We Are Fearless — Case Study

Re-negotiating a £multi million client contract in the face of tough economic headwinds.
The enabler: Piscari’s advanced RFP negotiation support.

The Client

WeAreFearless is an awardwinning integrated sports, esports and entertainment agency, committed to solving business challenges differently by harnessing the power of psychology and creativity.

Garry Dods (Founder/MD) and Mike Harland (Managing Partner for Digital), recognised that a forthcoming client re-negotiation was going to be challenging due to a rapidly changing world, pressure on budgets and the introduction of a 3rd party procurement agency.

Piscari spent time understanding the history of the relationship with the client, the results and key challenges. This culminated in the development of a negotiation strategy and tactics document that was iterated as the negotiations developed.

“As an agency, we strongly believe in a bold creative approach to meet the needs of our clients’ challenges. However, it’s not boldness without backup, as every creative solution is supported by insight and evidence as to why it will be effective. The knowledge shared by the Piscari team has similarly given us the backup to be more confident in our future negotiations, better understanding of the process to follow and to strategically understand when to push, hold, or step back to achieve our objectives.”

Mike Harland, Managing Partner Digital, WeAreFearless

The Challenges

WeAreFearless worked with Piscari to help them understand, and prepare for, negotiations that would address the following challenges:

  • Rate cards hadn’t changed for over 4 years, yet input costs had gone up dramatically.
  • The client had appointed a third party procurement consultancy.
  • The economic inflation forecast could peak at 11% pa.
  • Exchange rate risk had now become a very real issue.
  • The three year extension negotiation wasn’t going to be a walk-in-the-park.

The Approach

Working with Garry, Mike and their team over a six month period (two months strategy/planning and four months of a negotiate-replan-engage cycle), Piscari did the following:

  • Interviewed staff to understand the detailed context, issues and opportunities.
  • Built a negotiation strategy document.
  • Refined the strategy between Garry and Mike and developed a tactical plan.
  • Provided coaching/mentoring support pre-and-post meetings with the client’s third party negotiation consultancy and the client.
  • Helped WeAreFearless build a defendable and logical response to challenging positions resulting in a successful outcome for both client and WeAreFearless.

Outcomes and Benefits

Measured over a six month period, WeAreFearless have seen the following benefits from working with Piscari:

  • Increased confidence when entering difficult, and often complex, contract or scope-of-work negotiations.
  • Signed a three year agreement with improved commercial terms and benefits for both parties.
  • Strengthened relationships with a key strategic client, underpinned by rigorous preparation, and an ability to take the emotion out of the negotiations

What’s Next for WeAreFearless?

WeAreFearless is set for considerable growth in the coming years despite the economic headwinds. One of the key enablers of this growth will be the ongoing optimisation of the sales, negotiation and ongoing cost and profitability management capability around larger/complex deals. The work done over the last six months is undoubtedly important to support this next stage of growth.

Piscari’s Negotiation and Procurement Insights service
Mike Lander,
CEO Piscari

Why Piscari? Our Difference

We asked Garry and Mike from WeAreFearless: “How is Piscari different from other negotiation mentor/coaches?” These are some of the things they said about us:

  • Very hands on. Took the time to understand our business and the key stakeholders and become part of the team.
  • Flexibility & perseverance. It wasn’t a traditional procurement process. In fact, the procurement team were pushed to the side at one point with the client disagreeing with both Fearless and the hired procurement teams rate proposal. The Piscari team were with us through these unexpected twists, offering us advice on how to best roll with these punches.
  • Experience – a depth of knowledge around our industry and how both the marketing and the procurement teams operate.

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