In this episode of The Confident Negotiator Podcast, RED BEAR’s Director of Client Engagement, Brandon Wilson, joins host Rob Cox for a deep dive into what makes RED BEAR's negotiation training truly unique. Known as "The RED BEAR Difference," this approach combines strategic alignment, experiential learning, coaching and reinforcement, and data-driven measurement to ensure that participants not only learn new skills but apply them effectively in real-world scenarios.
From custom-tailored training exercises to continuous reinforcement, Brandon unpacks the methodology that’s helped thousands of professionals elevate their negotiation outcomes.
Transcription of the Video:
Rob Cox: Hello, everyone and welcome to The Confident Negotiator Podcast, the number one podcast about how to become a world-class negotiator. I'm Rob Cox, and with me today is RED BEAR Director of Client Engagement, Brandon Wilson. Brandon, thank you so much for joining us today.
Brandon Wilson: No problem. Thanks for having me back on, Rob.
Rob Cox: Absolutely. It's always great to have you on, Brandon. Brandon, you've worked for RED BEAR for almost 10 years now. You've helped thousands of professionals become world-class negotiators. I know everyone is excited to hear from you, so let's dive on in. Today we are talking about The RED BEAR Difference. At a high level, what is The RED BEAR Difference?
Brandon Wilson: Sure. So I would call The RED BEAR Difference, you could look at it as our four-step client engagement process, so effectively what it would look like if we were to team up together, and also I'd say if you look at the process as a whole, what makes working with RED BEAR unique.
Rob Cox: To put it simply, how does The RED BEAR Difference differentiate RED BEAR as a negotiation training company?
Brandon Wilson: So in terms of differentiating, I'd say it's the holistic or comprehensive approach, again, when you take a look at all four aspects together. There's a lot of companies in our industry that may do some of the things that we do to a degree, but I can say with confidence that there's no one else in this space that does all of what we do as good as RED BEAR.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Let's dive into the difference itself. Let's talk about the strategic alignment phase of The RED BEAR Difference. Why is strategic alignment important for our customers?
Brandon Wilson: Great. So strategic alignment's the first step in our process, obviously, and it's really centered around the idea that every solution that we deliver to our clients is tailored to the unique needs of each audience that we're working with. And we accomplished that through two sets of interviews. The first interview is we call an executive champion call. So we want to connect with leadership at the client and whomever that most senior individual is who's tasked with overseeing the training initiative.
And we want to speak with them to understand the most pressing requirements that they're tasked with today in terms of improved business results, understand the KPIs that are associated with those, performance to date, and really focus in on leadership's vision of how their team should be interacting with customers, suppliers, partners, internal stakeholders, and then where they may currently be falling short of that vision.
And we'll take that information from leadership and that then shapes the next set of interviews, which we call subject matter expert interviews or SME interviews. We like to speak with a handful of SMEs, so trusted individuals that are representative of the overall training audience. Connect with them for 30 to 45 minutes and really just dive into what does their day-to-day look like, so who are they negotiating with, what are they negotiating over, what's their authority and flexibility to negotiate and really dive deep on the biggest negotiation challenges that they face today.
Collectively, what mistakes are made when faced with those challenges? And then ultimately, what impact does that have on their business? And we'll take that information from the SMEs, from leadership. We compile that together in addition to some research that we do on our own end. And out of that we create two deliverables that factor into the training. The first is an instructor briefing packet.
So this is more or less an internal document on our end, but it's a compilation of all that good information from the interviews. And we provide that to our instructor on the front end so that when they come in to deliver a training, they're fully up to speed on what's playing out amongst the group that they're going to be working with for a few days. In addition, the second deliverable is tailored skill practice exercises.
So these are tailored scenarios that are modeled after the most common or the most challenging negotiations that the audience finds themselves in. So that then throughout the training at certain points, after we introduce a new skill, new concept, we then immediately follow that up with one of these tailored exercises to allow the participants an opportunity to practice that new skill in a realistic scenario.
Rob Cox: Excellent. So again, the strategic alignment phase of The RED BEAR Difference is strategically aligning with leadership's vision, getting all of the input that's going to make the training customized to our customers, and then of course, creating those custom tailored exercises so that it's applicable to their day-to-day lives. I think that's fantastic.
Brandon Wilson: Yep, you nailed it. Really that first strategic alignment step really sets the stage for what's coming up next year.
