So ! Your media plan is finalized, you are now ready to negotiate with the sales house ! You are probably wondering how to proceed and what steps to follow to begin your negotiations? In this article, we would like to give you some good practices to follow at each stage of the negotiation with your interlocutors.
Collect the information necessary for your negotiation
“If you do not know your opponent or yourself, in every battle you will be defeated.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Sun Tzu understood this. Information is one of the best assets we can benefit from, both in war and in trade negotiations!
If you want to have the advantage in your commercial negotiations, we advise you to check certain data such as campaign histories. Although tedious to find, they will allow you to know the results of your previous negotiations, the discounts obtained and the number of spots and insertions purchased.
By using campaign management tools like AdwOne , you can easily find your history in just a few clicks.
It is also a good omen to check your knowledge of the agency and all the commercial offers it offers (supports, gross rates, audiences, broadcast , themes, etc.). For example, knowing the audiences of the media that interest you and their developments can allow you to influence the negotiated price.
You also need to know the average booking times by media type. We remind you of them in the list below:
- Magazines : 3 to 4 months
- Daily: 3 to 8 days
- Display: 4 to 5 months (variable depending on the media requested)
- Radio: from 48 hours to 3 months
- Cinema: 2 weeks
- Television: 3 to 4 months with optimization which can be daily.
Once all this information has been collected, we will be able to move on to the second phase, that of technical preparation!
Prepare yourself technically
This step, often neglected by media buyers, is nevertheless essential!
First, identify the determining points for your negotiation (discount, desired volume, reservation time, etc.) and prioritize them from most to least important.
You can then move on to the third step and develop your trading strategy.
Develop your trading strategy
There are multiple trading strategies, we give you a non-exhaustive list of strategies below.
You can adopt a strategy by choosing to adopt a behavior:
- Cooperative: negotiators have the desire to understand each other, through mutual listening, mutual respect for the constraints or choices of the interlocutor, the search for solutions and the desire to adapt to the needs of the other.
This will result in quality decisions and a relationship with a high level of trust. You will be able to better defend your interests. Be careful, however, not to be too naive in your negotiations. Your interlocutor is there to make figures. This strategy can be time and energy consuming for you.
- Competitive: This strategy arises from an unbalanced exchange.
It is characterized by a desire for non-cooperation, by the absence of taking into account the interests of the interlocutor and by adaptability. You can then maximize your immediate gains to the detriment of your long-term relationship. This strategy will be interesting in the short term but risks creating a rupture in your relationships. - Accommodating: You then seek to accommodate the other party and maintain your long-term relationship, but by seeking to please them in the short term, you can quickly lose interest.
This strategy is suitable when negotiating is not worth it.
This will allow you to be calm and reassure your interlocutor. By favoring a long-term relationship in the absence of a short-term benefit, you highlight your good will. However, your interlocutor might consider this act as an act of weakness. - Focused on compromise: this strategy tends to favor the other in the absence of its own advantages. You maintain your relationships and facilitate communication with your interlocutors by being conciliatory. However, you risk getting an average solution and seeming like you don't want to commit to the relationship.
After selecting the strategy to adopt for your negotiations, we advise you to create your matrix to use to conduct your negotiations. One of the best known is that of the chessboard matrix . You can adapt it to your media buyer issues.
Negotiate!
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression” (D. Swanson)
If you are interacting with an advertising manager for the first time, needless to say, making a good impression will be decisive for the rest of your negotiation and the commercial relationships you will have.
Find the arguments to get the price you want!
If you are a new advertiser , you can highlight the risk you are taking by investing with them, make it clear that other requests for briefs would follow.
You can also play on volume to get a bigger discount.
Insist on the evolution of your budgets upwards or downwards.
If you are in the first case, by announcing it to your previous contacts and if you grant them this increase, they will be touched by this great mark of confidence.
If necessary, if your media plan allows it, you can choose to bet everything on the same horse and highlight the fact that you choose them, and not their competitors. This may even allow you to obtain better conditions the following year.
Be flexible in your negotiation.
You can get better prices and discounts in the future by being flexible.
Follow a negotiation method that best suits your situation.
- Negotiation by section
If you are not interested in certain elements of the proposal, you can ask to remove those that are less relevant to your media plan. You will then be able to get a discount for each item requested.
This method is interesting for reducing the price and obtaining a more suitable price. But you risk missing out on interesting proposals from the management. Also be extremely careful not to neglect the overall communications strategy when doing this.
- The Lure Trading Method
This method almost requires acting skills! Do not reveal your preferences to the seller and pretend to be interested in other proposals. Are you wondering why do this? You can therefore more easily negotiate the price of the desired service.
For example, if your advertiser urgently needs advertising insertions for a very close date, and the agency knows this information, it will know that he does not have time to put the proposal out to competition and that he is ready to pay a high price. Focus the negotiation on price or location, emphasizing deadlines only later.
- The too high price method
This method is that of “it makes or breaks”. By claiming a price that is too high, two results are possible. Either you win your case, with a more reasonable counter-proposal and a price adapted to your budget. Either you upset the seller and the negotiation takes a more delicate turn.
We have given you all the secrets and best practices of good negotiation. If you need more information, if you would like to know more about our campaign management tools, do not hesitate to contact our teams . They will be delighted to help you with your project.
Sources:
