Negotiate sales or lease agreements for products or services
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This work is the relationship itself. An agent can prepare for it and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter needs a person present and answerable.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Relationships, negotiation and public-facing presence |
| Jobs that do it | 11 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others (4.A.4.a.7) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 11 occupations that perform it.
- Prepare and negotiate advertising and sales contracts.
- Negotiate materials prices with suppliers.
- Represent companies in negotiating contracts and formulating policies with suppliers.
- Contract with vendors to provide employee services, such as food services, transportation, or relocation service.
- Contract with vendors to provide employee services, such as food service, transportation, or relocation service.
- Negotiate with buyers for the sale, storage, or shipment of crops or livestock.
- Schedule use of facilities or catering services for events such as banquets or receptions, and negotiate details of arrangements with clients.
- Meet with clients to negotiate management and service contracts, determine priorities, and discuss the financial and operational status of properties.
- Negotiate contracts for prearranged funeral services.
- Negotiate terms and conditions of agreements and contracts for forest harvesting, forest management and leasing of forest lands.
- Gather all relevant material for bid processes, and coordinate bidding and contract approval.
- Negotiate the sale, lease, or development of property and complete or review appropriate documents and forms.
- Negotiate short- and long-term loans to finance construction and ownership of structures.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. An assistant can prepare you for the encounter and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter itself is the work and it needs you in it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
Who does this work
11 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Advertising and Promotions Managers
- Advertising Sales Agents
- Compensation and Benefits Managers
- Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers
- Food Service Managers
- Foresters
- Funeral Home Managers
- Human Resources Managers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
- Purchasing Managers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Negotiate contracts or agreements”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.