So I feel like this is pretty random but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

preview cliffs: My boss can save people money on contracts/purchases. I want her to do it based on commission where I get a cut.

My boss is an amazingly good negotiator. She has a minor roll negotiating contracts at my work, and is incredibly tenacious. She regularly will just call up someone that we contract or rent from and, more or less, force them to give us a discount.

She hammers salesmen until she is getting things cheap enough to where they are making no money. If I'm booking a vacation, or doing any sort of purchasing, I have her do it for me because she will shop around, talk people down, and generally badger people until their best option is to come down a ton. And on top of that she loves doing it.

While she is tenacious, she lacks any sort of motivation to actually do something with her talent. I figure there has to be some sort of market for hiring someone like this where they work on comission based on how much money they save someone. It's probably already a profession of some sort and i'm just oblivious to the title.

So I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction. I would assume an add or 2 just pointing out what she could do for people, free of charge unless she saves them money, would bring in a little bit of business.

Any comments are welcome. I assumed it was worth asking, and if nothing comes of it... oh well. Thanks

This will only go so far imo.

The people that will bend and break over low-balls are usually selling below average products, or have ways that they can cut costs backdoor so you end up with less quality than if you paid more.. some of it is not believable as well, namely:

Not to be rude, but do you see the P&L forms for these salesmen? I have been in sales for a decent amount of time, and if I ever tell you "We are making no money off this" it is:

1) Not true - I have back-office/ accounting people behind me and if I tried to do things that result in us not making money then it is not happening, period. Some sketchy sales positions or desperate sales people may be able to lower their own commission so they personally make no money, but their company will always profit, and going after desperate salespeople will not last, because they won't.

2) I'm in a position now where things are negotiated up front, and sometimes people try to change it on the back-end once the deal is basically "closed" and they think they can nickle and dime the deal. If/when this happens, I fight it, and then consider it a bridge burned and will only work with that person when I can take advantage of them (unique situation where I can make much higher profit).

Send her to a Chinese market.

LL is spot on. And maybe its after years of experience with the whiners, anyone who wants to play spoilt child to get a better price gets a hung up phone. The only thing worse than no sale is a break even sale. There is ALWAYS another buyer around the next corner.

She sounds incredibly obnoxious. Being a good negotiator is about 'winning' while not having the other person feel like they've had all of their skin rubbed off. People who lacerate the other person in negotiations all the time rapidly discover no one wants to do business with them.

As someone who has kicked plenty of people who negotiate people like her to the curb I can attest that it's -EV from a time invested perspective.

The other thing you are missing is that 99/100 times someone starts to negotiate like this with a strong salesperson, they are snap looking for another buyer. In business, this is a great way to have the carpet pulled out from under you while the salesperson is lining up a stronger #2 while keeping you warm/ interested.

Take a theoretical example:

Imagine trying to negotiate a major product shipment of building blocks for your widget company. You hire this negotiator to get the supplier down to their bottom-line by any means necessary. You think you have a great deal coming in so you are preparing for this delivery of product and getting all necessary people involved on your end. This means that many other people and internal (probably external as well) business units are getting in line for this delivery. Last minute, the deal doesn't go through. Now you are in desperate need of a delivery or production is slowed/stopped and you are losing money. You suddenly went from a huge profit margin % to one of the desperate buyers this company probably found when you were haggling with them. Now the price you pay is dependent on the market and within a new strict time constraint.

Even if this deal goes through a couple times and you get bottom-line price, this above scenario is eventually going to happen, and could eliminate profits very quickly.

+1

Most people will not do business with someone like this and nobody wants to do business with people desperate enough to put up with this ****.

I've known some great negotiators in my time. They're all people who anyone would be happy to do business with again, and again, and again. This isn't to say that when it's all on the line I (and they) wouldn't absolutely pull every trick imaginable, but it's really rare that I would do that. Basically the ends need to justify the means. Getting printer toner cheaper is not justification for me to beat the crap out of my office supply company. (maybe it is if I run a newspaper lol)

"You can skin the sheep once, but you can fleece it over and over again"

Whatever happens, TR of her screwing you out of your share?

wp

FYP.

I think most everything has been said already... In sales, both people need to think they are getting the best out of the other. It could be that you and her are both stupid and think this way too often. lol (jk)

Find a $1000+ product on Ebay and Amazon, and then see if you can negotiate that price lower locally with any vendor. If you can, then you know you're a good negotiator.

+1. Ultimate test of negotiating skill.

Fixed it back. This woman thinks the height of negotiating skill is to call and nickel and dime people who she already has an agreement with. That's screwing not negotiating.

They don't have to agree to the changes.

In terms of careers, she'd be best doing cost savings analysis/brokering for a specific field
Like a big company has telecommunications needs, your boss would have to analyze what they are paying and who they are paying it to and figure out how much money she can save them. Then she gets them those savings, and would normally get a large percentage of savings

I know a guy who did this and made pretty good money.

it sounds like she doesn't have enough motivation to do this, so she's probably not going to get much value out of her skill longterm.