Featured Member: Negotiations Ninja

While running companies large and small, C-suite executives face a plethora of different challenges that require mediation. The best CEOs may seek guidance to learn how to communicate effectively, in order to resolve issues equitably.

Negotiations Ninja, a Calgary-based organization founded in 2017, is made up of Canada’s foremost experts in negotiation, persuasion, influence and conflict resolution. They deliver negotiations skills training and education to industry frontrunners, drawn from years of experience that can change a company’s worst of times to the best of times.

A dare and a podcast

Founder and CEO Mark Raffan is a multi-award-winning negotiation trainer, speaker, blogger, podcast host, renowned negotiation expert and entrepreneur. However, if he hadn’t gone out with friends one night, Negotiations Ninja might not have happened quite so quickly. But they proposed a dare.

“I was complaining to a few friends in a bar that there was no great negotiations content out there, and they said don’t complain about it, do something about it. I had a few more drinks and I said, ‘I will do something!’” The next day I started the Negotiations Ninja podcast, which turned into Negotiations Ninja, the training company.”

The podcast was a huge success, attracting readers and listeners worldwide.

"And we continue to bring in communication, negotiation and conflict resolution experts from every field, including the arts, psychology and many other areas,” says Mark. “My guests are leaders in their chosen industries. They openly share their unique insights about what they think are the best ways to approach obstacles.” Invitees either work for global organizations or they run their own large businesses, eager to impart their knowledge, such as Nokukhanya (Nox) Ntuli of World Bank or former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, among other luminaries.

Mark was still working for another firm while pursuing his influential podcast, but it didn’t take long for people to reach out to Mark for face-to-face training. “The inbound requests became so great, I could no longer ignore them,” he says. “I decided to leave the corporate world to develop Negotiations Ninja full time.”

Today, the organization delivers training onsite to the largest companies in the world, or virtually if the client prefers. “We’ve travelled to almost every continent, delivering our courses,” Mark says. “As my wife will tell you, I live in a plane.”

Born to broker

The skill of negotiating takes great learning, creativity and seasoned experience. Mark seemed destined for the role. Even though he followed the “corporate blueprint” after university and didn’t consider entrepreneurship until his 30s, everything he gained was fodder for his future enterprise. Being born and raised in a household of entrepreneurs in South Africa meant he knew innately what he was undertaking in his independent initiative.

“I come from a bloodline of entrepreneurs who don’t fit well within the corporate purview,” he says. “Entrepreneurship has always been an option in our family, and it’s always been celebrated. We never shied away from conflict or negotiation, and it helped me to be comfortable with difficult conversations.”

Clearing the air for success

Most trainers at Negotiations Ninja have extensive B2B experience and they focus on three prime areas: sales, procurement and human resources. Many factors can create obstacles, including mergers and acquisitions conflicts, legal terms and conditions conflicts or internally with employees or executive teams.

“As good negotiators, we seek first to understand the problem, to borrow a classic line from Stephen Covey,” says Mark. “We seek first to understand why that obstacle exists and what brought it about, because we can’t really solve the problem or help the customer solve the problem without first understanding why it’s there. We start by listening to the client’s concern, then we explore and understand what it is the client is saying. Once that’s established, we can collaboratively work with that client to try and come up with a solution to the problem that makes sense.”

With B2B businesses, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.

“Let’s say you’ve recently acquired some oil and gas equipment in Calgary and it looks like it’s faulty,” he says. “The client might want their money back or the equipment replaced. The salesperson, however, disagrees, maintaining the equipment was fine when it was shipped, so the wrongdoing must be with the purchaser when the equipment was unloaded. So now, we have a conflict where one side believes it’s the other side’s fault. We resolve by seeking to understand with some root-cause analysis, to understand what the cost of the problem is and how equitably we can solve that problem between both parties. Generally, we would step in to coach or mediate between those two parties to be able to resolve that conflict.”

Calgary as chosen headquarters

Mark could have lived anywhere on the planet, but in 2001, he chose to live in Calgary.

“Calgary is a phenomenal place to live and work,” he says. “The amount of talent here is truly amazing. I find Calgary a friendly place—small enough to feel community-oriented, big enough to feel like a happening place.”

For more information, visit https://negotiations.ninja. A new episode of the Negotiations Ninja podcast is released every Monday, with a throwback episode on Thursdays. And available on Amazon, Mark’s new book, 9 Secrets to Win Deals and Influence Stakeholders: A Field Guide to B2B Negotiations, demystifies the negotiation process and shares coveted trade secrets for success.