By Sam Trattles
Working with developers, builders and maintenance people provides an opportunity to negotiate good deals due to a highly competitive market, and a history of openness to this kind of discussion.
When entering into a new project, the clearer you are about what you want will hold you in good stead for a competitive response from the market. Getting clarity early on, and writing it down, will help the people tendering for the work know what success looks like for you. It will also allow you to easily compare what they propose.
When you line up the responses you should be able to see who is including and excluding what in the price. If you ask for written submissions, you can always then invite a short-list of potential suppliers in for a face-to-face meeting to walk through their response. This will make it easy to understand the whole deal, as well as get to know the team you will be working with (and see if your gut tells you they are a good fit to work with your team).
On the other hand, when dealing with suppliers who are helping us out of a jam, it doesn’t often leave room for a negotiation. The reality is that we need them in that exact moment, so they have us over a barrel. Therefore, it’s important that you negotiate emergency rates at the same time you review any ongoing or new (maintenance) contracts.
When you’re in a phase of discussing consistent support, there should be some room to move in a deal, as this is a time when you can go to the market knowing (for the most part) what support you will need throughout the year, or on a specific project.
It is prudent to take this opportunity to think worst-case-scenario across the year.
For example, what are the chances of something breaking, or requiring emergency support for your equipment at some point? Based on the level of use, it’s highly likely something will go wrong.
If you can agree on ‘emergency’ rates ahead of time, it will be one less thing you need to worry about while you’re managing a crisis.
Good luck!
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About Sam Trattles, Other Side of the Table
Author and strategist, commercial deals negotiator who has closed upwards of $450m in deals across sport, music, the arts, philanthropy and grass roots programs.
