Once you have a grasp of the substance of your negotiation, it’s time to think about the process. Imagine that the interests, alternatives, options, and standards you’ve just formulated are the “what” of your negotiation. Now, plan the “how.”
Think about the smaller commitments each side will make throughout the process and determine who has authority to make each of those commitments. You’ll have an agreement at the end that represents the total package you’ve shaped, but along the way you will also make more-discrete promises, and each of those need to be realistic. Take time now to prepare how and when those commitments will be fulfilled.
Start by thinking about the negotiation from start to finish. Maybe it will be one meeting, or perhaps you’ll need to get together multiple times. Roughly estimate how many sessions it will take and identify a smaller goal or set of goals for each one. Even for smaller negotiations or quick hallway discussions, you’ll want to delineate your plan for each touch point.
Start with the first meeting you’ve envisioned. What’s its purpose, and what do you want to achieve? Maybe all you want from this initial discussion is to build the relationship, showing your counterpart that you’re trustworthy and committed to coming up with a joint solution. Or maybe you want to walk out with a solid understanding of his interests. Perhaps you want to lay out some options for the other party to consider or take back to his boss.
Do this for each subsequent session, too, identifying what you hope to achieve at each milestone. When do you hope to have a joint recommendation? When do you want to have a signed agreement in place?
In a simple negotiation, you might plan to make the following commitments (and ask your counterpart to do the same):
Meeting 1. Generate a range of options to mull over
Meeting 2. Create a draft agreement
Meeting 3. Reach a final agreement
In a more complex negotiation, the commitments might look like this:
Meeting 1. Agree on what the core issues are and the timeline for addressing them
Meeting 2. Come to a clear understanding of interests around each key issue
Meeting 3. Create a framework for the agreement and brainstorm options for filling the framework
Meeting 4. Decide on options to review internally
Meeting 5. Define standards to apply and use them to narrow down options to a select few for you to each review individually
Meeting 6. Agree on a joint recommendation to share with stakeholders
There are two primary reasons to map out milestones in advance. First, it helps you plan for each session adequately: Walking into a meeting to define the issues to eventually resolve requires a different kind of preparation from going into a meeting to develop a full agreement. Second, it identifies set times to go back to your stakeholders during the negotiation and get their input or approval so that you can make sure that they are available at those times.
You and your colleague may be planning to discuss what resources each of your teams can give to a new cross-functional project, but before you meet, consider whether either of you has the authority to make the final call on these allocations—and if not, who does. Similarly, think about the authority of your counterpart. From whom will she be getting approval?
If you need to get approval from others, keep that in mind as you set milestones and build in time to go back and huddle with your team. Similarly, if your counterpart has a low level of authority, you need to be prepared to give her the time and evidence she needs to get the agreement approved.
Lastly, if you don’t yet have enough information about your counterpart to make this assessment, note that so you can ask about the structure of who can make what commitments once you are face-to-face with her.
As you prepare to reach out to the other party to begin the negotiation, think about what and how you are communicating. You’ll want to think about what messages you want to send, identify what information you need, and create an agenda to send to your counterpart.
Whether oral or written, verbal or nonverbal, the messages you convey during your interaction—and how and when you do it—can have great impact on the course of the negotiation, so it pays to be deliberate. Equally important to consider are the messages you don’t want to send.
First, think through what you want the other party to understand and how you’ll convey it. You might want to express how seriously you take the negotiation, your desire to move quickly (or slowly), your level of authority, or your wish to repair a damaged relationship.
Take this example: A sales team has been working with a prospective customer for months, and they have a solution they think will work. They need to agree on details such as price and precise configuration. The team has determined the messages they want to send in the next session:
Now that the team knows what they want to get across, they can think about the best way to deliver those messages. They’ll decide who on the team will say what, in what order, and at what points during the next session.
Equally important to knowing the messages you want to send is identifying what you want to learn from your counterpart. There are likely to be holes in your preparation—things you need to confirm about her interests, her alternatives, her authority, and so forth. You’ll also want to learn about how she views you, your relationship, and any past history you have. Craft a set of questions to ask in the room to uncover critical information and test any hypotheses you made.
In the earlier example, because the sales team is trying to better understand the buyer’s interests and his ability to make a commitment, they might ask questions like “We talked before about downtime for this piece of equipment. How much is that costing you every day now?” or “You said there are some folks in your organization whom you need to convince. Who are they, and what are their interests?”
The team may prepare questions to query the other party for feedback on the messages they plan to present. To keep the lines of communication open, they can ask things like “Are there other interests that this solution doesn’t meet?” and “Do our calculations seem right? If not, what are we missing?”
The last piece you’ll need is an agenda to share with your counterpart. Use the milestones you laid out when preparing commitments and the communication goals you have for each session, and create a draft agenda. This tentative plan will help you communicate with the other party about how you expect the negotiation will go. If you plan to develop a series of options by the end of the first meeting, for example, draft an agenda that includes exploring her interests, sharing some of yours, jointly brainstorming possible options, and narrowing down to a few ideas for further consideration. Also consider who needs to be in the session. Can you and your counterpart be the only ones in the room? Do you need someone with a particular expertise, perspective, or level of authority? Include the appropriate individuals on the attendee list in your agenda.
Whether your relationship with your counterpart is ongoing or you expect it to last for only the duration of the negotiation, it pays to invest in it. It creates the foundation for the best possible outcome of your negotiation.
