Understanding the Other Side: Negotiations in Strategy Execution

Jonathan  0:02  

Welcome everybody to another episode of the strategy gap. Today we're having a fun conversation about all things negotiation, and building strategies using that to in your, I'm gonna start over real quick Excuse me. Welcome everybody for another episode of the strategy gap. In today's conversation, we'll be talking about all things negotiation. And joining us for the conversation is George de Vardo. George's career spanned many roles and industries after obtaining his Bachelor's in economics and MBA in business management, he started his career selling financial products and portfolio planning. Later, he transitioned to advertising media, where he spent time managing media negotiation, sales and pricing at companies like NFL media, and play fly sports. Prior to his current role, he was the head of pricing and strategy at Barstool Sports leading go to market media pricing, planning and strategy. And he's currently the Vice President, head of revenue operations at enthusiast gaming, where he's building up the team to lead immediate product creation, sales and analytics and business strategy partnerships. George, welcome to the show. 

George  1:05  

Thanks, Jonathan. Joe, very excited to be here.

Jonathan  1:10  

Awesome, well, kicking things off, as demonstrated in your intro, have you spent a considerable amount of time in roles that involve many different parties, oftentimes having to come to an agreement, whether that's internal and strategy decisions, building pricing strategies, managing advertising or partner relationships. So for today's conversations, we really want to focus on that element. And the importance of coming to an agreement agreement and negotiations. Negotiations, I think, unfortunately, often is a word that has a negative connotation, or you think the used car salesman and having a negative experience in negotiation. But this doesn't necessarily have to be that. So I wanted to kick things off broadly by asking you what's your perspective, on negotiations role in strategy,

George  1:56  

I think that you hit it right on the head that negotiations can have that negative connotation of used car salesman, things like that. I have felt like that. And because at the beginning of my career, you saw, I was selling financial products. Really what that was, I graduated in 2009, my MBA with the idea of going into finance, because we all know what the landscape was like, at that time, you know, some of the only roles that were available, nothing on Wall Street or anything around there, it was, you know, working through as a rep for either life insurance or health insurance firms. So that's what I was doing. I was selling health insurance, life insurance on commission, you know, and my first experience out of college was all these, like, I thought it was going into this great business world. And then we sit down and it goes, All right, here's your script, memorize the script. This is what you say, this is what you respond with. And like, it felt like a used car salesman. Now, you know, I was good at it. I was good at regurgitating the scripts, and doing it. But, you know, this is like this 22 year old trying to sell you life insurance or health insurance, that empathy isn't there. And I think that's what we're gonna get into is that I had no reference point, I didn't really believe in it, I don't, I'm just selling you a product. And I think that that shines through, that's when you see the used car salesman, that's when you see that that empathy isn't there. And you're, you know, I think these negotiations and even sales, like when it comes down to it, it's about trust, it's about this person that I'm talking to isn't trying to screw me in some way. And I think that the only way to get there is to connect on that empathetic level. I kind of just started rambling. So I don't know if I answered your question correctly. But I'll just leave it there. 

Joe  3:42  

That makes sense. And I think we all we all dread the discussion that we have the use car salesmen, everything's great, until you get to the finance manager's office, and all of a sudden $1,000 turns into $5,000, and all that good stuff. So I mean, people don't generally want to be sold. But if you're solving a problem, they don't mind it. So it's just the question of how we're selling it. And I guess, to your point, your positioning, and so the same thing you see a lot too, with management consultants, Not to disparage our management consultant listeners, but we're talking maybe at best 2425 year olds coming out of MBA programs, and they're advising Exxon Mobil on their diversity, diversification strategies. And it's a question of, well, what experiences a 26 year old have so I guess you mentioned that you were successful in the role even though you knew you felt a little off so I guess, how do you get what what advice do you give people to pour themselves into a role because sometimes you have no choice but to act as if and so What strategies did you employ to really lean your shoulder into the role and figure out how to make it work for better or for worse?

