from beginning to end.
Do You Offer Negotiation Training?
In addition to our negotiation consulting services, we also offer negotiation training so your team can learn how to effectively build out negotiation strategies in-house. Click here to learn more about our negotiation training services.
Brands We’ve Worked With
