Negotiation competitions and how to make them work: ManGO!'s approach and experience

The "Personnel Management" conference at the Center for Innovative Education and Development featured a speech by Oleg Koschinsky. A business coach and development director at ManGO! Games, he pointed out the main things to consider when organizing negotiation competitions.

We at ManGO! Games have already gained considerable experience in negotiation competitions, so we are ready to share working practices and those to be refrained from. The following advice comes from Oleg Koschinsky.

Why do you need negotiation competitions?

Online negotiation competitions serve to support the annual discussions of trading terms within the sales channels. The main purpose of such events is to teach negotiation skills to a great number of professionals simultaneously. Thus, our competitions usually gather around 90 people. Participation in the competition increases employees' confidence, with subsequent noticeable growth in negotiation quality and the company's financial performance. Last year, we ran negotiation competitions for Kimberly-Clark and Perfetti Van Melle.

We believe the findings drawn from several years of our practice may be of use to you, too.

Key findings

First of all, FMCG sales sure benefit from such events, but it is timing that plays a major role. We recommend the competitions to be held right before signing the documents.

Second, the very format of the negotiation competition proved to be the most effective for this task.

Third, the competition offers a great opportunity to increase involvement not only for the participants but for the entire company as well.

Here's a list of things that make negotiation competitions work:

• Standout invitations and rankings.
• Advice sessions before and after each event.
• A moderator to stimulate, motivate, and engage participants.
• Minimum uncertainty and maximum simplicity.
• Use of external communication tools, e.g. WhatsApp, OneDrive/GoogleDrive.
• Automatic calculation (90% effective).
• Professionally designed invitations and rankings with participants' pictures. That is something you shouldn't try to skimp on.