George  4:43  

You know, it was about working on commission 100% Commission. That's really what it was. That's the that was the you know, needed to make money that was it. In the wait, only the only real way to be successful with it is to push yourself into it in that situation. which I didn't really love, which is why I decided to transition out of. And I would say that that you can, you know, fake it for only so long and fake it as long as it's necessary. But it's important and necessary at one point to really move towards something that you're actually going to start to enjoy and love. Because that's the only way to try to really start to become that empathetic with it when you're talking to someone to, to explain that, that empathy within these because it's an arrangement and especially in revenue operations, somebody needs to do something that you don't need to do when you need to do something that somebody else doesn't need to do. And it's this working relationship. And even so if it's not negotiation, you're trying to figure out a certain operations process, a structure of workflow, you know, that in itself is sort of saying, what do you need to get done? What can I provide to that? What do I need that you can provide to me, and the quickest way to get to that point where you're just exchanging it, and it'd be it's becoming more efficient, because I think like that's in the same ilk, of negotiation, as well as in this revenue operations world of figuring out the best process flow, it's how do we get everybody to do what they need to do? Not waste time. And so at the end of the day, nobody feels like they're slighted that they're doing more than the other person. So it doesn't, that's kinda where I see, I know, I kind of kept going, again, through your simple question of, but I think like, that's kind of what it comes down to. 

Jonathan  6:26  

Yeah, and certainly a lot of people think about negotiation from that sales context. But as you lead into a bit there, negotiations happen everywhere, anything, it's all about the frame of reference that you come at it with. And so when you're working within a team or across teams, there needs to be some level of negotiation. But I think people maybe approach it the wrong way at times where they're thinking, negotiation is about I need to win this situation. So in your mindset, and and kind of how you've leveraged negotiation throughout your career. What is that mindset that you use as you're working across teams, and within a team, to ultimately get what you want to accomplish, but not necessarily having it be this combative, like me versus us situation?

George  7:04  

I think it's what Joe hit on before that it's about solving problems, it's solutions. It's about understanding first, what do you need to get done? What do I need to get done? What do you need to get done? Because that's what it boils down to even like a traditional negotiation. It's usually based around money or some type of terms, but in general, we're talking about is we're part of this process flow. What do we all need to do? What is the top goal? How do our teams get involved in it? And where can we bring the most efficient process to it? How? And I think that's in that working, there's, there's only one way to do that effectively. And that's to understand what the other people involved in the process are doing? And how you can best as a group solve that solution?

Joe  7:49  

Because I think the you have your MBA, oh, actually all three of us do, right? So I think one of the classes that was most interesting to me was the negotiations class. And the idea of BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, understanding what people what their BATNA is, going into a conversation really helps. And sometimes that's seen in a negative way to like, well, what are you going to do, you're not gonna, you're not gonna buy this car, what are you going to do, but it's more generally, like, say you are selling a solution. And you're saying, Hey, we're gonna solve XY and Z problem, their BATNA could be, well, I'll just go to the competitor, or I'll just go back to what I've been doing. And that does help you kind of really understand the positioning that you're gonna go. And I use that all the time in my life. So it's be a ti n A, and it's just really, if we don't come to an agreement now, what is both party going to do? And most of the time, it's, both parties are worse for it, especially if you know, for an absolute fact, the solution that you're selling is the right one. So with that preamble, have you had any situations where you've been negotiating an agreement where you know that it's really going to be great for the customer that you're selling, but they are just resistant? For all sorts of reason fighting tooth and nail? And what happens to the ones that don't agree? And how maybe have you brought in some over to the Promised Land? How has that worked?

