Engagement brief · for heads of procurement & supply chain

Train your procurement team on the deals it’s carrying right now.

A one-to-three-day engagement with Ruth Shlossman, built on the Four Games doctrine. Every team finishes a HIPPO Diplomatic Brief™ on a real, current negotiation before the room empties — which is how single participants keep reporting six-figure outcomes.

Request a scoping call → See the fee, drawn to scale

Backed by the No Regret Guarantee™

Scoped in discovery · in-person or virtual · teams of 8–40

Field diagnosis

Technically excellent.
Structurally overridden.

We find this pattern inside strong procurement functions: the skills are there, the outcomes aren’t. Your team knows the process — RFPs, scorecards, clauses. Nobody trained them for the other three games running in every deal: the human one, the political one, the systems one. That gap is where deals go sideways.

If more than two of these read like last quarter, the problem isn’t skill. It’s sight.

[×]The executive bypass. A stakeholder goes around the team “just this once,” and the once becomes the norm.
[×]The Friday deadline. Vendors set the tempo, and your team inherits urgency it never created.
[×]The invisible win. Prevented disasters never hit the P&L, so the function is measured only on the savings line.
[×]The squeezed supplier. Short-term pressure degrading the exact capability you’ll need in the next crisis.
[×]The blame rotation. When a contract goes wrong, the team that flagged the risk is the team that wears it.

Exhibit D: The executive bypass, mappedthe most expensive line in your org chart

EVERY BYPASS IS A NEGOTIATION YOUR ENTERPRISE RUNS UNPREPARED. A MANDATE CAN’T CLOSE THAT ARC. A TEAM WORTH ROUTING THROUGH CAN.

The doctrine · what your team was never trained to see

Every negotiation is four games,
played at once.

01 The Commercial Game

What’s actually on the table?

Price, terms, risk. The game your team’s training covered, and the only one most negotiators ever see.

Comparative doctrine

The old way ran on Commercial Myopia.
The Diplomat way runs on sight.

This is the shift the engagement installs — not a new script for your team to recite, but a different question at the top of every deal.

The old way	The Diplomat way
“What do they want?”	“What are they protecting?”
Negotiate the price	Negotiate the terrain
React to urgency	Diagnose urgency as a signal
Split the pie	Expand the pie
Win the meeting	Prevent the crisis the meeting was about
Procurement as cost center	Procurement as stewardship

The instrument

Every engagement ends with this document, filled in.

The HIPPO Diplomatic Brief™: the preparation instrument every Procurement Diplomat completes before a major negotiation.

Your team completes it live, in the room, on a deal they are facing this quarter. Not a case study. Theirs.

Objectives. Stakeholders. The Four Games. Shadow Shark Watch. The Bigger Pie search. A named walk-away position.

And at the top of the page, the question that reorganizes everything beneath it: what regret is this deal capable of creating, and how do we prevent it?

Deal / counterparty

Logistics master agreement, renewal, FY27

1 · Objective, the enterprise interest we are protecting

Freight capability through two peak seasons; not “best price”

2 · Stakeholder map

Ops VP · CFO · vendor account lead · vendor’s regional director · plant managers ×3

3 · The Four Games

Commercial: rate + fuel clause · Human: account lead fears losing the logo · Political: their Q3 volume target · Systems: what this precedent makes normal

5 · Shadow Shark watch

Expect: false deadline (“expires Friday”) + artificial scarcity on capacity

6 · Bigger Pie search

Volume commitment ↔ rate lock + service tier upgrade

9 · Prevented Regret target

A 5-year rate we’d regret by month 7

Prepared · Before posture

Deliverables

Three instruments your function keeps.

Each engagement is scoped to your team’s size and stakes — a single high-value renewal, or a full function rebuild. The deliverables are working documents, not binders:

Artifact 01

Completed HIPPO Briefs™

One per participating team, each on a live deal. The preparation alone routinely covers the workshop fee before the engagement ends.

Artifact 02

Driver Mapping Canvas™

Customized to your industry and supplier base. Its center column is the one most teams never fill in: not what each stakeholder is asking for — what they’re protecting.

Artifact 03

Prevented Regret Debrief™

A post-negotiation process your team runs independently, forever. This is the mechanism that finally makes prevention visible to your CFO.

Documented in participant debriefs

The fee, drawn to scale.

The gold bar is the entire engagement fee, at the very top of its range. Every bar under it is one participant’s reported outcome after Castle Negotiations training.

$50K The engagement · top of range

The full fee for the largest engagement we scope. Most come in well under it.

$3.7M Automotive procurement lead · Michigan

In piece price across 7 rounds, sourced 1.5% above the target the team had set.

€800K VP Procurement · DexKo Global

Protected on a sole-source relocation where the supplier opened at double the price.

$600K Participant debrief · 2017 cohort

Saved in testing by identifying the issues and opening from a prepared position.

$500K+ Participant debrief · 2017 cohort

In contract spend, negotiated with confidence. “Suppliers take you more seriously after.”

€250K Category lead · AL-KO Vehicle Technology

Per year, after a Driver Map revealed the supplier’s true interest was more orders, not a 20% increase.

Also on file: a customer demanded a 25% price rollback. The prepared team settled at 6% — a 19-point swing. Director of Sales · Dexter Axle

All figures reported by participants in written debriefs after Castle Negotiations engagements. Euro amounts drawn at dollar parity for scale. We log missions, not marketing claims.

If this page was forwarded to you

You’re likely the one who approves this budget, so here is the short version. The investment: $10,000–$50,000+, scoped to team size and stakes. The format: one to three days, in-person or virtual, for 8–40 people. The output: every team finishes a written negotiation plan on a deal it is carrying this quarter, plus a debrief process that makes prevented losses visible on paper. The exit: the scoping call costs nothing and ends with a written diagnosis of your function, whether or not you engage.

