Procurement Negotiation Training

Cut Costs. Reduce Risk. Improve Relationships.

Now, that’s delivering real value. Most procurement teams negotiate from intuition. The best negotiate from a proven system. RED BEAR’s training transforms how your team approaches every supplier negotiation—with repeatable tools, clear strategy, and guaranteed ROI.

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Negotiation Training

Conceding Too Quickly

Leads to inflated costs, missed savings targets, and supplier overdependence.

Avoiding Healthy Tension

Puts suppliers in control and weakens your contract terms.

Failing to Ask Strategic Questions

Misses leverage points and opportunities to unlock supplier value.

Over-Indexing On Price

Undermines innovation, supplier quality, and ESG performance.

Treating Negotiations As One-Offs

Prevents scalable, category-wide improvements.

Skipping Preparation

Creates internal misalignment across finance, legal, and ops.

The business cost?

➤ Out-of-control spend

➤ Weak supplier performance

➤ Missed KPIs

➤ Limited credibility with finance and the C-suite

RED BEAR’s training gives your team a repeatable system to reduce risk, protect margins, and drive better outcomes in every negotiation.

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Required Reading

Not really, but it should be for any procurement leader who wants to get ahead.

Our guide breaks down the principles, tools, and outcomes behind our Negotiating With Suppliers™ program.

What’s inside:

✔ A 3-phase training model built for procurement

✔ Common negotiation mistakes (and how to fix them)

✔ Real client outcomes

✔ RED BEAR’s negotiation framework, planning tool, and behaviors

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Procurement Pro

Negotiate Like The Procurement Pro You Are

Welcome to our Negotiating With Suppliers™(NWS) training—the playbook for how procurement gets done. It provides the skills, tools, and behaviors buyers need to craft profitable, value-based agreements with suppliers.

Get ready to…

Manage costs with strategic levers
Lead negotiations across internal and external stakeholders
Improve spend metrics and risk profiles
Elevate procurement’s role as a value-driving function

Part 2

Advanced Relationship and Conflict Management

Building on the foundational skills, this module delves deeper into managing complex negotiation dynamics. Participants will:

Learn to harness negotiation tension to build stronger internal and external relationships.
Develop strategies to navigate conflicts with partners, clients, customers, and vendors.
Enhance their ability to move seamlessly between competitive and collaborative negotiation styles.

This stage is tailored for those looking to refine their negotiation techniques and apply them in more intricate scenarios.

Negotiation Training - conflict management

NWS 1

Foundation of Strategic Supplier Negotiation

This is where world-class supplier negotiations begin.

From price pressure to internal friction, your team learns how to lead negotiations that reduce cost, protect value, and strengthen supplier partnerships.

Here’s what they’ll walk away with after Negotiating With Suppliers™ (NWS):

Negotiation Training - strategic negotiation

A Proven Planning System

Learn how to map out a negotiation before it begins—players, power, pressure points, and more—using RED BEAR’s strategic planning tool.

Six Core Negotiation Principles

Simple, powerful ideas rooted in Stanford research that guide how procurement professionals prepare, communicate, and respond under pressure.

Real-World Practice Through Simulation

Your team applies the RED BEAR methodology in a series of live negotiation simulations—building muscle memory through hands-on repetition.

Techniques to Uncover and Leverage Supplier Needs

Learn how to manage information skillfully, ask smarter questions, and get beyond the surface to uncover what suppliers really need.

Smarter Concession Strategies

Understand when and how to concede—without giving away value or weakening your position.

Tension Management Skills

Learn how to harness the natural tension of negotiation to drive better results—not defuse it or back away from it.

This workshop goes beyond theory—it’s an experiential, results-driven training that transforms the way procurement teams approach negotiation.

Time commitment: 2 days

Delivery: In-person or virtual

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NWS 2

Advanced Supplier Negotiation

Negotiating With Suppliers™ 2 (NWS2) is an advanced, hands-on workshop designed for NWS1 graduates ready to elevate their supplier negotiations even further.

Through immersive simulations, real-world application, and dynamic group work, your team sharpens key skills and builds new ones to navigate tough conversations—internally and externally.

