I would like to share one of my experiences about how I tried my best settle down a tough matter.
Our company’s policy to manage the oversea business is through regional agent in the world. We pay the commission to the agent, normally it is 5%. In 2008/05 I formally sent a notice to A customer (in Japan) to raise up the price. After one day, our agent in Israel sent me an e-mail unhappily to complain why our company never advised them we got the order from A customer? They claimed this is the product they helped to design-in B customer (in Israel), and A subcontracted for B, thus we have to pay the commission for the orders that A placed to our company.
At that moment I was really confused by the mail since I got no idea about such mess. All I had to do is to find what happen.
After some effort, I understood how it happened. The truth is as below:
1. This is an OEM product instead of standard productThis product must just be produced for specific customer. 2. I found the sampling record to prove that this product was indeed designed in to B customer by agent’s effort. B customer is located in the agent’s responsible region and they mutually kept very close relationship. 3. All the orders A placed must be all for B. (from 2006/11) 4. But no commission record was found. Why? 5. It is because our company confronted serious and frequent salespersons’ leaving in very short period. So some important information was interrupted and not well taken over. 6. I just took over the job to be the sales in Jan/2008 and had no idea about what happened in the past. I lost to keep the association between A, B and agent. 7. My boss couldn’t agree to pay 5% since our agent didn’t provide the service to A. He just agreed to pay 2%. (But our agent insisted us to pay 5%, they claimed it wasn’t their fault, it is because of our dishonesty for not revealing information.)
Now the fact is clear it’s our fault. How can I do to make up the relationship with our agent? How can I turn the disadvantageous situation to good result?
I thought over again and again. An idea came to me. I found something that might attract the agent greatly—a big customer D (in Israel), which always brought me troubles and we almost lost the connection with D. It was located in this agent’s region however in the past we always treated it as a direct account and never allocated this customer to this agent.
Form my consideration:
1. I have to maintain the relationship with the agent 2. I have to dispel the agent’s unhappiness. 3. Israeli region is not easy to penetrate without local association. It’s hard for me to keep the relationship with D directly to reach win-win, I wanted to allocate D to the agent to make more use of it, to shift the communication job to the agent. 4. I was very sure the agent would take my proposal since Jewish wouldn’t give up any possibility to get more profit. Comparing A customer with D customer, definitely D can bring more long-term benefit to them .
After getting the supervisor’s approval, I did as follow:
1. Deeply apologized in behalf of company to confess the mistake we made, to comfort and ease their unhappiness. 2. Expressed we will sincerely keep the promise to prevent such mistake from happening again. 3. Explained get their understanding: to explain the mistake was caused by too frequent salespersons’ leaving. It was caused by carelessness, bad management instead of dishonesty. 4. I presented my proposal to allocate D customer to them if they agree just to ask 2% commission on A customer’s orders.
Just as expectation, they were attracted by my proposal, reaching win-win.
1. Their unhappiness was successfully dispelled. 2. I successfully reduced the commission rate from 5% to 2%. 3. I shifted the troublesome communicating job with D customer to the agent. 4. Our agent expressed their appreciation on my effort to allocate D to them. They thought I did a good job to take care of their benefit. 5. Definitely our agent would take their best to serve D since D is really a great company in the world. We can get more orders through agent’s efforts; the agent can get more commission by serving D.
1. A very inspiring report to me and everybody here.
2. Your successful negotiation with the agent, in Israel, demonstrates the importance of "empathy" in various negotiation we would encounter in our life.
3. However, the question is how we can identify or spot what the other party's value, interest or even fear is.
4. Above is the key to any successful negotiation (or communication).
Chit-chat is a good tactic to build up the relationship with people, however from my personal viewpoint, chit-chat is NOT always the right policy to do especially in interviewing opening occasion with those who you don’t have any background information. Besides, performing the chit-chat skill is not always a bonus characteristics, it depends on what position and function you are applying, depend on as well as what the preference the interviewer intends..
Take me as an example when I was an interviewer (I used to be many times, interviewing the buyers and salespersons), I would prefer to choose those who take low profile and conservative strategy in the first, than enable to chit-chat in the end of the interview. I would evaluate the performance how fast s/he can catch the glues to analyze limited information within limited time-restraint since being a buyer or salesperson, s/he has to be very alert to give corrective response in the right time.
Those who take chit-chat tactics in the opening of the interview, I may regard him/her opportunistic and risky, but not aggressive.
But from my personal viewpoint, chit-chat is a good tactic to use in the occasion while it is your first time to meet each other, in case you have background information with each other, or in case you wear the same shoes. By chit-chatting, it can be helpful to build up a harmonic atmosphere to lead to the topic.
It is probably right that chit-chat may not be applicable to the interview occasion as mentioned in your posting due to a cultural difference between Taiwan and Western countries.
However, for head-hunting kinds of interview, using chit-chat as the beginning of an interview is commonplace in most cases.
Chit-chat, with a purpose in mind, is a very useful knack to kick off difficult communication, including negotiation. We do not usually cut to the chase at the beginning of our negotiations, instead, we use chit-chat (indirect opening) as a thermometer to find out or confirm the temperature and shape the aura before we negotiate, which can, in most cases, cut the risk of communication.
So, to be a successful communicator (negotiator), you must know how to chit-chat in a proper way.
Please help to check my grade. To be frankly, I never imagine that oneday the score would become my trouble. Could you please advise the reason? Your clarification would be highly apprecoated.
5 則留言:
I would like to share one of my experiences about how I tried my best settle down a tough matter.
