How to close a billion-dollar deal
Britain’s National Health Service is Microsoft’s biggest single client. It is a huge organisation - the third biggest employer in the world after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the Indian Railway - and it is a prodigious consumer of IT.
My friend John Coulthard is Director of Healthcare at Microsoft UK. His team has just closed a substantial deal with the NHS. He, and his colleague Richard Aspin, have been kind enough to share their debriefing notes with me and Bad Language readers.
They offer a unique insight into the challenges of doing a really, really big deal. Surprisingly, many of the lessons also apply to more everyday negotiations.
The number one lesson: “It’s all about them.” You can view the full debrief in PDF format or Mindjet Format (download a free MindJet viewer). Here is a summary:
- Negotiate with the right person. Ask the CEO who is going to run the deal. Put procurement in the room from the start.
- Issues not products. Define the business issues.
- Think individuals not organisations. Build trust. Set a 3 day SLA for resolving issues. Never leave anything unresolved. Make them look smart. Be astonishingly polite. Have fun.
- Make their job easy. Do the heavy lifting for them. Use templates.
- Nothing exists unless it is written. Take notes. Clarify, clarify, clarify.
- Knowledge. Don’t assume they know. Get other experts involved. Know your stuff.
- Intelligence. Seek allies, insight.
- Internal stakeholders.Brief them early and often. Don’t let them lead.
- Compelling events. Use events that matter to them and events you can create.
- Don’t. Don’t use your phone or PC in a meeting. Don’t disregard the competition.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, NHS, healthcare, Mindjet, marketing, sales, negotiation
Joe Clark wrote:
So if all this good advice can be and is expressed as plain text (or an ordered list in HTML), as you have done here, explain to me why you’re linking to a PDF and some unpublished weirdo format as though those formats were appropriate for the content?
Do you believe that people should be encouraged to post any old nonsense format online instead of real HTML?
Posted on 08-Aug-07 at 2:45 pm | Permalink
Matthew Stibbe wrote:
Actually, Joe, I agree with you. But in this case, the PDF / Mindmap thing is a primary document from Microsoft and I wanted (agreed) to present it in the format the original authors used. Also, a mindmap is an interesting way of presenting information. The content of the PDF/Mindmap is more extensive than the ten point summary I wrote for people who don’t like to click on links.
Posted on 08-Aug-07 at 2:52 pm | Permalink
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Posted on 28-Dec-07 at 10:36 pm | Permalink
Bad Language / Uncle Matthew: How do I get wrote:
[...] How to close a billion-dollar deal [...]
Posted on 26-May-08 at 5:59 pm | Permalink
BothAnd » Blog Archive » How to close a billion dollar deal wrote:
[...] There are links to the original documents here over on Mathew’s blog. [...]
Posted on 30-Oct-08 at 7:25 pm | Permalink