Please be sure to reference your sources in appropriate Harvard formatting and to provide substantive evidence of any claims that you make. Where appropriate, include personal anecdotes, statistics, and references to additional reading or materials.

Negotiate to win-win

Have a read through the following scenario, which is adapted from your suggested text (Jobber and Lancaster, 2015, p65).

Thomas Maggs is head buyer for cereals and cereal-related products at Morrisco Markets, one of Britain’s top supermarket chains. Morrisco has a 14 percent share of the UK grocery market with a mixture of in-town and out-of-town stores fairly evenly spread across the country. Like most retail grocery buyers, Maggs is tough on his suppliers. He has to be, as competition among the big multiples is fierce, and the ability to price low and retain a fair margin is the key to sustained financial success. The breakfast cereal market is highly competitive, fragmented, and yet dominated by a number of ‘power brands’, such as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Weetabix, and Shreddies, all of which spend large budgets on advertising and promotions. Maggs favors deep price cutting promotional activity in this market as he knows that it shifts stock fast. The cereal manufacturers tend to resist this form of promotion as much as they can, preferring to ‘add value’ to their products rather than reduce price, which they feel tends to undermine premium brand imagery.

Sonya Farquahar is Key Accounts Manager at Morning Foods Ltd, a large manufacturer of breakfast cereals with one or two heavily supported ‘power brands’ in its portfolio, such as Powergrains, a protein-rich crunchy cereal enjoying 8 percent of the cereal market, and Slymbites, a tasty, low-fat cereal targeted at young women, ready sweetened with aspartame, a no-calorie sugar substitute, enjoying 5 percent of the market. With distinct product differentiators, these two brands hold premium price positions, and the company favors added value ‘themed’ promotions. Each brand is heavily supported with TV advertising. Riding on the back of the success of the two brands, each of them has been recently brand extended to cereal bars, competing with Jordans and other brands. The brand team at Morning Foods want to run promotions on the two brands, offering free cereal bars in-pack as a means of generating trial for each of the extensions. Given the importance of these brands, the company is trying to use this as a lever to gain separate distribution for the bars. It seems to be working with most of the supermarket chains, but Morrisco is proving difficult to persuade – they don’t like to be dictated to and they don’t want another as yet unproven cereal bar on their shelves. Maggs at Morrisco is insisting on some form of deep price-orientated promotion.

Imagine that you are Sonya Farquahar, and that you are doing some preparation for a big meeting with Thomas Maggs.

As part of your preparation, you are going to read the following article from the National Association of Sales Professionals, which is listed as an additional reading resource for this session:

https://www.nasp.com/article/AE55C784-B35B/sales-negotiation-skills.html (Links to an external site.)

In no more than 500 words:

Evaluate where you believe the balance of power lies in this negotiation process.

Assess the three most important behavioral sales skills you should try to work on when you are sitting down to negotiate with Thomas Maggs.

Describe what you think could be elements of a win-win outcome for both parties in this negotiating process.