Multiple parties behind and across the table: A role-play simulation of parallel, competitive order negotiations for training B2B sales professionals

Abstract

For a couple of years, customer firms have been inviting shortlisted suppliers to so-called ‘supplier days’, where they negotiate potential deal proposals in parallel with the competing suppliers. We describe these parallel, competitive order negotiations (PCONs) and thereby introduce them to the academic B2B community. Supplier salespeople are regularly overwhelmed by these practices and require more and more specific training. We review the literature on effective salespersons' skills training with a focus on sales negotiation and then present a role-play simulation of PCONs for training purposes, called “Lithium Ion Battery”, developed in close cooperation between the academic and practitioner authors. We discuss learning objectives of the simulation, closely linked to the characteristics of PCONs, and then present the simulation set-up including the cover story, negotiable issues, involved parties, and simulation procedures. We disclose our simulation development, testing, and application, and discuss challenges encountered on the way. Running the simulation in corporate and Executive MBA trainings shows a high degree of external validity and participant buy-in. Preliminary evidence of training evaluation is also positive. We conclude that the presented simulation is a valuable and suitable training device.