George  8:59  

Absolutely. And I think that, you know, in my industry in media, you know, when you're selling these solutions, you're not selling like real products, you're selling an idea, you're selling content, you're selling the idea, like, traditionally, if you're not working client direct, you're working with an agency. So you're trying to convince this person at the agency to then convince their client, but this is going to work for them. And you know, as somebody as a salesperson on you know, we'll call it on the gaming media side. We know that in gaming media, and this is a fact the audience of gaming media is highly engaged. You can't you'd be hard pressed to find an engaged a more engaged audience anywhere else in media. We know that the consumer metrics are you know, sometimes two or three times the brand trust all the things you want as a brand are amazing. In this gaming media audience. We still if you look at though the percentage of Have ad dollars that are in gaming media, it's probably like 3% of the business. And why is that, because the majority of dollars are still living on linear on TV, in network prime, where ratings have plummeted. And people are still buying it, because it's almost they're in this comfort zone, they're used to it. And so that's a struggle where you're fighting against this tide of people who are worried on the agency side to trust in gaming media, because they haven't done it before. And, you know, it's going to work for them, who knows what's going to work for their client, and you can only do all these positive things, I've seen people negative sell, I don't think that's the way to go. I think the I think you're already lost when you're at that point when you're negative selling. So you're constantly bringing all of these areas to them. And you know, sometimes you just don't break through something, and then you start to see them, you know, spend on the Superbowl, when you could have taken a fraction of that, and given them a higher engaged audience than what they just did in the Superbowl when they said, We don't have enough money for gaming. Well, you know, sometimes it's frustrating, but some do come through. And you know, when you know, there was a client, I don't want to share specifics, but there was a client who we were able to get over the line. And it was a very basic, you know, spent with us, it was a CPG, it was candy. And they had advertised in a very large platform. I think it was either NCAA or something like that at the time. And they advertised within a very small amount compared to what they spent in the gaming space. And they had told us that the engagement and followings and social metrics they got from ours outweighed what they got in the other space. So I think that it's case studies like that it's keeping on pushing, I think gaming is at that place, in its timeline in media, where we're, we're aware, you know, digital media was 1520 years ago, where you were pushing to try and get everybody to understand that, yeah, this is more addressable than linear than TV. This is more addressable. And, you know, TV was there before when it was just radio. And before that it was print. So I think it's this timeline, where it's our job to be specialists in our own business side, being gaming to then you know, non negative sell. But understand that it's less waste here, especially now, with everybody focusing on efficiency, especially in the advertising space. And just bringing all those positives, I think it's about case studies, it's the proof, to say that, you know, these are people who trusted us to do it. This is the benefit that they saw from it.

Jonathan  12:48  

Got it. And there are certainly many listeners, I think that can attest to situations like that. But then we have, you know, the other side of our listeners and people in roles like yours, that they're maybe not experiencing that sort of negotiation from an external standpoint. But they're having those same type of conversations within their team or across other teams. So you're in a unique perspective, where you get a little bit of both of that. So how did the external negotiation type of dynamics? How do those relate to the internal ones? Are they the same? Are they different? Are there different considerations and considerations? They're

George  13:22  

the very, I think they're different, at least in my experience, I think external negotiations are generally going to have some very key points, it's generally going to be about a business revenue, you know, price, at least in my experience, like those have always been those external negotiations, that that's the key, you're trying to make a partnership. But at the same time, at the end of the day, it comes down to a very major piece, and that's price. So you know, you come to terms there, and you try and focus on the other aspects. And I think that's where it's super important, where, you know, it's this main piece that you need to come to terms on. So that's what I think it's the most important to understand the other side of the conversation, because that's these, these other qualitative pieces are the ones where you can then have to sell through on either side, where it's going to work, a partnership like this is going to work, do they have a certain like, from my experience? Do they have a certain type of media that aligns with a large initiative that you already have internally, you only find that out through conversation and understanding more about the other side of it. So I think that's like the external piece, internally, I think, are almost harder, to be honest, because it's not as simple. There's personalities, you're managing different personalities, you're working with these people. It's not if this doesn't work out, you know, I don't want to talk to this person anymore. You are very much likely going to be in a meeting with that person in an hour. So I think that internal are almost harder because there's more of an emotional aspect to it as much as you don't want it to influence that. You want it to work out. You Even you want them to feel good at the end of it, both parties, because it's going to have effects later on when you're going to eventually have to do another sort of negotiation internally with it.

