Discounts to close. Free delivery to keep the account. Better terms to secure the renewal. Each concession looks reasonable on its own, until the agreement delivers less profit than the business needs.
Telling your people to hold price is not enough. They need a value case the customer recognises, a prepared commercial position and a clear view of what they can trade.
Discuss your negotiation priorities →
Five conversations that cost margin
“The competitor is cheaper.”
The discussion moves straight to matching the quote. Your team cannot show whether the alternative delivers the same performance, service or reliability, or what the differences are worth to the customer.
“We need to sharpen the price to keep the account.”
An important renewal turns into a negotiation over the concession. The value delivered over the term was never recorded, so the conversation starts from last year’s price.
“We have already explained our quality and service.”
Your people know they work hard for customers. The claims are never translated into time saved, costs avoided or risks reduced, so a buyer can dismiss them at no cost.
“It is only another small concession.”
Price, freight, terms and rebates are negotiated one at a time. Nobody adds up the whole package before deciding what the business can afford to give.
“The difficult deals keep coming back to me.”
Managers are pulled into negotiations because the value case, limits and alternatives were not settled beforehand. Too much depends on a few experienced people.
The problem starts before the customer asks for a discount
If your team cannot explain why the offer is worth more to that customer, price becomes the easiest comparison. The workshops train your people to investigate the customer’s situation, put a figure on the difference and prepare their position before the meeting.
Show why the difference matters
Build a value case in the customer’s operational and financial terms.
Know what to hold and trade
Prepare objectives, alternatives, limits and concessions before pressure builds.
Negotiate the whole agreement
Weigh service, payment, volume, range and commitments alongside price.
Build a value case the customer can recognise
Customer Value Discovery helps your team uncover what the customer needs to achieve, what the alternatives would cost and what is at stake if the solution fails. The findings become a customer-specific value case that supports the commercial conversation.
Participants investigate priorities, consequences, alternatives and decision criteria, recording answers in the customer’s own words. This gives the team a stronger basis for its position than general claims about quality and service.
The buying trigger
Why the customer is buying, and why now.
How they found you
What put you on the shortlist.
The problem and its consequences
What goes wrong, explored at three levels of depth.
The cost of the problem
What each problem costs the customer, in dollars where possible.
Current solutions and alternatives
What the customer does today, and its next-best option.
Constraints and timing
Budget, specification, approvals and deadlines.
Value in use and value at risk
What the customer needs to gain, and what it needs to avoid.
The buying group
Who informs, who influences, who gatekeeps and who signs.
Participants receive the full question set and practise it on their own accounts during the workshop.
Six frames for what the difference is worth
Each answer is placed under one of six frames and compared with the customer’s next-best alternative. Three frames cover value in use: what your offer does for the customer. Three cover value at risk: what it protects the customer from.
Performance in use
Specification, consistency, productivity and yield.
Ease of doing business
Delivery, lead time, ordering and administration.
Commercial arrangements
Pricing model, terms, rebates and commitments.
Supply continuity
Stock-outs and short deliveries, and the downtime or penalties that follow.
Product and service reliability
Failures, rework, recalls and remediation.
Technical support
What happens when the customer needs a fast, accurate fix.
Importance and performance scores show where to look. A premium needs the dollar figures behind them. Where the evidence does not support one, the team prepares a realistic position and trades on terms.
A cheaper quote can be the more expensive choice
Your customer pays more than the invoice. It pays to operate, maintain and replace what it buys, and it carries the cost when supply or performance fails. The Value Iceberg makes that comparison visible.
The invoice is the visible tip
Four prices to examine against the customer’s next-best alternative. Diagram not to scale.
Pricing Periodic Table: Vq · Value quantification and Dr · Delivery reliability and value at risk.
A higher purchase price can mean a lower total cost
Yellow: purchase price. Black: energy, parts and downtime over five years. Offer A costs A$1,000 more to buy and A$10,000 less over five years. Illustrative example used in the workshop; a real comparison uses the customer’s own figures, with the assumptions stated.
The cost of a failure rarely ends with the replacement part
A missed delivery can idle a crew. A stopped line can delay the customer’s own orders. Participants trace what happens next, who carries the cost and which effects your offer can credibly help prevent.
From the immediate event to the wider business exposure
An illustrative chain of first- to fifth-order consequences. Each case differs.