Our company’s policy to manage the oversea business is through regional agent in the world. We pay the commission to the agent, normally it is 5%. In 2008/05 I formally sent a notice to A customer (in Japan) to raise up the price. After one day, our agent in Israel sent me an e-mail unhappily to complain why our company never advised them we got the order from A customer? They claimed this is the product they helped to design-in B customer (in Israel), and A subcontracted for B, thus we have to pay the commission for the orders that A placed to our company.
At that moment I was really confused by the mail since I got no idea about such mess. All I had to do is to find what happen.
After some effort, I understood how it happened. The truth is as below:
1. This is an OEM product instead of standard productThis product must just be produced for specific customer.
2. I found the sampling record to prove that this product was indeed designed in to B customer by agent’s effort. B customer is located in the agent’s responsible region and they mutually kept very close relationship.
3. All the orders A placed must be all for B. (from 2006/11)
4. But no commission record was found. Why?
5. It is because our company confronted serious and frequent salespersons’ leaving in very short period. So some important information was interrupted and not well taken over.
6. I just took over the job to be the sales in Jan/2008 and had no idea about what happened in the past. I lost to keep the association between A, B and agent.
7. My boss couldn’t agree to pay 5% since our agent didn’t provide the service to A. He just agreed to pay 2%. (But our agent insisted us to pay 5%, they claimed it wasn’t their fault, it is because of our dishonesty for not revealing information.)
Now the fact is clear it’s our fault. How can I do to make up the relationship with our agent? How can I turn the disadvantageous situation to good result?
I thought over again and again. An idea came to me. I found something that might attract the agent greatly—a big customer D (in Israel), which always brought me troubles and we almost lost the connection with D. It was located in this agent’s region however in the past we always treated it as a direct account and never allocated this customer to this agent.
Form my consideration:
1. I have to maintain the relationship with the agent
2. I have to dispel the agent’s unhappiness.
3. Israeli region is not easy to penetrate without local association. It’s hard for me to keep the relationship with D directly to reach win-win, I wanted to allocate D to the agent to make more use of it, to shift the communication job to the agent.
4. I was very sure the agent would take my proposal since Jewish wouldn’t give up any possibility to get more profit. Comparing A customer with D customer, definitely D can bring more long-term benefit to them .
After getting the supervisor’s approval, I did as follow:
1. Deeply apologized in behalf of company to confess the mistake we made, to comfort and ease their unhappiness.
2. Expressed we will sincerely keep the promise to prevent such mistake from happening again.
3. Explained get their understanding: to explain the mistake was caused by too frequent salespersons’ leaving. It was caused by carelessness, bad management instead of dishonesty.
4. I presented my proposal to allocate D customer to them if they agree just to ask 2% commission on A customer’s orders.
Just as expectation, they were attracted by my proposal, reaching win-win.
1. Their unhappiness was successfully dispelled.
2. I successfully reduced the commission rate from 5% to 2%.
3. I shifted the troublesome communicating job with D customer to the agent.
4. Our agent expressed their appreciation on my effort to allocate D to them. They thought I did a good job to take care of their benefit.
5. Definitely our agent would take their best to serve D since D is really a great company in the world. We can get more orders through agent’s efforts; the agent can get more commission by serving D.
By 2095100049
To 淳:
1. A very inspiring report to me and everybody here.
2. Your successful negotiation with the agent, in Israel, demonstrates the importance of "empathy" in various negotiation we would encounter in our life.
3. However, the question is how we can identify or spot what the other party's value, interest or even fear is.
4. Above is the key to any successful negotiation (or communication).
5. Thank you for your sharing with us.
About Chit-chat
Chit-chat is a good tactic to build up the relationship with people, however from my personal viewpoint, chit-chat is NOT always the right policy to do especially in interviewing opening occasion with those who you don’t have any background information. Besides, performing the chit-chat skill is not always a bonus characteristics, it depends on what position and function you are applying, depend on as well as what the preference the interviewer intends..
Take me as an example when I was an interviewer (I used to be many times, interviewing the buyers and salespersons), I would prefer to choose those who take low profile and conservative strategy in the first, than enable to chit-chat in the end of the interview. I would evaluate the performance how fast s/he can catch the glues to analyze limited information within limited time-restraint since being a buyer or salesperson, s/he has to be very alert to give corrective response in the right time.
Those who take chit-chat tactics in the opening of the interview, I may regard him/her opportunistic and risky, but not aggressive.
But from my personal viewpoint, chit-chat is a good tactic to use in the occasion while it is your first time to meet each other, in case you have background information with each other, or in case you wear the same shoes. By chit-chatting, it can be helpful to build up a harmonic atmosphere to lead to the topic.
2095100049 Fay
It is probably right that chit-chat may not be applicable to the interview occasion as mentioned in your posting due to a cultural difference between Taiwan and Western countries.
However, for head-hunting kinds of interview, using chit-chat as the beginning of an interview is commonplace in most cases.
Chit-chat, with a purpose in mind, is a very useful knack to kick off difficult communication, including negotiation. We do not usually cut to the chase at the beginning of our negotiations, instead, we use chit-chat (indirect opening) as a thermometer to find out or confirm the temperature and shape the aura before we negotiate, which can, in most cases, cut the risk of communication.
So, to be a successful communicator (negotiator), you must know how to chit-chat in a proper way.
Dear Teacher:
Please help to check my grade. To be frankly, I never imagine that oneday the score would become my trouble. Could you please advise the reason? Your clarification would be highly apprecoated.
Best Regards, Fay 2095100049
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