Budding negotiators often wonder whether they should open the conversation at the first meeting. Should I make the first move, or should they?
Most people choose a negotiation approach based on what the other party does: They wait to see how their counterpart is going to negotiate, and then follow suit. Instead of sitting back and waiting for your counterpart to make an opening move, lead the way.
Similarly, if your counterpart takes charge, but does so in a way that you don’t feel is helpful, there is no need to follow. If he opens your conversation by tossing out a position, or perhaps making a subtle threat, take a deep breath and ignore it. Explain that you’d rather work in a different way, by developing—and distributing—value together and working to reach an agreement that benefits both sides.
So what should your first move be?
Instead of laying a preferred option or demand on the table and waiting for a reaction from the other party, start by establishing how you will work together, invoking the elements of communication and relationship. You’ll focus on these throughout the negotiation, but they’re a particularly useful starting point.
Use this first experience in the room together to establish how you’ll interact during the course of the negotiation. You laid the groundwork for this in your preparatory interactions with your counterpart, but now that you’re in the room, show her how you’ll work with her throughout your time together:
As your negotiation session opens, leverage what you have prepared: review the agenda, and discuss the desired goals for this meeting and what you want to have at the end of it. As you begin, ask good questions and demonstrate that you are truly listening to your counterpart.
Let’s say you begin to query him about his interests. You can do this directly by saying something like, “Based on our past discussions, it sounds like what matters to you is reducing overall costs, improving quality, and decreasing downtime. Is that accurate? What am I missing?”
Then listen carefully to what he shares (and note what he doesn’t). Summarize his points back to him. People want to feel heard. Check for understanding so that you have the right information and to make him feel he got his point across.
As you listen, avoid reacting to what you hear (“Oh, that couldn’t possibly be that important to you” or “Wow, I want just the opposite.”). Instead, absorb it and use it. You might say something like, “You really care about paying off debt and getting better training? Got it. We’ll need to figure out a solution that meets those interests and some that I have. Are there other interests you haven’t shared yet?”
Set a good example by sharing information yourself; that will go a long way to keeping the lines of communications open. Whenever you suggest an option or offer a standard, share your reasoning. But don’t give speeches, either. Brevity is important. Share your ideas in consumable chunks, giving your counterpart time to absorb them and ask questions. For example, if you say too much all at once, the great point you made about needing to use a standard that your boss would find persuasive will get lost.
If you find yourself giving mini-speeches, stop yourself and ask questions instead. Test to see if you have been understood. Solicit your counterpart’s reactions. See if she has some new ideas sparked by what you just shared.
Watch out for situations in which you may have misunderstood each other. If you find that you view things differently (you disagree on whether a standard is valid, for example), slow down and explore the issue together. Instead of debating who’s right and who’s wrong, share the reasoning behind your perspective and ask for hers. You may not see eye to eye, but reaching an understanding of why you see the issues differently will allow the negotiation to move forward.
Make sure you’re engaged in a discussion, not a debate. The more your counterpart feels listened to, the more open to persuasion she’ll be. If you get to a point where you can make her case as well as (or even better than) she can, you know you’re headed in the right direction.
Continue to use these questioning and listening tactics throughout the negotiation.
Early in the negotiation is also the right time to focus on your relationship by separating it from the essence of what’s being discussed in the negotiation. We call this negotiating on two tracks.
People often believe they need to make concessions or forgo their interests for the sake of “the relationship.” We’ve heard people say things like:
Conceding like this in an attempt to make the other party happy is a mistake. You’re not only giving away more than you should, you’re also not improving the relationship itself, so you’re not even getting what you think you are “paying” for. Furthermore, you’re probably making matters worse: Appeasing your counterpart encourages his behavior, and you’ll likely see it again and again. More important, you’re not addressing the issues at stake or the circumstances that may have put the relationship on rocky footing.
To negotiate on two tracks, do the following:
Negotiating on two separate tracks is particularly important if you’re trying to repair an already-damaged relationship; see the box “Negotiating on Two Tracks: An Example.”
If you have a good relationship, but you fear that your request—a raise, additional resources, or a discount—will strain it, you can use the same approach. Raise the issue respectfully and with an openness to think and work it through together. Be explicit about the relationship factor: “I have enormous respect for you and don’t want to strain our relationship in any way, and yet I have what I think is an important request. I’d love to find a way to discuss my request on its merits and in a respectful and creative manner.” If you enter into the conversation and sense from your counterpart’s responses that he does feel that you are hurting the relationship, that’s the time to move the conversation to the separate track and deal with any feelings of hurt or disrespect head-on.
My colleagues and I worked with an IT outsourcing company that was reaching the end of a seven-year contract with a customer. The customer wanted to sign a new agreement, but managers there were still concerned about a service outage that occurred a few years earlier. They pointed out that it had taken our client four days to respond, and the outage ended up costing them several million dollars. Trust had been broken, and the customer demanded, for the sake of the relationship, a 20% discount on what would amount to a multi-hundred-million-dollar deal.
Our client was tempted to give the discount—perhaps not the full 20% but something close—but we knew that wasn’t going to solve the real problem: The customer was still not going to trust our client to respond on time, since the issues that had caused the lack of trust had not been addressed at all. Instead our client needed to break the problem in two and deal with the relationship first and the pricing for the new contract separately.
Our client then acknowledged to the customer that they had not handled the outage effectively and they understood it had led to distrust and a strain on the relationship. They also noted that while they were very open to discussing pricing for the new contract, they thought these were unrelated issues and wanted to solve them one at a time.
Based on the ensuing discussion, our client worked with the customer to develop a new set of procedures to ensure that kind of outage would not occur again and if any other problem occurred, it would be dealt with swiftly and would involve close ongoing contact with the customer team and the CIO. They also identified the actual cost of the outage to the customer and agreed to cover this cost as part of the new deal under negotiation. They were then able to use industry standards when pricing the new contract. Thus the client was much better off than they would have been if they had unnecessarily given up millions of dollars and ignored the issues that had caused the problem to begin with.
In all cases, your goal is to negotiate on the merits of the deal rather than making concessions or offering discounts to build rapport or trust.
Opening the lines of communication and establishing a productive working relationship allow you to move into the circle of value and then work together to negotiate a solution. You’ll keep applying these approaches to communication and the relationship that you learned in this chapter throughout the negotiation.