Count each cost once, keep confirmed costs apart from estimates, and treat revenue at risk as revenue, not profit.
Connect the analysis to Vq · Value quantification and Dr · Delivery reliability and value at risk in the Pricing Periodic Table.
From discovery to a prepared negotiation
Five steps take each participant from the customer interview to a negotiation plan for a live account.
Discover
Discover the customer’s priorities, alternatives and economic consequences.
Map
Place each outcome in the six value frames.
Score
Rate importance and performance, for you and the competitor, with the customer’s input.
Monetise
Turn the largest differences into dollars the customer’s finance team can test.
Pitch
Present the value case before price is discussed.
A prepared account position
Practice uses your own accounts: renewals, procurement-led negotiations, price increases, and the hard case where your offer is close to the competitor’s.
Negotiations prepared on evidence
RBM Plastics
Higher prices and volume commitments on a key account
A strategic customer asked for lower prices in exchange for more volume, with lower-cost competitors in the background. A half-day Customer Value Discovery workshop identified more than 20 value drivers, and negotiation planning built the case around supply continuity, technical support and operational risk. Higher average selling prices than the prior year and increased volume commitments were reported within 12 weeks.
Stryker Medical
Value selling to every hospital stakeholder
Strengths recognised by clinicians did not always carry through to procurement and finance. More than ten structured stakeholder interviews produced value maps for each stakeholder, discovery tools and coaching, so Stryker’s Australian teams could discuss value in use and value at risk with each group within 12 weeks.
Realised: outcome reported after implementation. Capability built: tools and skills in place; no financial gain is claimed.
Customer Value Discovery in mining: Orica
Orica’s teams applied Customer Value Discovery to real customer opportunities in Jakarta and India. The workshops connected technical solutions with customer operating outcomes and prepared teams for procurement-led sales and negotiations. Read the Orica Customer Value Discovery case study.
Nine elements the workshops build
The Pricing Periodic Table sets out 61 elements of pricing capability in nine domains, across Value, People and Structures. Sales and negotiation workshops build these nine. The scope is agreed with each team.
Define value
What the customer gains and how you show it
Value proposition
Why a customer chooses you over its next-best option, in the customer’s terms.
Value quantification
The difference you make, stated in the customer’s dollars.
Delivery reliability and value at risk
The cost to the customer of late, short or failed supply.
Sell on value
How the team opens and runs the conversation
Value selling
Conversations that open on the customer’s economics.
Negotiation skills
Preparation, opening, trading and closing against a trained buyer.
Buyer and procurement tactics
Anchoring, deadlines and take-away tactics recognised and answered.
Trade and hold
What the team gives, and what it keeps
Walk-away and alternatives
A point below which the deal is declined, set before the meeting.
Concession planning
A planned list of trades, with price the last item on it.
Price-increase negotiation
Increases explained with evidence and held through the conversation.
Who runs the workshops
Ron Wood, Founder and Managing Director
Ron began his career as a pricing and commercial manager in industry, across FMCG, building materials and capital equipment. He founded Pricing Insight in 2007 and has since worked with more than 160 clients.
He runs each workshop with a senior associate, using your accounts, your competitors and your price conversations as the practice material.
What the engagement involves
Workshops are run for teams. For individuals, the same method is taught online through Pricing University.
Questions about the workshops
How is this different from generic negotiation training?
It starts with the customer’s economics. Participants complete Customer Value Discovery and build a value case before they plan the negotiation, so the position they defend rests on the customer’s own figures.
Does it cover negotiating with procurement?
Yes. Workshops cover buyer and procurement tactics, alternatives, planned concessions and price-increase conversations. Training your own purchasing team to negotiate with suppliers is a separate scope.
Can the workshops run online?
Yes. Workshops run online, in person or as a hybrid, with the practical work agreed for each team.
What if our products are similar to competitors’?
Look at running costs, service, reliability, terms and range. Where there is no supported advantage, the team prepares a realistic position and trades on terms.
Prepare your team for the conversations ahead
Tell us where negotiations are getting harder, what your team is giving away and which accounts or renewals come next. In a 30-minute call, Ron Wood will work through the evidence, preparation and skills your team needs and suggest a format. Call +61 410 534 099 or email info@pricinginsight.com.au.
Discuss your negotiation priorities →Related: Pricing Masterclass · EBIT Opportunity & Risk Diagnostic · Value-Based Culture & Transformation