During a recent negotiation, I was able to put together a BAM list of additional marketing concessions that the distributor agreed to saving us about $4000 in fees. I’ve replicated this approach in two other marketing negotiations with identical results.

Dan Wright, Impossible Foods

I spend a lot of time in day-to-day problem solving. I don’t do a lot of negotiations of contracts or pricing, but I have been able to use active listening and creative trades to reduce the impact of a problem to my company. For example, ECI was behind on a part due to order entry error, but with these strategies, I was able to work with the customer to push out most of the demand. Instead of daily OT and expedites, which would probably have cost $us 20-$30k, we were able to minimize to 2 expedites for around $6000 and a small amount of OT (total impact less than $10k).

Cyndi Speidel, Electrical Components International

“Ruth is spectacular!! If you are lucky enough to get an invite to this seminar jump on it. It will be time well spent and will certainly improve your negotiation skills and tactics.”

Kevin Fort

Sales manager

Dexter axle

Feb. 2019

Three months after attending a Negotiate Smart™ workshop:

“I opened with an aggressive  BAM in my last sourcing. When I shared this number with each supplier, all of them told me there was no way they could get there. After 7 rounds of negotiation, I sourced above my BAM by 1.5%. This was worth $3.7M in piece price when comparing the most competitive 1st round quote to where I finished.”

Purchasing - Automotive IndustryAuburn Hills, MI - November

February 20, 2018

“Excellent training and excellent trainer.”

Jan Zhang, Chassis Brakes International

“After Ruth’s coaching session, I was no longer nervous about negotiating.   She showed me a logical, easy to follow system. I also saw that negotiating is a lot more creative then I thought.”

Ezra Wanetik

“I have learned new negotiation techniques that will definitely bring more success to negotiation outcomes!”

Luis Sanchis

“I truly enjoy learning with Ruth, her enthusiasm is infectious and her knowledge of the subject is vast.”

Brett Antenucci, Purchasing Buyer

“The Negotiate Smart training has been a great eye opener for me and my team. Now my team is much better prepared to negotiate and they have a great base to keep on growing in their careers.”

Carlos Alvarez Ferrando

“They fiagured out how to make the course fun, and informative. The days flew by. The debrief of the role-plays were the highlight for me. I really saw clearly what it looks like to be a better negotiator. Thank you.”

John, IT developer

“I was surprised by how much I learned from this course. I consider myself a seasoned negotiator. The instructor confirmed what I knew, and also showed me new ways to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’. She also gave me insight into what I was doing wrong. It was a practical workshop.”

Steve, General Manager

“I feel this is one of the best workshops my company has had. It was relevant to my job and it will be very helpful in how I deal with both internal and external issues in the future.”

Magda, District Sales Manager

“Your negotiation training session was phenomenal. We are continuing to develop the negotiation skills you taught. We meet regularly to debrief as you suggested and continue to set negotiation goals.”

Jeff, VP of Sales

“The instructor spent a lot of time understanding our company and customized her approach and training to our needs. Her attention to detail was much appreciated.”

Susan, Procurement Office

“Ruth’s workshop had a tremendous impact on my next sale. I used many of the strategies she taught, and was able to turn a 250K sale into a 750K sale.”

“I'm better at getting support from Engineering because of this class.”

We asked for the quote and we received 4.6M ...we finalized at 3.2M. Both parties are agreed on the total agenda as well. 


Negotiate Smart™ ~ Asia ~ July 2017

ROI Summary ~ Top Five Results

Allen Chen of Huizhou:

For a project, normally we can't get all materials/tooling ready to meet customer requested engineering sample submit date, but by deeply probe, we find delivery date is most important for customer, we use whatever effective way to expedite tooling and do spot buy/air ship all shorting materials, and then we can meet customer target date, so customer accept all expediting/additional cost and finally we completely satisfied customer requirement and in addition that we realized more profit.

Jacky Du of Shanghai:

In the negotiation with Di motor supplier of 3,500pcs motor sample, I've built a trust relationship with the supplier, and deeply probed the production arrange, finally convinced supplier to reduce the sample price from 6 times to 2 times of serial production price, the saving is 60,000USD.

Asif Uddin Ahmed of Delhi:

Began with an attractive opening offer (BAM) and offer i