By the end of the workshop, your procurement professionals will:

Negotiation Training - conflict management

NWS 3

Mastery In Supplier Negotiation

Turn proven skills into negotiation mastery.

Negotiating With Suppliers™ 3 (NWS3) is a highly customized, two-day capstone experience for NWS1 and NWS2 graduates. It’s built for procurement professionals who are ready to refine their expertise and apply RED BEAR’s system to high-stakes, cross-cultural, and complex supplier negotiations.

This isn’t a refresher. It’s a mastery lab.

By the end of the workshop, your team will:

Negotiation Training - Feedback

Deepen their mastery of RED BEAR’s core principles and behaviors

Apply foundational concepts with more precision, confidence, and control.

Strengthen positioning and value communication

Learn how to articulate high aspirations and negotiate from strength—even in challenging supplier dynamics.

Build better partnerships—inside and out

Use RED BEAR’s Partnership Principles to improve collaboration, surface creative solutions, and align faster.

Work more effectively across functions

Gain tools for negotiating with internal stakeholders who have competing goals, deadlines, or decision styles.

Practice with real challenges

Apply skills to the “tough stuff”—live issues your team is actually facing—with expert coaching and feedback.

NWS2 helps your procurement team move faster, protect more value, and drive stronger outcomes from the inside out.

Time commitment: 2 days

Delivery: In-person or virtual

Keep Building

Reinforce and sharpen RED BEAR fundamentals

Practice the most critical concepts from NWS1 and NWS2 in live, tailored simulations.

Cross-Cultural Negotiation Understanding

Apply strategic negotiation behaviors to challenging cases your team is facing now.

Master cross-cultural negotiations

Learn to recognize—and overcome—the unconscious behaviors that derail global deals.

Exchange best practices across the team

Share internal sourcing wins, surface insights, and standardize high-performance habits.

Leave with an action-ready negotiation plan

Build a go-forward strategy with personalized feedback from expert facilitators.

Your most experienced negotiators don’t need more content. They need the space—and the coaching—to apply it at the highest level.

NWS3 is where that happens.

Time commitment: 2 days

Delivery: In-person or virtual

Achieve Mastery

Each training is designed to build upon the previous, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive learning experience.

By progressing through all three parts, your procurement team will be equipped with the skills and strategies necessary to negotiate effectively and drive value in every supplier interaction.

See How It Works

"It was eye-opening… I was not expecting to learn new negotiation skills after 30 years as a buyer or commodity manager."

★★★★★

— Barrie, Strategic Category Manager

"Excellent. I have been in supply chain over 30 years and have gone through several training programs—this one has been by far the best."

★★★★★

— Andy, Supply Chain Manager

"Outstanding experience! The content was not only highly relevant but also engaging and thought-provoking… This course exceeded my expectations, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to enhance their skills in this area."

★★★★★

— Chris, Director, European Logistics

"Incredibly valuable training. I’m fascinated by these learnings… I’m confident it will help me make an impact on hospital efforts as I continue to grow into my role."

★★★★★

— Matt, VP Finance

"Fantastic! I feel that I actually have an organized toolbox now."

★★★★★

— Brandon, Sr. Manager, Sourcing

"Very informative, thought-provoking, and provides some genius training for self-improvement."

★★★★★

— Thresa, Global Procurement Manager

"The course was exceptional and ranks among the best I have attended. I particularly appreciated being challenged, especially during the major negotiation exercise where I had to negotiate solo against a team of two… Everyone in the group had the opportunity to participate, and I greatly appreciated the diverse representation from various departments, which enriched the learning experience."

★★★★★

— Harry, European Logistics Manager Management

"Great program and examples that kept us engaged."

★★★★★

— Geoff, Director, Category Management

"I have years of negotiation experience and I thought this training was amazing. I learned multiple new techniques and skills to use. Would recommend to everyone—new and experienced."

★★★★★

— Heather, Category Manager

"This is the best training I’ve probably ever had. It was so engaging. Trainings are usually long and drawn out, but this wasn’t. Great work!"

