How a High-Stakes Negotiation Revealed the Critical Mistake That Nearly Cost This Business Development Deal
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INTERVIEWER
In all of your work experience and, and, you know, obviously recency bias is helpful, but not necessary with this, with this question. Uh, I'd like you to walk me through an example. Of a situation where even though you delivered, You still like looking back, wished you had done better. Right? What was it you were trying to, what was the goal that you were trying to achieve that even though you got there, You wish you'd done better.
CANDIDATE
OK, OK. I'll think of that and I'll let you know. Yeah. So, um, I'll try to explain during the example there are set key keywords. I'll keep on giving you the background info of those keywords, yeah. So, uh, last year one of our, uh, big customers wanted, uh, to procure a second cath lab for their existing hospital, high-end cat second,
INTERVIEWER
a second, what kind of lab.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, I'm telling you, uh, cath lab, cath lab is the equipment, uh, which is basically used in cardiology department for, uh, putting stents in the heart for doing angioplasty and angiographic procedures. OK, yeah, so it was their 2nd cath lab. It was a high-end cath lab with what they wanted to procure as they had already procured, uh, Phillips. Uh, low-end cat lab 3 years back. Now challenge in front of me was that, uh, uh, customer was more inclined to, uh, towards our competitor because of two reasons. Siemens, which was our competitor, was providing a low-end, uh, low price products, uh, within their requirement. Second, that they wanted a variety of applications since they have already had Philips equipment. They wanted a variety of applications, and they were looking for a vendor outside than Philips. Now task was to carefully drive this deal so that I can create both technological plus commercial value to the customer. Hence I prepared the strategy and uh focused on two major areas negotiation style and identifying the power stakeholders. Since I was, uh, dealing with this customer for the first time, it was very necessary to find the negotiation style. I went through all the previous, uh, quotation which has been shared with the customer. Uh, with the dates, who has been the receiver, what price they have been received, and found out that, uh, this customer is, uh, is a hard negotiator, and there's a long list of negotiate negotiator list which can start from a normal staff biomedical staff from the hospital to which reaches up to 5 level up to the chairman of the hospital reaching, uh, sitting at Dubai while negotiating. Hence keeping this fact in the mind of the long negotiator list. I always, while giving the price, I always kept some margin with me so that when in the final stage, chairman of the hospital negotiate with the Phillips India head, he should have some room for discounting. In the second, uh, focus step, I identified the power stakeholders where I mapped each and every stakeholder of the customer and found out that. Doctors who would be using these machines, clinicians who would be using these machines are the power stakeholders. They had a huge say in the system, and for them technological superiority matters the most. Hence, in a, uh, I, uh, because of my technical knowledge, I set the, uh, status of our equipment much above than the competitor. But in addition to that, I created a huge value proposition for one particular software. Which was unique to Phillips and no other vendor had that, and I created the value as if they should not go ahead without that particular software. I kept on harping the advantage of that software and created an overpriced value of that particular software. Though it was a risky proposition, but because of this, it really helped me while at the final negotiation stage and uh while in the final negotiation stage while I closed the deal well within our target price. Now, so two things have happened in this. I closed the deal well within our target price with the uh customer who has been very hard negotiator and has got very highly discounted price in the past. Second, that initially I was, uh, Phillips was not at all in the deal where customer was inclined towards the customer and I changed the whole deal. But when I execute, though we have got the uh deal at that particular point of time, but when I introspected our strategy and I found out that I could have added some more equipment because this is a uh very big, this was a very big hospital while I was negotiating, I could add some more equipment, uh, in this particular deal and could have won the project. That particular $6000 dollar deal would have become some $8500 if I would have added some more equipment. The, so long story short, I won the deal. However, I could have done it better by adding more equipment. By adding what? By adding more equipment, like I told you, one equipment was cath lab, uh, if I would have added some of the ultrasounds within this deal, I could have one more value. It, it would have, could have become a larger value. So,
Interviewer Insight
the main ask of the question was to highlight a time where the candidate wished they had done better. Candidate does not close the loop on that question, necessitating the follow up.
INTERVIEWER
as someone who exists outside of the, the medical equipment sales, uh, world, I don't, I guess I'm lost on, on how that would have improved the deal. If they were looking to build out a specific lab. Which you've done before. Presumably there's a blueprint for what's required to stand that lab up, right? So I'm, I'm missing the connective tissue between selling them what they had already purchased in the past, but you could have put more stuff in there. I don't, I don't quite understand that. Can you, can you Add clarity to how that would have improved on the deal.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, so this is a very big hospital where they have multiple requirements at one particular time point of time. So they had a requirement of cath lab, which I know, but side by side, a lot of other negotiations were going on in terms of monitors in terms. Of, uh, ultrasounds which, uh, for, for their other hospitals since when I knew that, uh, I was almost at the winning stage, I could have added some more equipment. Those are not related to the cath lab, but some more equipment which could have. Make this deal value much bigger from $6000 to $8500 because what happens is that whenever a customer is giving you the order they merge sometimes uh 23 orders at one point in time and give you the order so I could have built more value and could have earned more revenue in the within the same time period.
Interviewer Insight
from a scope and scale perspective, this presents as very small. Beyond that, the candidate doesn't make it clear how they arrived at this higher number, whether it was possible, and if so with what level of effort.
INTERVIEWER
So what prevented you from improving the deal at that time? What what what was stopping you?
CANDIDATE
No, no, no, so I, uh, and nothing stopped me. I was more focusing on winning that deal. That's how I missed this particular point where in the final negotiation state I should have added this deal or I should have discussed other deals also, but my whole focus remained in that particular deal, and I missed that point.
INTERVIEWER
OK, I think I understand. But if you think about that, if you think about that as like a a teaching moment for you in your career. What, what lesson do you take away from that that you would apply to a future or have applied to future negotiations?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, correct. So, uh, the learning from this, uh, particular, uh, particular incident was that, uh, always try to do I was focusing at one particular point in time, uh, uh, at one deal. However, we, I, I should have a holistic view where I could have enlarged the deal. I should always, uh. I should always look after increasing my deal value and look out for more ways to increase the value. So this was a particular incident where I focused on only one deal, and if I should have focused on other deals, I could have merged, but that was a learning point that I should have a holistic view to increase the revenue of my target.
INTERVIEWER
And just for clarity, when you say, uh, you were too narrowly focused on this deal, and you were, you know, you didn't bring in other deals, were those deals, Deals that you were also working with that customer, or those were other salespeople trying to sell to the same customer?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, very apt question. So those deals, uh, I were, were getting negotiated with the same, uh, customer. However, as part of my Scam strategy, uh, I was focusing on those 20% of the deals which could give me my 20, 80% of the revenue. Smaller deals come in 80% of those smaller deals and hence I was not focusing on them. If I should have focused them, I should have merged that. So as a part of my scam strategy, I was focusing on 20% of those deals which was which are entitled to give me 80% of the revenue because I had a huge target to be covered in a very smaller period of time.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Quality of this answer block did not mirror previous. Candidate failed to present a story which mapped well to the question. Follow up questions were required to understand the nature of "do better" and even then, the stakes presented as very low scale. Candidate has presented thus far as holding themselves to a standard but within the context of this answer block the candidate failed to set that bar at level "high."