Business Negotiation

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1. Most of the time in negotiations talking about the other side’s interests or fair standards is a wise approach to negotiations, however sometimes it may not play very well. When you try to discuss interests, your opponent might simply state their position, or attack any of your proposals, options.

To direct their attention to the merits, you can use strategy that focuses on what they may do which is called negotiation jujitsu.

In Negotiation jujitsu instead of defending yourself and counterattacking your opponents when they attack, you should sidestep their attack and deflect it against the problem.

Some of the main “rules” of Negotiation jujitsu:

Don’t attack their position, look behind it.

When other side is trying to set their position, you should neither accept it nor reject, consider it as one possible option, try treating it objectively and analyse to what extent does it fulfil both sides’ interests and look behind their option, find out why they think that this option is good, and what are their main interests behind it.

Don’t defend your ideas, invite criticism and advice. In negotiations people waste a lot of time on criticising each others’ ideas, instead of defending your position and resisting their criticism you should get to know what are your opponents’ concern about your position.

When negotiations become more of a personal war, you need to get your opponents back on track of solving problems and focusing on issue, instead of personal relationships.

2. One-text procedure would be good alternative if you fail to shift negotiation from positional bargaining to principled negotiation. In that case you would need third party to help you find a solution. For example, if couple can’t decide what places to visit in a country that they’re travelling to, they may call third party, which in this case could be travel agent. Travel agent in turn can help them to find an alternative that works for both of them. He needs to come up with some initial plan for their trip and go to both of them, one by one and ask what they think about it, finding out their interests and main concerns. After getting that information he would go back and edit initial plan, then he would go and ask them again what they like and what they don’t. He needs to repeat this process till the plan seems to be satisfying to both sides. As third party isn’t interested in any of the outcome, it can look at the problem objectively and make decisions wisely.

3. If you face negotiators who use tricky tactics, there are three steps that you need to follow:

Recognise tactic. Often times just recognising the tactic will neutralise your opponents from using those techniques.

Raise the issue explicitly. After you recognise that other side is using tricky tactic you should bring it up clearly. In most cases it will stop them from using that technique.

Question tactic’s legitimacy. Bringing tactic up explicitly gives you an opportunity to discuss the rules of the game. Instead of focusing on their position, you should find out what are their standards, criteria that makes their position legitimate.

4. Some of the common tricky tactics:

Deliberate deception:

Phony facts - making false statements about facts.

Ambiguous authority - your opponent makes you believe that he has full authority to compromise when in reality they don’t.

Dubious intentions - misrepresentation of other side’s intention to follow the agreement.

Psychological warfare:

Stressful situations - your opponent puts you in circumstances when you’re under stress, which make you want to finish faster. For example: too noisy room, too high/low temperature.

Personal attacks - attacking your status, commenting your clothes, not listening to you and making you repeat what you say.

The good-guy/bad-guy routine - form of psychological manipulation, playing with contrasts, first bad-guy offers you unpleasant terms for you, and then good-guy steps in and offers better terms.

Threats - pressure, threatening with bad outcomes or possibly bad consequences if not following their terms.

Positional pressure tactics:

Refusal to negotiate - other side simply refuses to negotiate on any terms.

Extreme demands - other side makes offer which is extremely unpleasant for you, to set anchor.

Escalating demands - raising demands on every concession made.

Lock-in tactics - strengthening bargaining position by weakening control over the situation.

Hardhearted partner - justifying requests with the partner who refuses to agree on any terms but his own.

A calculated delay - postponing decision making until favourable time.

Take it or leave it - offer of 2 choices agree to their terms, or to have no agreement.

Good-guy/ Bad-guy routine is often used in movies. For example when police officers want to get information from a person who committed crime about his partners. One police officer would threaten him with toughest punishment like life-sentence, in some time another police officer would step in with better option if he cooperates with them.