Training Procurement Personnel in Negotiating Skills Available to Purchase

Considerable interest has been shown recently in developing the negotiating skills of procurement personnel. This article outlines one approach to such development which has been used in in‐company training programmes. It describes the simulation method which has been used as the core of more than 200 such programmes, presents the results of a research study carried out in 12 of the 70 corporations in Europe which have participated in these training programmes, and sets out some conclusions which have been drawn from the empirical knowledge gained in running the whole series of programmes. It is hoped that this discussion will prove useful to procurement managers, management trainers, business school professors, and others who are concerned with the development of negotiating skills.