Best Practices for Bargaining --Winning

Win-Win Negotiations

Jul 27, 2009 Jacqueline Trovato

How does someone do win-win? Give the other side concessions.

Most people feel good when they get concessions. They give them bragging rights. They’re unmistakable proof of a successful hunt. They drag them back to their corporate den and celebrate them with the negotiating equivalent of an end-zone dance.

Offering Concessions

How does someone give concessions without giving away the ranch in process? By doing the two most important things good negotiators do. First: by getting something in return (trading concessions, not just giving them away). Second: by doing the old negotiating two-step—opening with an assertive offer, and then, as the talks progress, deliberately dropping back to the real target.

Start High, Drop Back

The little maneuver (start assertively high, then drop back) is a central feature of win-win negotiating. But this seems like such an inefficient way to come to terms—why start high only to drop back to a “fairer” position? Why not just tell it like it is with a firm, fair initial offer and skip all the rest? Because, the other side needs this to save face.

It seems that a firm, fair reasonable offer, seeking what is only truly needed with no fluff added, is a logical and honest thing to propose. From the counterpart’s viewpoint, the offer doesn’t look firm, fair, and reasonable at all. Instead, it looks inflexible, self-righteous, and pigheaded. The other side neither knows nor cares that the offer was pared to the bone before it was made. They know only that nothing they say or do is having even the slightest influence on what they thought was an offer but with each passing second looks more like…an ultimatum!

Who knew they would think this fair, un-inflated offer would be perceived as an ultimatum? Thanks to the “firm, fair” gambit, the discussions now have only two possible outcomes and they are both terrible: unconditional acceptance of the first offer (and loss of face) by the other side, or deadlock. So much for telling it like it is.

The Theatrics of Negotiation

If that start high-drop-back routine feels a bit theatrical, it’s no accident. Theater permeates negotiation. Bargaining is like a ritualized kabuki play in which the negotiators are both actors and audience. It would all be so much easier if people could just state their needs without embellishment and be answered with dispassionate logic. The elaborate pas de deux of negotiating is a frustratingly inefficient, roundabout, sometimes tortuous process.

But it’s what humans do. They do it because it fulfills some deep human need to make a difference, to have control, to be competent, to do well. Like it or not, everyone is wired for the melodrama of negotiation.

The copyright of the article Best Practices for Bargaining --Winning in Business Management is owned by Jacqueline Trovato. Permission to republish Best Practices for Bargaining --Winning in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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