Managerial tools: need formula or how are we squeezed?

A week ago, my colleagues and I finally released the free course “Negotiation schemes” (available after registration), so today we decided to talk about tools not so much management as negotiation. Moreover, things are more than related.

After the article “Administrative tools: 4-phase algorithm for solving problems with people or“ What do you want if you are such a crap manager? ”They wrote to us: they say, well, it doesn’t happen that with all people and in all cases this algorithm works ? This is true - this algorithm does not work well when another person does not see a common future with you. And / or wants to banish you squeeze on something.

One of the most useful managerial experiences in my life I received from the management of the repair of my own apartment. At that time, I worked as a manager for 4 years - first I led the Java testing team on mobile devices (we worked with Sun), then led the team at Intel. I read Tom Demarco. Joel Spolsky, passed several managerial trainings. In general, I felt like a very cool manager. But it did not save me.
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Managing the repair of an apartment requires few other skills, especially when you are confronted by an experienced foreman. At the very beginning of cooperation, my foreman applied the formula formula “Need for Needs”, which ensured a clear and unconditional victory for himself.

The tool itself is often used in negotiations with customers - first of all, it is used by them. So, what the Formula for Need looks like:

Need = 1 * t + 2 * E + 3 * $ + 4 * Um

We first heard this formula from our colleague Dmitry Kotkin, the head of the St. Petersburg Schip negotiator school, after which we asked Dima to describe the science of negotiation in diagrams. But back to the formula:

1 * t = Time

The first factor is the time we spent preparing and holding this meeting or meetings. The more time we spend on the negotiation process, on interaction with a person, the more dependent we get.

Household example. Two people, a couple - scandals, swearing, live unhappily. But when asked to her: “Why are you not going to divorce him?” - we get a brilliant answer: “Well, I lived with him for three years, I feel sorry for this time.” Here, the need has been formed, the dependence has been formed - first of all, in the person’s head.

2 * E = Amount of effort already applied

The second factor that plays to increase the need is the amount of effort we have put in to do something in this situation. For example, if you need to go up to the 100th floor to conduct negotiations and you have spent an hour and a half on this, then it will be very difficult for you to return without result. The more effort we have made, the more pitiful we are to abandon any results as such. It makes us vulnerable.

An example from the work of the sales department. A sales manager is asked a question: “You have customers who do not buy anything. Why are you calling them? Why do you spend your time working with a client who has said fifty-four times that he will not buy anything? ”Answer:“ Well, I spent so much effort on it. I wrote a very long commercial offer, I rewrote it several times, I went to meet with him. I feel sorry for the effort

It's a pity not time, but effort as such. This is the formation of need.

3 * $ = Money

The third factor is lost or lost profits. If we are promised gold mountains and we believe in these mountains, then we become dependent on the result, and vice versa.

Known experiment, which was conducted by American sociologists. They took the student group and offered them the following task: “You have been allocated one hundred thousand dollars to develop a new Boeing. You have already invested ninety thousand in this project. A month before the end of the project, you will find out that your competitors produced a cheaper, more economical, more competitive aircraft. "Question: will you invest the remaining ten thousand in the project?" Most of the participants in the experiment said: "Yes, we will invest." To the question why: “Well, we have already invested ninety thousand, we feel sorry for this money that we have swum there”. The third trap of consciousness.

4 * Um = Emotions

The last factor that binds us to the situation is emotions. Why do men "love" hysterics? Why do they begin to interact with hysterics and can not get rid of them? Because the hysterical woman is not predictable and unpredictable, she is constantly in different emotions: now she is sad, now she is cheerful, now she admires you, then she hates you. And all this binds to a person, emotions bind to a person, both negative and positive.

An example from life. The story was told to us by Dmitry Kotkin, from whom we learned about the formula for want. Further, almost literally:

In 2008, we were invited by the company Honda Maximum, which is a Honda dealer in St. Petersburg.

The question was very simple: there were renewals of annual contracts for various services, starting with the recruitment of personnel and ending with IP telephony, and the task was set to reduce the prices for the supply of services. That is, it was necessary to press the suppliers to other numbers. We then took the formula of needs as a basis and developed an action plan, how the department heads should have acted in order to get a lower price than in the previous year.

The first fact - began to work with time. Our wonderful counterparty, with whom we interacted, was assigned a large number of meetings, and the meetings were insignificant for the sake of clarifying some issues. And now a person from his office goes to the office of a potential client for an hour, I ask him something there, they say “thank you very much for coming, we will think further,” he is going back. Here he has two hours of time at least from his working day fell. And if there were two such meetings, three, four, then even more time fell out. We begin to tie the counterpart to time.

