6 Tips How To Prepare For A Negotiation

A negotiation is a meeting where people who have different interests try to come to an agreement. Because of these different interests, it is important that you prepare yourself as well as possible for such a meeting. Proper preparation prevents poor performance. This is very true when negotiating, and even more so when in a foreign language. In fact, when getting ready for an international negotiation, you should do it in English. This will help you to prepare yourself linguistically as well as for the discussion itself.

Here are some tips on how to structure your preparation:

1. Your goals

There are three questions you need to ask yourself here:

• What is the optimal outcome of this negotiation for me? In other words, what would I hope to get out of this meeting? The more clearly you can specify this, the more chance you have of achieving it.
• What is your “walk-away point”? At what point in the negotiation are you no longer ready to compromise or give your business partners what they want?
• What is your “BATNA” (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)? If the negotiation fails, what alternatives do you have? Are there other organizations or companies you can talk to? Or can you change the focus of this negotiation in some way?

2. Their goals

The next step is to try to look at the situation from the perspective of your business partners. Here, you need to find out more about your counterparts. The result of this research should be an educated guess at their optimal outcome, walk-away point and BATNA. This will allow you to see possible area of compromise. It might also give you an idea where the main problem could lie. You can do this research on the internet, by asking people who know your partners and their company and by asking your negotiating partners themselves what they want, through phone calls before the negotiation.

3. The background

What is the past history between your two companies? Have earlier contacts been positive or negative? What doubts or mistrust might you meet? What good experience can you refer to as a way of building trust?

4. The competition

This could be part of your BATNA. Check carefully what competitors are out there. Are they better/worse, cheaper/more expensive, reliable/unreliable, etc.? The more you know about the competition, the easier it will be to respond to your partner’s arguments.

5. Profit and loss

Try to define for yourself: what exactly do we, and they, gain by coming to an agreement? Be specific. Make clear, concrete calculations. Then try to do the same when specifying what you both lose by not agreeing. Loss is a powerful motivator for coming to an agreement.

6. Strategy

Once you have made these preparations, transfer them to an agenda. You do not necessarily need to show this to your business partner. You can keep it as an outline strategy for yourself. Having a clear structure for your argumentation can be a powerful negotiation tool.

Conclusion

In negotiations, we are usually looking for the win-win outcome. Why? Because most of us want to build lasting business relations based on mutual trust and respect. Looking at the situation from the other negotiating team’s perspective help us to see more clearly what a win-win outcome is likely to be.