Debriefs · declassified

Anatomy of an €800K save.

The supplier who wanted double.

The setup. A sole-sourced product. No short-term alternative supplier. The vendor announces they are closing the production site, and offers to relocate production to France if the price doubles. A textbook Shadow Shark opening: real leverage, theatrical framing.

The old-way instinct. Panic math. Accept 2× as the anchor, fight to land at 1.7×, call it a win, and quietly absorb the requalification costs.

The Diplomat move. Bernd’s team refused the anchor entirely. They established common ground, reversed the hardball framing, and rebuilt the number from raw-material reality instead of from the vendor’s opening position.

The prevented regret. A price increase below half of what was demanded, roughly €800,000 protected, plus every qualification, testing, and travel cost that never had to exist.

“Instead of agreeing to double the price, we secured an increase below 50%.”
Bernd Holzinger · VP Procurement, DexKo Global

Regret · Prevented

Debrief · cross-functional rollout

“Ruth trained a cross-functional, cross-generational group in conflict management. Everyone, from Associate to SVP, uses her tools now. There’s even a waitlist for the next round.”

Stephanie Lind · Founder & CEO, ESA (ex-Impossible Foods)

Debrief · the consultant’s consultant

“I have hired Ruth as a third party to train clients my firm is working for, because she does such a good job.”

Brett Meyer · Partner, AlixPartners

Debrief · function-level ROI

“Hundreds of employees trained… both sales and procurement functions improved outcomes by a large margin. ROI in Ruth is extremely high.”

David Peck · Head of Supply Chain, Dunes Point Capital

Debrief · reading difficult rooms

“What is truly special about her was her ability to effortlessly customize her material on the fly to the needs of the specific, and in most cases difficult, people and situation.”

Tom Jacobson · Managing Director, Accenture

The Cartographer’s record

Ruth Shlossman has spent 25 years
mapping rooms like yours.

Harvard-trained M.Ed. Founder & CEO of Castle Negotiations Consulting Group. Her clients call her the Ted Lasso of negotiating: warm on the surface, ruthless about preparation underneath. She delivers every engagement herself.

$1B+in value created, protected, and captured through stronger agreements

10K+professionals trained, from new hires to senior executives

25+years as a front-line negotiator and strategist in live deals

In the field with: BAE SystemsAccentureAlixPartnersKPS Capital PartnersChart IndustriesInstitute for Management Studies

The engagement path

From first call to trained function in three steps.

The scoping call is a working diagnosis, not a pitch. You leave it with a named Prevented Regret target for your function and a read on which of the Four Games your team is weakest in — whether or not we ever work together.

Preparation is profit. We practice the doctrine we teach, starting with how we scope.

45 minutes · this month

The scoping call

We map your function’s terrain: where deals go sideways, which game is being lost, what a regret costs you. You get the diagnosis in writing.

Within 10 days

The engagement design

A proposal in the doctrine’s own format: your diagnosis, the reframe, the engagement design, deliverables, investment, and the specific future problem this engagement exists to prevent.

Scoped: 1–3 days · in-person or virtual

The intervention

Built around the Four Games. Ends with every team completing a live HIPPO Diplomatic Brief™ on a real, current deal, and a debrief process your CFO will actually see.

Asked and answered

The three questions every head of procurement asks.

“This sounds like negotiation training with new names for old concepts.”

Fair to ask. The difference is the object of study. Most negotiation training teaches tactics for a fixed pie. The Four Games and Driver Mapping™ diagnose what’s happening underneath a negotiation — the political and human layers most training ignores — so the pie can grow before anyone starts dividing it.

“We already have a procurement training vendor.”

Then ask them one question: does their program produce a documented Prevented Regret story, or a certificate of attendance? That answer usually settles it.

“$10,000–$50,000 feels like a lot for a workshop.”

It’s priced the way a strategic consulting engagement is priced, because the goal is the same: protecting long-term enterprise value. For calibration, scroll back to the fee drawn to scale: one participant’s single debrief protected €800,000. One regretted contract costs more than every tier of this engagement combined.

The calendar, plainly

Why July 26 is a real date,
not a marketing one.

We teach people to see through manufactured deadlines, so we don’t use them. Here is the actual logistics: Ruth delivers six enterprise engagements per quarter, discovery-to-delivery takes about six weeks, and Q4 windows are assigned in scoping order. On Monday, July 27, the fall calendar gets locked.

Q4 2026 · delivery windows

OCT · W1-2Held

OCT · W3-4Held

NOV · W1-2Open

NOV · W3-4Open

DEC · W1-2Open

DEC · W3Open

Scoping calls completed by Sunday, July 26 can still be designed, proposed, and delivered inside 2026. After that, we’re honestly and unapologetically scheduling for Q1.

The first move

Book the scoping call.
Leave with a diagnosis either way.

45 minutes with Ruth. Your function’s terrain, mapped. The regret you’re currently on course to sign, named.

Request a scoping call → Or take the free Pre-Brief first

202-249-7614 · ruths@castlenegotiate.com

The No Regret Guarantee™

We believe this engagement will fundamentally change the way your team prepares, negotiates and influences commercial outcomes. If your team fully participates and you genuinely don’t believe the engagement has delivered that transformation, we’ll refund your investment.

We teach procurement teams to prevent commercial regret. The last thing we want is for you to experience it by choosing us.

Technically excellent.Structurally overridden.

Every negotiation is four games,played at once.

The old way ran on Commercial Myopia.The Diplomat way runs on sight.