The second factor is effort. People were asked to remake the commercial offer several times, to give it in Excel Table, to make a presentation of the service in PowerPoint, to change everything, to give some kind of schedule. And our wonderful manager was starting to vpahvat.

The third factor is money. It is clear that people began to constantly lure a lot of money. That is, the manager was told: “Look, if everything goes well, ... we are building three more dealerships, and everything will be there without any tenders. If we now have a tender, and we choose a supplier, then there we will definitely buy and just conclude an annual contract for these three dealer centers there ”. About dealerships - they really were built, but the promise of great profits - this, of course, was the manipulation of pure water.

The fourth factor is emotional. Managers who came to negotiate with the center, began to constantly swing on emotions. The so-called psychological or emotional pendulum (also known as the “wave rule”) was used.

The man comes, he is told: “It’s great that you have come, we are so glad to see you. It's great that you agree to work with us. ” A man flourishes in a smile, he is rocked in a positive. And then he is being pumped in the other direction: “You know, we looked at your commercial offer - it was ineptly done: some mistakes in the Russian language, this is shame, that’s impossible. You are a serious company. ” Man shakes the other way. “But we liked your prices, which you give us, and, in principle, they allow you to continue the conversation with you further. But the fact that you are five minutes late, of course, doesn’t paint you. ” Here is a five-minute buildup that throws a person in different directions. And in five minutes the logic is turned off, some emotions are turned on, and then the increase in demands begins.

It took two weeks to conduct all tenders. Before this, a month was usually spent. We saved the company time by saying that we shouldn’t stretch for a month, let's do it in two weeks. The amount of savings compared to the previous year for individual contracts reached 20%, it was they who obtained discounts on services. They were even able to squeeze out a bank of some kind on short-term deposits. It is almost impossible to change the terms of cooperation on bank interest, but thanks to this scheme they have achieved this.

When I heard all this, I slapped my forehead, remembering the story of the renovation of the apartment. At that time, I felt like a very experienced manager - with IT teams and engineers it worked out pretty well. :) And then it did not work. What is the essence of the story.

An example from the life of how IT-manager managed repair. We started the repair in 2006. A friend of the mother-in-law and father-in-law is a lieutenant colonel of one of our special services, recommended the foreman. Volodya 40 years. They met, discussed, all is well:

- What, I say, the conditions for prepayment?
- Alexander Mikhalych, standard: 50% prepayment immediately. 50% at the end of the work. In terms of a month and a half. Will you buy the materials yourself, or will we buy reports for you by check?
- Volodya, I need smaller hemorrhoids. Let's do it and do it.
- Well, then another $ N for materials.
- No problem.

Volodya is given 50% + $ N money, after which two more workers come to the apartment and the repair begins.

A week later I stop to see how are you. Volodya recalls to the side:

- Alexander Mikhalych, there is such a thing ... In short, my wife was diagnosed with spinal cancer. She needed an urgent operation. Here is an x-ray [draws some pictures] In general, I paid all the money to the hospital.
- ...
- In general, there is no more money.
- And what shall we do?
- Well, we will somehow finish.

Then it turned out that Volodya still has five children (true). Workers with no money left. Somehow you need to feed the children, Volodya got another two parallel works. Repair got up.

Then we tried to work for another year. Volodya was given a little extra money to hire new workers, some employees came from Central Asia, intermediaries disappeared with money, in general, there was a funny mess.

We parted only after a year. I could not part with the foreman. Firstly, because in my managerial experience there was no such thing, and Demarco, Brooks and Spolsky, bastards, forgot to warn :) And secondly, it was a pity to spend money, time, effort and it was absolutely embarrassing to put pressure on a person who wife at death and 5 children on the shelves. Formula needs in pure form.

What conclusion can we draw from this article?

Negotiations with different people need to be conducted in different ways. Sometimes very differently. And in many respects it depends on whether you have a common future with a person or not. Moreover, from the other side there can be a person who owns the subject of negotiations or hired specialists who help him to achieve a 20% discount.

And if you feel pressure from the person, it is worth considering whether he does not need you? And what exactly.

If now you come up with examples from your own negotiations with customers, management, or not from working practice, where you got into the formula of need, we will be grateful if you share it in the comments.

And how to deal with the formula needs we think to tell in the next article. Or video. Unless, of course, the topic will be interesting to you.

PS Blog Stratoplana moved to a separate site: http://blog.stratoplan.ru - see you there!