How do you negotiate the terms of the deal?
(price, quantity, payment terms, delivery, and more)
Dealboard’s
research indicates the overwhelming majority of the seafood industry
relies on text messaging – Skype, iMessage, WhatsApp, WeChat and more.
Here
is yet another example of technology under-serving the seafood industry,
because these methods of communication introduce problematic
situations for something as important as the terms of the deal for a large
seafood transaction between two companies.
Problem
1: Did the Chicken or the Egg Come First?
Seafood
deals require agreement on a lot of different terms and conditions, requiring exchange of many messages to arrive at an agreement.
Unfortunately, since messages cross each other, the sequence in which you see your messages may not be the same as the
sequence seen by the recipient. This means you see the discussion differently.
Consider how confusing it is to rely on text messaging for something much simpler than negotiating a seafood transaction - such as arranging to meet my son for dinner later in the week. This simple task falls down under the constraints of text messaging. To understand why, read the text exchange pictured below:
What is it that we agreed to, exactly? I have no idea whether he likes the time, the first location, or the second location I proposed.
Text messaging leaves dangerously wide room for interpretation. Do you want your trading partners to misunderstand shipping information? Payment terms? Price or quantity?