Joe  15:12  

It's something that we see a lot with our clients because we help them execute their strategic plans. And some of the plans that are not in the best position to be executed are way too big. And why are those plans too big, because nobody wants to say no, because they want to avoid the conversations that you're referencing. So somebody comes to them and say, I think we should work on this initiative this year. And on the surface, that actually probably could be pretty good. But if you take a look at it maybe a little bit further, maybe it costs too much, or it's going to take too long. And you know, the idea of telling somebody that their idea is bad by saying no makes people avoid that conversation. And so techniques that have been studied and really deployed, have really mentioning that you validated the person who brings the idea to you to say this is by all means a good idea. But it is kind of fallen victim to bad timing in this situation, it's not going to make the cut for this planning cycle. But for these reasons, not because it's not a good idea, if we validate you, but we are going to revisit it and don't make that lip service actually have a mechanism to put good ideas on some sort of parking lot, or some sort of list that is revisited. And be it sends the right message, you can't get everything into the plan. Because if the plan is too big, it's gonna be it's gonna fail. So if we only have this much space, what can we put in there, we have to be very protective. And you're gonna have to say no people once in a while, you have to say no, and the way that you phrase the no and the way you go it, you do that a couple of times, you'll start to stop fearing that, and ultimately, hopefully have a shorter list of to dues and higher outcomes. That's at least what I've seen people do. Do you have anything? Any stories to riff off of that in terms of saying no, and it went better than you expected? Or maybe even worse than you'd expect with so

George  16:45  

many? So, so many, I was actually going to ask the question, as well, to you. I'm super interested to see your experiences, it seems like it's going to be the same anywhere. But as a third party, you know, you almost How do you do you have to eliminate that emotional aspect? Completely? Like for you, I think like as whether it's in consulting or as a third party, you're coming in from this outside view? It's, do you come in with a checklist? And it's just did you check these boxes? Nope. Okay, we're not doing it is sort of like that, obviously, with a little bit more bedside manner. But more or less, I'm just curious, like, that's, that's probably the process that you all approach. You're

Joe  17:23  

gonna take a crack at it is Jonathan to this was in this life for a long time. And I'm still living that life. 

Jonathan  17:28  

Yeah, I think honestly, relates, actually to a conversation I had with a team member recently, where it was about, you know, how do you make decisions, when maybe you're not the expert in that field? Or in maybe the person that's asking you a question they know way more about what they're doing, then you actually do in your goal in that situation, is not to actually make a decision based off of the facts. It's to assess whether they're doing their homework, and actually coming to the table with the right mindset, the right action plan the right steps forward. And so when you're having a situation, in my perspective, where there's multiple different options, you're not necessarily always saying, Hey, this is the best option, because you're not going to actually know all the ins and outs of all those situations, you're giving your perspective on, did we prepare our assessment on these options in the best way possible? And therefore, you know, do we have any follow up questions that can confirm that and use that for the so that then the people on the other side can actually make the decision themselves? So you're not making the decision? You're guiding them to ask the questions that then they can make the decision on their own?

George  18:34  

That makes a lot of sense. And I think, to answer your question before about my experience, on my side, I think that in these revenue operations roles, you are saying no, that knew more than you were saying yes, in, you know, things to take on different initiatives. And I have found is most important to, you know, I think what Jonathan was just saying to it's more we come to an agreement together, it's not me saying no. And if I know in the situation that for whatever reason, either the numbers aren't going to work, the timelines not going to work. Trying not to say no at the onset, but saying, Okay, how is like working with the person and going through with it's a timeline issue, working through them that timeline, okay, how is this going to work in real life? And then we work on it together? Oh, but you know, but now, it's gone too long. You see that? Right? And so if they don't have an answer, hopefully, because again, like Jonathan was saying, I don't know on their end, because I'm not the specialist there. I'm trying to get them to a point to leads educate me on a way to get past it, or them come to the realization themselves. Like, this isn't gonna work. So let's find a different solution. So I think like time permitting, that's kind of how I like to approach it. It's always better to have them realize it's a no than you saying, No.

Joe  19:51  

If we're working with the client to help them build their plan, which we do quite often I'll sit in a room with like 30 people and we're starting from scratch and I'm not typically a subject matter expert on it. Every vertical we work in, but I am a subject matter expert on what makes a good plan. So you're working with them, you're they're throwing their ideas out. Me being agnostic, I can see if an initiative isn't worded in a way that makes sense. So if I'm an outsider, I always say, write your plan in a way that if somebody from another department were to glance at what you say you're going to do, they're not going to have to like squint and like what is this, and but you also don't want it to be so opaque that you have to read 10 paragraphs to understand. So there's a sweet spot there. And so word smithing, and that is important. And you have four focus areas. Focus Area three has 150 items, focus area number two is three. So clearly, you're you're not prioritizing everything equally, there's like small things like that, that allow you for them to come to their own conclusion, because that's the other thing too, especially being a third party, you can't come in super heavy handed and say, yep, that plan is bad. Yep, get rid of that, because that's just going to alienate them. And nor am I in a position to say it. But there's some basic tenants of planning that you can point you to say, you have way too many items, we need to call this down, what ones you choose to get rid of is up to you. But objectively speaking, we need to get this list smaller. And so that's how I've seen it to be this like I am the third party, agnostic observer, here are my viewpoints. And I think you'll know this based on research. And then at that point, they usually take you up on your suggestions, and it's their it's their decision, not yours, you are a guest at the end of the day. Yeah,