Start by assessing the relationship as it stands now. Is there one? If there is, is it based on trust? Has it ever involved creative, joint problem solving? How about risk taking? Are you able to deal with differences? Has there been damage to the relationship that needs to be repaired? You may have done some of this as you questioned your assumptions about the negotiation, but take a moment to think about with whom you’ll be interacting.
Then think about the relationship you want to have. Do you want to deepen trust? Encourage an equal partnership? Do you want to express emotions more openly? Or are you happy with the way the relationship is and just want to maintain it?
Examine any gaps between how you see the current state and the ideal you’ve described. First, assess why the gaps exist. What caused a breakdown in trust or a lack of respect? What happened to make the relationship a transactional one? Why can’t you solve problems together or take risks? Why do you feel unable to share your emotions about the state of the agreement?
Next, ask yourself what you can do to address the situation. For example, perhaps you’ve identified that the lack of trust a customer has expressed stems from the time you broke a key commitment. Now that you’re negotiating a contract renewal, you’ll know that you need to talk early on about what happened, why, and how you can ensure it won’t happen again.
Or perhaps you need to agree on a plan for sharing resources with your fellow manager in an overseas office, and any communication between the two of you—never mind negotiations over touchy subjects—is awkward. This may be because you’ve mostly communicated over late-night e-mails and met in person only once. For this negotiation, you might decide to meet face-to-face, or at least via video conference. Leave time before you dive into the negotiation to get to know each other, discuss the pressures you’re each under, and perhaps even show a little empathy for the amount of work your counterpart has taken on after hours.
If your relationship with your counterpart is truly damaged, you need to take further steps. Focus on fixing the relationship before you address the substance of the negotiation. Take time to understand your counterpart’s story about past interactions, share your own story, and try to build understanding. If the situation calls for it, actively show your empathy or plan an apology. If the problem is big, you’re unlikely to solve all of the relationship challenges in just a few conversations, but aim to get the relationship to a point where you can work together in the negotiation without strong emotions getting in the way. (We’ll go into more detail on how to fix a damaged relationship in chapter 6.)
Alternatively, you may be negotiating with someone with whom you have a perfectly good relationship, but you don’t expect to see eye to eye on the issue up for discussion and worry this might strain the relationship. For example, imagine you’re the head of HR and a long-standing, valued employee requests a more flexible schedule, which your company’s policy doesn’t provide.
Don’t plan to jump in with a hard line, sharing that the policy is the policy and it applies to everyone. Instead, define an approach that respects your existing relationship, demonstrates openness and creativity, and sets a strong precedent for future dealings.
This is where the communication and relationship elements intersect: Send the right messages to keep the relationship strong. Here are some of the messages you may want to plan to send:
You may also want to ask questions:
Instead of angering the employee by shutting him down before you have a chance to discuss the issue, you tee up a respectful conversation in which you are firm, but listen; are open to persuasion; and aim to be creative.
With a little hard work, you will find a solution: perhaps more vacation time for reduced compensation, allowing him to work at home on Mondays and Fridays, delegating some of his work to other employees, or helping him find child-care options.
On the off chance that you two cannot come to a clever solution, at least the relationship is preserved by the way you approached the discussion.
Sometimes you’re negotiating with someone with whom you’ve never worked. Your goal in these cases is to bring the other party to trust or respect you. Think about how you might forge a connection once you’re in the room. Do you know someone in common or have a shared interest? To prepare, research the person’s background, using Google or LinkedIn, to identify potential connections. Also think about situations in which you’ve had a strong relationship with your counterpart and what contributed to that dynamic. If you’re selling a product, plan to talk about other customers who were satisfied or a specific problem you solved for a client.
As you think about what kind of relationship you want to have (or avoid) with your counterpart, you’ll inevitably come up with additional things on which to prepare under communication—a message you want to send, a piece of information you need. With all of the elements, approach them iteratively and return to previous ones as needed.
At this point, take a step back and ask yourself: What might I be overlooking? What faulty assumptions am I making? Am I being overly positive or confident about certain elements? Am I being overly negative or concerned about others? What have I assumed is not likely that might very well happen? Review and revise your preparation based on the answers to these questions.
Then think through any external factors that might alter the negotiation. Will a competitor show up with an equally or more attractive offer? Will your counterpart get pulled from the negotiation, leaving you to interact with someone else entirely? Will someone at the counterpart’s company raise a concern about working with your company? Will your counterpart’s company get acquired? Might regulations change and create new risks or dictate the need for new terms?
Plan for these risks ahead of time. Write down everything that could go wrong (or differently than expected) and what action you can take in each scenario. You can’t get rid of surprises altogether, but you can minimize their impact.
Some negotiators are tempted to map out tactical steps they’ll take to make the negotiation go exactly as they plan. As my mentor, Roger Fisher, used to say, “It’s better to have a map of the terrain than to have planned one path through the woods.” Be prepared, but be flexible. You want to drive the negotiation while also listening and learning.
Most importantly, be ready and willing to be surprised, because chances are, you will be. If you prepare well, making sure to answer all the questions in the box “Questions to Answer While Preparing the Process of Your Negotiation,” you will learn from those surprises—an unexpected interest, a creative option, a persuasive standard—and the things you learn along the way can make all the difference in your negotiation.