What Do You View as Your Strengths and Weaknesses as a Negotiator?

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We also agreed on taking a break in between the negotiation process to reassess our situation.

Strategies that worked:

Not revealing Fiancée situation:

After the debriefing session it was clear that the strategy to not mention the fiancée situation worked because if we had revealed the employers might have used this information against us. Also, the strategy of stating that we are moving to New York for the job strengthened our point that it was the motivation towards the job.

Deciding our Limits:

Having already decided our limits for the lowest salary package helped us to avoid confusion among the team and so everyone knew where the negotiation is heading.

Including pension benefits’

The idea of including pension benefits worked as the opposite team was not ready or prepared for it and they were taken by surprise and hence agreed on our demands for 6% pension benefit.

Taking a recess:

The recess was very useful as it helped to get rid of any confusions in the team and also to get each one on the same page. We reassess our situation and decided that the final offer of 98,500 was better than our BATN and the team should accept it. It helped to create a consensus before a decision was taken and hence a mutually agreed decision.

Strategies that did not work:

One person talking:

I think the strategy of letting one person talk was not good. As the person talking felt more pressure of the situation as all the members of the opposite party were talking. This gave them a feeling of power in the negotiation and be the dominant party. Even though we managed to get a deal than other groups, I think we could have got more had we talked as a group.

Over ambitious:

We made a first offer of $120,000 which I think created a bad impression of us on the other team. It showed that we asked for something that we did not believe or had strong reasons to support it. Hence, it created a scenario where the other team assumed that we could be easily agreed to a lower targets. It was embarrassing hen the other team laughed at our first bid and I think the main reason was that we were not able to strongly our bids with strong reasons.

Seating Position:

We were seated in an arrangement where the opposite team was at a slightly higher level than us .I believe it created a sense of power and domination in the other team and they were more comfortable in the negotiation process than us.

Learnings:

The negotiation was a good learning one. Some of the key learnings from the negotiation are as follows:

- It is important to prepare a strategy before a negotiation

- Always back what you want from the negotiation with strong reasons.

- It’s important to not get influenced or intimidated by strong personalities and clearly speak with confidence what you wish.

- It is good to reassess our situation in middle of the negotiation and not get stuck what we wished, instead evaluate and look what is best at the present moment.

- Speaking as team is much influential than an individual doing the talking.

Bio pharm Seltek Negotiation

3. Reflections on “BioPharm-Seltek” role-play (week 3)

a) Which of your negotiation tactics and strategies worked well, which did not work, and why?

b) What was the impact of your target, your BATNA, and each side’s first offer on the negotiation?

c) What was the pattern of concessions in the negotiation? Did it favour either side more than the other, and if so, why?

d) What are the key learning points of this exercise?

The BIOPHARM-SELTEK negotiation was a critical arrangement for me, being the CFO of Bio pharm, Pharmaceutical organization with a yearly sales of $ 700 million, I had the obligation to closure of the deal to spare the organization from enormous loss. BIOPHARM purchased patent from Belgium organization to produce and sell, Depox. We had rights to offer the Depox in North America yet the main difficulty for us was the prerequisite of another plant to manufacture Depox on the grounds that to make genetically engineering compounds, a unique plant is required that had water processing facilities in it.

In spite of the fact that we had found a suitable site for building another plant which was 10 miles from our U.S central facility. We had also paid a token measure of $10,000 for the plant but Depox had gigantic market demand and so as to save the lost profit of $1 million per month till the new plant is prepared, it was best alternative for us to go for a current plant. Seltek was pharmaceutical organization with a yearly turnover of $150 million, it had a plant 70 miles from our Headquarters. Despite the fact that their facility was far for our R&D plant however their quality workforce and machinery was suitable to immediately start the manufacturing of Depox.

BATNA:

In most dire outcome imaginable our best alternative was of building another plant which was 10 miles from our facility and we had also paid a token measure of $10,000 for plot to play safe if on the off chance that we choose to construct another plant. The plot was costing $ 500,000 and aggregate expense for building plant was $ 25 million. If we somehow managed to construct a plant we had to bear a loss of $1million dollar per month for a year and also after one year there could be significant reduction in the demand. .Thus, an aggregate sum of $ 37.5 million was costing for this task and plant must be worked from one year from now itself.

We had the approval of 40 million dollar from our CEO to acquire the plant and based on our BATNA and the value of Seltek plant we set our target to $ 12 million excluding the patent and the maximum limit of $20 million without patent. After reading the information the team misunderstood that selling the patent to us was important to Seltek. During our negotiation the opposite made a first offer