George  21:19  

that makes a lot of sense. Because you're also I think building trust, right, you have to get that trust there, at least to a certain level that to your point, you're not just this, no, you're not just this bit like the bobs from office space. You're not just coming in there like them, like they want to trust you, they want to know that you're there to help not just to cut off the top. So I mean, I, I get it, because I feel like that at certain times, too, especially building out a revenue operations team for a company like eg they never had one. And so it was this fast pace growing, where they focused on revenue, revenue, revenue revenue, and then they realized over time, there's no structure to base the growth on so then they pulled back and have now built out, you know, a revenue operations team, a planning team, all these different pieces where this growth and scaled growth can start to grow from but that transition process, you felt like a consultant, half the time coming in, even though you're working at this company, because you were saying, well, we can't really do this, we'd like this anymore. It has the resources have to go here. So I get it, I think anyway. Yeah.

Jonathan  22:28  

Yeah, certainly. And you know, the underlying piece thing coming to all of this is back to Joe's point earlier is understanding the BATNA or, or what's in it for the other person on the other side of the table is sometimes it's pretty easy. Probably most of the time, it's it's not that easy. And it's a challenge for organizations, not necessarily they don't think about the factor. But there's some sort of disconnect, either up and down with an organization or across an organization. Not with like, what are we actually going to do, but in my experience, most time, it's how are we going to get this done? In your experience? What techniques do you do to understand actually how things work with an organization? And not just what are you going to do with any organization, because I think that does play a part into it? Absolutely.

George  23:11  

You need to invest in meetings with different departments, I would say it's your schedule, and not so much where you're inundated. But I think the only way to truly understand it is to talk to the people from different departments, understand their workflow, sit in on calls to even if they'll allow you to just to shadow and understand like what goes on when you're not involved, just to see a process go on, almost take that consultant approach to it to understand what's going on within this world to then apply it to your side of the business. And I think it's really just about understanding and the only way I found you can do it is through conversation, you know, and continuous you can't meet with somebody once a quarter and think you're going to understand their group. It's one so it's it's it's twice a month. It's you know, it's a slog, it really is, I think, like eventually you can get that to be less frequent, but especially like jumping into a business, if you're really trying to feel you should be meeting with all these different at least once a week to just try and understand it. Because I for me, that's the only way I think it works.

Joe  24:19  

It's interesting because it brings me back to the idea of your closest friends, the ones that you proximity wise you're closest to and there's there are exceptions, right? We all remember freshman year living in a dorm like you couldn't have been tighter with the people on the sixth floor of Seton Hall, right? The best buds but then next year, you move through different dorm and all of a sudden, you know you're still friends. It's not the same idea. So the idea of having familiarity with somebody meeting with them regularly, it just automatically is going to build trust. And it's funny that word trust came up. I actually spent the day yesterday in New York at the Salesforce World Tour event that they do a bunch of them and they had a an hour and a half keynote and it was their CTO of co founder etc. They must have said the word Trust about 5000 times because As in their business, originally it was take all of your data and put it in the cloud, they had to fight that idea, right? Like, Well, I'm not putting stuff in the cloud, that's where things get stolen. So now they're over that hurdle. Now it's AI, trust us that your data is not going to go crazy because we have AI. And the idea is they're saying the word over and over again, that's only one thing. The other thing is, especially coming into a role, I'm going to learn from you all I'm going to do listening tours, I'm going to see what you have to say, if you do it once. And never again, that's going to obviously not building anything, but to your point, weekly, touchpoints, whatever that makes the most sense. It has to be consistent, and it has to be genuine. And if you do that, over time, trust will just automatically build. Some people want to take the shortcut, or they'll say I did two calls with them. I've learned everything I need to learn, I'm good. It doesn't lead anywhere, you know, it doesn't lead to a place that you want to get to. And it's a tough road. And it looks like a lot of work. And most people not most, I'd say a lot of people feel they're good after maybe one or two touch points. But it sounds like more more the merrier.