Rob Cox: Excellent. That's great. It's great to hear that the negotiation training is not just out of the box, it's not just generalized, it's specific to our customers and their actual needs, again, in their day-to-day. That's fantastic. Let's move on to the next phase. Talk about the experiential learning phase. Experiential learning can be a buzzword for some, but RED BEAR actually delivers on real experiential learning. Why is custom-tailored learning important and how hands-on is RED BEAR training really?
Brandon Wilson: Great. So I'd say for the experiential learning step, all of our workshops, in addition to what we outlined with them being tailored to each audience, they're highly interactive. So they're instructor led. We have a discovery-based learning methodology, so it's learn by doing. In fact, 85% of the workshop is spent either planning for, participating in, or debriefing to a negotiation simulation.
Again, some of which will be tailored that I outlined in that first step, and then some are also metaphorical in nature, so intended to momentarily take them outside of their real world so they don't get bogged down in some of the specifics and details that they deal with on a day-to-day basis. And the way that plays out in the classroom, say we have 20 participants, split the group in half.
And 10 will play the role of buyers, 10 will play the role of sellers. And a significant amount of that learning comes through that debrief portion that I spoke to. So one example, immediately on day one, after we introduce the training itself, we dive right into a case, and it's a level set so each participant can understand where are they at coming into the training.
And that first case, we have an extensive library of cases, but there's a few you could call greatest hits that we use frequently because we know they're effective and well received. And it's typically a case that revolves around buying and selling printers on the secondary market. Again, it's metaphorical. It takes them outside of their real world. Class splits in half, buyers, sellers.
They plan. They negotiate. The instructor brings everybody back for that debrief, and it usually plays out. Everybody's excited. They want to share their results. They feel good. The instructor asks, "Who feels they got a good deal?" Most people raise their hand. And then the instructor says, "Okay, well, let's find out," and start going through the results. Rob sold his printers for $15,000.
What'd you sell yours for? $18,000. Then you hear $30,000, $50,000. On the other end, you also hear $5,000. So the question becomes, how do we have, or not how, why do we have this range of outcomes between $5,000 to $50,000? So the instructor poses that question to the class and oftentimes they think, well, maybe we had different cases, or maybe we had different figures. Nope, it's all the same case.
So it really allows each individual for themselves to uncover, understand, had I asked this question, had I uncovered this piece of information, could have played a significant role in the outcome of that particular negotiation. So it, again, allows each individual to uncover for themselves where their gaps may be. Because we understand coming into a training, everybody's coming in at a different point. Some are more experienced, more talented.
Some individuals have a bigger or a smaller gap to fill. So it allows that to understand where they sit on an individual level. And then a few other details about the training that I would add. I mentioned a few. Typical engagements are two days in length, so you're looking at 16 hours across two days. They're instructor led, so our instructor travels out to your location when they're in person. We can also deliver these virtually. In that event, there's obviously no travel involved.
Usually groups of 12 to 24 participants. And then from a content perspective, which you may see here on the screen, we also touch on or introduce in that initial workshop all of the foundational RED BEAR contents, our negotiation model, negotiation principles, behaviors, and then finally, the negotiation planner, which I would say is the most valuable walkaway tool that participants leave this experiential learning step with. It's a one-page document front and back, and it's a summary of all the different skills, tools that we introduced throughout the two days.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Thank you for walking through that so thoroughly, Brandon. I thought that was great. Again, RED BEAR attendees of our workshops, they're not just learning from instructors, they're not just learning from workbooks, they're not just learning from the homework or the tools that they take home with them. They're also learning from their colleagues, and they're also learning from those hands-on experiences that you just walked through.
So I think that's fantastic. We're going through obviously cyclically here in our RED BEAR Difference. Again, it starts with the strategic alignment where you get alignment with leadership, going into that experiential learning, and then after that is coaching and reinforcement. So let's talk about coaching and reinforcement. Let's start with coaching particularly. Why is coaching important not just for managers, but for the negotiators who report to them as well?
Brandon Wilson: So I'd say taking a small step back, if I look at both coaching and reinforcement together, this is a critical part of our process because we've all been through training. You're excited. Everybody's excited. They want to put the skills to use. But then if you usually fast-forward a week, 30 days, 60 days, most individuals fall back into their normal patterns of behavior.