★★★★★

— Shanna, Category Manager

"Great value program, totally applicable and easy to remember and follow."

★★★★★

— Guadalupe, Director, Procurement

"Fantastic learning experience... By being more effective negotiators, we should be able to continue to find ways for [our company] to be more successful."

★★★★★

— Michael, Sr. Manager, Global Procurement

"This was an incredible experience. I learned important basics of negotiation that I had not learned anywhere else! I feel like I would be able to do this on my own. (With practice)"

★★★★★

— Marisa, Learning Partner

"This program was fantastic. Many tools to take away and my overall outlook on negotiating has changed for the better."

★★★★★

— Julianna, Senior Purchasing Analyst

"Highly interactive and relevant negotiation strategies."

★★★★★

— Ryan, Director, NPI Sourcing

"It was excellent. It completely shaped a consistent framework for the staff, and changed the overall approach to the way we will negotiate."

★★★★★

— Quinn, Purchasing Manager

Retention Super Glue

We’ve all experienced “training amnesia,” where you forget what you learned and revert to your old ways as soon as you return to your routine.

We’re not about that here.

That’s why we created our robust coaching and reinforcement training, 100 minutes™ to Improved Negotiation Results

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill reinforcement program; it’s a 360 experience designed for participants and managers to ensure the learnings stick.

For Participants

➤ Weekly emails with video content that showcases one key concept from the program.
➤ Guided questions for active learning and concept application

For Managers

➤ Weekly emails with video content that showcases one key concept from the program.
➤ Tailored smart coaching questions to use in 1:1s or team meetings to reinforce learnings

business-meeting

Training That Meets You Where You Are

We deliver high-impact sessions for global procurement teams—virtually, in-person, or hybrid.

Every training includes:

➤ Instructor-led

➤ Discovery-based

➤ Hands-on exercises

➤ Role plays and simulations

That’s non-negotiable.

procurement-negotiations-effective-training

A Proven Framework. A Practical System. Built for Real-World Deals.

We don’t teach tips and tricks. We train your team in a complete negotiation system—grounded in research, proven in global procurement organizations, and customized to your unique sourcing challenges.

At the heart of our Negotiating With Suppliers™ program is a set of core process, skills, tools, and behaviors that bring consistency and confidence to every supplier conversation.

The Methodology

Built on research from Stanford University and tested across every major industry, our approach combines behavioral psychology, strategic thinking, and real-world procurement dynamics.

It’s not theory for theory’s sake. It’s a process your team can apply the very next day.

1

The Six RED BEAR Negotiation Principles

Simple, powerful concepts that guide decision-making before, during, and after every negotiation.

2

The RED BEAR Model

A step-by-step framework to approach any negotiation—whether you’re buying packaging or managing a complex global supplier.

3

The Strategic Planning Tool

An intuitive, flexible worksheet that helps your team prep quickly, align cross-functionally, and walk in with a plan.

4

The Five Core Behaviors of Successful Negotiators

These are the difference-makers—mindsets and actions that shift negotiation outcomes and supplier dynamics.

Why RED BEAR Works When Others Don’t

We’re not just another vendor. We’re your strategic partner.

RED BEAR is the only negotiation training firm that combines:

➤ Behavioral science that changes how your team thinks, not just what they say

➤ Procurement and sales domain expertise that maps directly to your team’s goals

➤ Enterprise-level delivery that scales across categories and regions

➤ Hard ROI guarantees that prove our impact

About Us

Results, Guaranteed

We back up our claims with real accountability—on both sides of the table.

Our Promise: 10x ROI or your money back
Your Proof: Independent ROI study conducted post-training
Client Voice:

“We’ve seen millions in measurable cost savings since implementing RED BEAR’s process. This training gave our team a common language and strategy across all categories.”

– VP of Global Sourcing

Getting The Team Together? Do It Right.

With a session that will provide meaningful ROI right away.

We’ve got you.

Learn about our accelerated, 3-hour negotiation workshop for procurement professionals. Perfect for your next team meeting.

Check It Out →

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