George  25:57  

Yeah, I mean, if you if you are good after one or two touch points, good for you, then. But I doubt it. I agree with you. I doubt it. I think that too. Being having an open mind helps with that as in, if you come in, especially being new to accompany, especially in a role like revenue operations, you know, you're coming likely from another organization where you had a certain process that either worked or didn't. So you have your opinions, I think that it's good to have a plan coming into place. But understanding that it needs to be able to pivot, it needs to be a malleable plan, as much as it's supposed to have certain, you know, points that you want to hit. In this process. As you're learning more, you need to be able to at least pivot and edit it to make for the new things that you're learning. And I think that that is one of the most as much as is important to understand the other pieces that your your plan being valuable is also if not, if it's one in two, it's one a one b like I think those two key points, understanding the other departments and being able to understand that your plan needs to be able to pivot are the two major things that make a revenue in operations, any kind of operations processes structure successful.

Jonathan  27:10  

Got it yet, but it makes sense. I think we kicked off this this question the conversation early thinking about how does it inform you about it, but it can bring in a full circle back to the beginning. It likely has its benefits for then, you know, when you get back in those negotiations, or you have to say no, how has these weekly touch points or embracing relationships with other teams? How has that impacted then when you do have to have those tough conversations.

George  27:39  

It's the trust not to go back to it, but the trust is developed your because you're not just and you know, it is difficult, for me at least like we're all remote work, at least in the northeast area for my company. So it's very important for continuous touchpoints. But it's also important, I think that when you have the opportunity to meet in person, because that connection is very much still very different, and you can't replace it. But it all works to the same piece that you're trying to get to know this person, what you need to do in order to have these tough conversations for them not to completely go sell immediately, you need them to understand that you're not just face you're human. And at the same point, you have to understand that that's what this person is they they're not just this entity and accompany. They're, you know, they're they're human, they're real person with other things outside of it. The personality, likes dislikes. And so you know, the more you know about that, I think it only makes those nose easier, because the more information that you have within that you can address this as you need to address the nose as more of a person, not just an entity. And I think like that's what makes it more important that you know that connection.

Joe  28:46  

The old adage you buy who you buy from who you like, right? I mean, the wedding be sweet to the Super Bowl, there wouldn't be, you know, big expensive budgets for stakes. For some people. That wasn't the case. So that makes a heck of a lot of sense. But as you can imagine, we could talk about this topic. It used to be that it used to be that yet nevertheless, though, these days, right, yeah. As we're thinking about this topic, we're gonna we have to unfortunately draw to a close but we do ask a question of every guests, we have the same question to get their perspective, which would be if you can transport yourself back into when you started your career in Reb ops and strategy, what advice would you give yourself?

George  29:22  

Oh, man, Jon.

I think that have more understand that it's not going to be one thing that you're going to have to understand that revenue operations is not like when I went into revenue operations, like I really thought it was this one team where it was very, very standard. We were just going to be running analytics and, you know, think looking at different lines of the business. Understand the fact that you really need to understand those other sides of the business. You need to experience those other started to the business to be successful in the revenue operations space because you are that linchpin to everything. And the only way to be like, really successful and actually do it is to understand those pieces inherently and not be afraid to do it. I think at the beginning when I got into it, that's where I was looking at this and it became this monster of, Wow, I didn't know all of these different pieces really run through this department. I didn't know that I needed to understand as much about sales as I do about accounting as I do about finance, and they're, they're so different in their own. So I think understanding that was probably very great.

Jonathan  30:37  

Yeah, that's a perfect cap on the conversation. George, we enjoyed our time with you today and certainly learned a lot and I hope our listeners as well and look forward to future conversations. Sometimes you

George  30:48  

This is a pleasure. Thank you both. Alrighty, Thanks, George.