This third step with coaching and reinforcement really helps drive home the RED BEAR skills and makes certain that you as an individual or if you're a leader that your team members are putting these skills into play and they can drive a return on the investment that you've made in them with the training itself. So on the coaching side, getting back to your question, one way that we tackle that is we also offer an additional half-day coaching and reinforcement workshop.
So typically, as I mentioned earlier, trainings are two days in length. So what would happen is a subset of that training group, say you had 20 participants engaged in the two-day training, perhaps six of those 20 are managers, those six would hang around for a half day on day three is usually how it plays out. And that half day is focused around me as a coach or me as a manager.
Now that I've gone through the training, my team's gone through the training, what can I do to coach and reinforce these skills and make sure that I'm providing sufficient managerial support to make sure they're utilizing these skills effectively? So we tackle that with, first, we introduce a coaching model. So oftentimes individuals that are in that management role perhaps haven't been exposed to any coaching or management training.
So we introduce a general coaching model, but then we also provide them with a coaching toolkit. And that toolkit provides a variety of tools, templates that are specifically geared towards how can they encourage and reinforce those RED BEAR skills. So there's best practices and guidance in terms of what can you do to help a team member prepare prior to negotiation? How can you provide managerial support throughout the negotiation?
How can you debrief with your team members once a negotiation's been complete? And then in addition, there's also weekly meeting, frameworks, again, best practices in terms of how to recognize successful negotiations. So a lot of tools and templates at their disposal, again, with the focus being on how can I drive the use of these RED BEAR skills and make sure that we're maximizing the investment we've made in RED BEAR.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Thank you for explaining how the coaching side of things helps coaches, managers create that culture of excellence within their team's, Brandon. I think that's great. And the toolkits, of course, that they get, I think that's great. You talked about the coaching side of coaching and reinforcement. What about the reinforcement side?
Brandon Wilson: Great. So the reinforcement piece, this is applicable to everyone, not just coaches. So every participant that goes through... And again, this ties back to what I mentioned earlier... people are excited, but we want to make sure that they stick with the skills and put them into play. We try to tackle that challenge with this reinforcement piece, and we've developed our 100minutes program.
So the name comes from it's a 10-week program, and the intent is each activity, it's made up of 10 activities, each activity takes no more than 10 minutes. So every participant that goes through RED BEAR training for 10 weeks following the workshop, they're going to receive directly in their inbox a weekly activity. And each week's activity is going to focus in on one of the key skills, so one of our principles or behaviors that we introduced in the training.
And each week it's going to provide them with a summary of that skill, some key bullet points, some related blogs, articles, white papers, whatever ties into that topic. But then most importantly, a set of application questions. And these questions are intended to drive a conversation internally with a colleague, with a manager, in terms of for any given week, how can I apply this skill to a customer or a supplier that I'm actively engaged with?
Rob Cox: Excellent. Thank you for walking us through the reinforcement, the 100minutes side of things, Brandon. Just to recap as we're moving through The RED BEAR Difference, we started at strategic alignment where we gain strategic alignment with divisions of leaders, making sure that the negotiation training is custom-tailored. That feeds into the experiential learning that our clients experience as they go through the workshops.
That feeds into the coaching and reinforcement that managers receive after the training. And that feeds into measurement. So the final phase is measurement. Let's talk about it. What all goes into the measurement process and why is measurement important to leaders looking at negotiation training?
Brandon Wilson: Sure. So I'd say there's two pieces here on the measurement side, the first of which is every workshop that we deliver at the end of day two, we provide to the participants a workshop evaluation form. So this is going to capture that immediate feedback in terms of how do they rate the workshop, how do they rate the instructor, where do they gauge their own personal skill gain from where they feel they were before the training to where they're at now at the end of day two.
So that's the immediate feedback that's captured. I'd say above and beyond that, we've also partnered with a third-party organization called Beyond ROI to be able to come in after the fact and measure that financial return on investment. What impact did RED BEAR have to each organization's bottom line? So that's accomplished through a survey. It varies for each client, depending on how large their rollout, what time of year it may be, but I'd say usually three to six months post workshop.
Once we get the go ahead from the client, we initiate the process. Again, it's a survey. So we create the link for each client, provide that to the client, gets sent out to all the participants. And the survey itself, it's not overly time-consuming. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete, and it's going to capture and focus in on two key areas. So one is skill effectiveness. So one of the guiding principles of Beyond ROI's process is to measure outcomes, not opinions.
