Season 3 - Episode 4: Startup ShoutOut with Hope McIntosh at MCG
We round out our series on negotiations with a chat with Hope McIntosh-Trigg, CEO of MCG, a business consulting firm offering agnostic consultative services, in the disciplines of Technology & Digital, Sales, and Strategy. Their stated goal is to conquer complexity, drive material change, and spark positive and long-term impact.
Hope has a ton of negotiation experience. She’s been a sales person, sales manager, CRO, COO, CEO and more. We were pumped to have her take on the complexities of modern negotiations.
Background Story
Hope has amassed a 20+ year career in the technology sector in tech-operations, consulting, sales, marketing, and business strategy with tech giants such as Honeywell, Compaq, HP, VMWare, Dell, and Air Watch, having positions and consulting projects with clients in the commercial and public sector space that have taken her across the globe and within the 50 states. She’s here to tell us about her style when it comes to negoations.
Outline
Our conversations with guests don’t have a strict outline, but it does have a lot of learnings. See below!
Busted Myths
Myth: Winning a negotiation means crushing the competition.
Myth: You have to beat up the other side.
Learnings
How to prepare yourself for a negotiation
In our negotiations series, we focused on a bunch of topics, starting with ourselves. That is, we covered something William Ury, the author of numerous negotiation books including the famous “Getting to Yes” said - that you have to look inward before you enter a negotiation if you want to be successful. Let’s say you’ve got a big one - a million bucks on the line - how do you prepare yourself for the negotiation?
Hope suggested that she looks inward first and then thinks about the needs of the other side.
What value will we bring? How important is this deal to the other side and us?
Understanding the personal, profession, and business goals of the other side is essential in finding common ground.
Where she would fail: when she didn’t take the time to understand the goals of the other side (in any of those 3 categories). Be a principled negotiator!
Out of curiosity, what was your biggest ever negotiaton (that you can talk about)?
She had someone who didn’t understand their compensation plan. Caused odd behaviour. Became a move of explaining and getting the “internal sale” which can be as complicated as the external.
Pushing to something that isn’t there - or trying to buy rapport - doesn’t work.
What do you think of haggling?
Haggling versus Negotiations are generally issues around perceived and actual value of something. Having the wherewithal to understand the other side is crucial.
Do you have a great example of an internal sale?
It comes back to understanding what is motivating apprehension internally. Working with stakeholders and asking many (the five!) whys, will get you the answer. Once you understand their needs, you can effectively solution build.
Summary
It comes down to taking the time to understand yourself, your business, and then the other side.
Focus on the personal, profession, and business goals of the other side
Beware value perception / reality in haggling
For internal sales, push to understand the unique nature of the company concerns.
More on our Guest:
Hope McIntosh-Trigg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hopemcintosh/
MCG: https://macgroupconsult.com/