posts By RED BEAR

This post continues our exploration of the RED BEAR Negotiation Principles. These are the core ideas that help organizations build more profitable agreements through value, not price. In this installment, we focus on Principle 3: Managing Information Skillfully and the discipline that turns curiosity into control and conversations into outcomes.

Procurement sits at the crossroads of value creation. Across every supplier conversation, sourcing decision, and partnership, all value is negotiated… or not.

You invested in negotiation training. Your team showed up, got inspired, and left the workshop fired up. Fast forward three months, and you’re still seeing the same pricing concessions, weak margins, and lost opportunities. The problem isn’t your people. It’s the training model.

Preparation starts with insight, knowing supplier capabilities, market dynamics, and your true leverage before any conversation begins.

In high-stakes commercial negotiations, surface-level demands often mask deeper business imperatives. A procurement lead may ask for a 15% price reduction. A supplier may counter with expedited delivery.

Tick, tock.

To the untrained eye, leverage can appear fickle—one moment it’s there, and the next, it’s gone.

Your supplier doesn’t hold all the cards.

Ever felt boxed into a number at the start of a negotiation, and couldn’t escape it?