So in the survey, how that plays out, the questions are framed in such a way that it's not asking each individual, are you using this skill, but the question's framed from, how do your customers or your suppliers, how are they responding to your use of any given skill? So it's really focusing in on how successful have they been at implementing this new skill set. The skill effectiveness is one piece that it captures, but then obviously it is an ROI study, so there is that financial element as well.
So that's captured by asking each participant to provide one real world deal that they were able to close after the training, and then we effectively ask them anything and everything about it. Who was the deal with? What was the negotiation over? What was the total contract value? What skills did they utilize throughout the negotiation? And then ultimately, what was the financial impact for your organization? And we compile all of those survey results. Usually leave the survey...
Well, let's say we'd like to leave it open for two weeks. More often than not, we extend that out a week or so to make sure we give the participants ample time to respond. But once we close that survey down, within a few business days, we have a nice set of reports to provide back to our clients. And the first of those reports is a Power View report. That's a nice, pretty PDF, encapsulates everything that was captured from the survey. There's also a success story appendix.
So this is going to capture all of those financial success stories that were provided through the study and just organize them in a nice, clean manner so that leadership can review them. And it's a great opportunity, one, for leadership to have line of sight into the real world concrete example of this was the RED BEAR scale I used and this was the actual impact that had to our organization.
And the final report is an analysis workbook, and I usually describe this as if there's anyone on the client's end that likes to dive into large Excel files, then this is usually the file for them. It captures every result from every participant that was in the study. And it's color coded like a heat map. So you can see a lot of greens, a lot of reds, hopefully more greens than reds. But it allows leadership to take a step back and look at the big picture.
If you take a look at that file, there's an opportunity to look at it vertically and see collectively as a group, here are the skills that we're excelling in. But then also if you look at the red items, you can find, okay, here's a few skills that we haven't quite mastered yet. These are areas of focus that we can continue to reinforce. So from that aspect, you have a nice sense of personalized feedback of where you can continue to improve following that study.
And then the same holds true on the individual side. So if you look at that report horizontally, there's an opportunity to look at those performers that stand out that had some great feedback from the study, but then also identify those team members that, again, could individually use some additional coaching and support.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Thank you for walking us through that, Brandon. Again, fantastic. It's not just self-submitted feedback from negotiation workshop attendees. It's also independent third-party firms that validate studies, create that measurement aspect so that it's very easy to show leadership the ROI of their investment in negotiation training. Also, the personalized feedback from team members and how you can help create that culture of negotiation excellence within your teams.
I think that's fantastic. You've walked us through all four phases of The RED BEAR Difference. For those of you who are just listening, we've had slides up next to Brandon's head as he's been talking through them. So please go back and check it out on YouTube. Brandon, you've been very generous with your time. Thank you very much. Is there anything else that you'd like to say before we wrap up?
Brandon Wilson: I'd say that the last piece I would add is how this RED BEAR Difference factors into what we call our RED BEAR Customer Journey. So if anyone out there wants to Google that, you can find a few different documents out there on our website.
Rob Cox: We'll put that up next to your head as well. We'll have it right up there.
Brandon Wilson: One of these ways. So the RED BEAR Customer Journey, that really ties into when we work with a new client, they come in at the ground level and they have our level one solution. Whether we're engaged with a sales audience, a procurement audience, or even a cross-functional group, it's that those level one workshops tie into what I spoke about earlier where we introduced that model, the RED BEAR principles, behaviors.
But the RED BEAR Customer Journey, that document walks you through that. In addition to that level one, there's also a level two, level three, even a level four. There's some additional solutions as well such as cross-cultural negotiation. But the reason I wanted to mention it is as a client progresses through that customer journey, so from that level one to level two and so on, this RED BEAR Difference process repeats itself.
So if we engage with a new client, we're going to go through all four items I just spoke to. But if we re-engage and that audience continues to level two, those four steps are going to continue. Again, we're going to come back in, do our upfront strategic alignment, again, deliver that experiential learning, and then there's still going to be added opportunities for coaching and reinforcement and measurement as well. So each time you continue through that continuum, this RED BEAR Difference process plays itself out again.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Thank you for bringing it full circle with the customer journey there, Brandon. For those of you who are interested in seeing the customer journey for yourself, please visit our website, redbearnegotiation.com. Go to resources, fact sheets. It's either Customer Journey for Sales or Customer Journey for Procurement based on your needs. Brandon, you've been very generous with your time. Thank you very much for it. This has been The Confident Negotiator Podcast. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.