How to prepare a negotiation
...tions are permitted (mobile phones…) Dress, what is the dress code? Will the clients dress formally? Tie? You may check with the car-driver or the receptionist to have last minute dress adjustment. Note taking, plan one person who should be responsible for keeping an official record of the meeting (or audiotape), avoiding video (too formal and discourage participation). Make sure he/she will note also the preference of each participant (habit, hobby, food). Send in advance a clear description how to get to the location, hotel and airport pick-up, attach these info to the proposal agenda. B) Information preparation[3]: Negotiation plan[2], clearly divide the four-step process: preparation - information exchange - proposing and concession making and commitment. Take in the consideration cultural difference in your plan. Your behavior, make sure you demonstrate love for your work, and you treat your client as an equal. Whether this is the 10th or 100th meeting with this client, are you prepared to treat them like a brand new client? Are you bringing the same freshness, enthusiasm, and new ideas that you brought to the first or second meeting? Will you be able to reserve judgment about outcomes until you see the whole picture? Your goals, try to define your goal in a written sentence, why you want what you want? Your files, carefully examine the assets and the weaknesses of your files, imagine that your opponent has access to it and what should be the main argument it could retire from it. What is your main weakness? Can you improve it? Should you tell it? How? Have you bench mark? What the status of other competitors? The client's shoes, what business or personal pressures is your client feeling right now? If new client, get some information about his reputation. Are you reinforcing your standing as possessing a broad, top-management perspective and an understanding of the entire business that surrounds your client? Both of you. Reflect on how to make that meeting a success for both of you. Analyze underlying interests and preferences for each party. What have you in common with your client? Why? Review and remind the story and the successful collaboration in the past. Do not forget that your plan, after all, is based on a number of assumptions about what the other side wants and is thinking. Others participants, have you established a clear roles for everyone in your and in the other’s team? Assess each actor’s power and match your team structures so that will make everybody comfortable with any individual (praise, positive association, similarity, openness, gender, language skill). Make sure you have assigned relationships responsibilities within your team (competing, problem solving-collaborating, compromising, avoiding, accommodating). Have you identified the opposite party personal relationships and/or coalitions? Have you consider any additional audience (direct and indirect)? Externals factor, any rational, political, socio-economic, organizational factors or emotional implications of the issue at hand? And of your message? Negotiation or not, clarify if and why there is interdependence, what is the conflict of interest and if there is hope to influence each other. If it is the case avoid the negotiation. What is your and the client interdependence structure? it is a zero-sum (competition with a clear winner and looser) or mutual-gain (collaboration)? Relationship, how much respect, trust, reciprocity, fairness have you for the client and how much the client have for you? Future relationship plays an important role in this meeting? What you need to improve? How to build it? How will you make progress against your client's business issue and keep developing and improving the relationship? Bargaining, are you in a distributive bargaining or an integrative bargaining? Will you play hardball? Will your client? Be prepared for conflict, embrace it, rather than avoid it. Focus on understanding the root of the concern. BATNA, what is your BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement)? What should happen if the negotiation is a failure? Have you evaluate the BATNA of your opposite party? How will the client take a negotiation’s failure? Reservation Point, it is the outcome value at which you would prefer to walk away (max/min) and accept your BATNA. How much strong is your reservation point? Why? Is it strongly anchored? And this of your client? How could you shift the client reservation point? What will you be your concessions? Take a real break before considering to violate the RP. Target Point, fix the outcome value that you would ideally like to achieve in the current negotiation. How much strong is your target? Why? Is it strongly anchored? And those of your client? Zone of Potential Agreement (ZOPA) or Bargaining Zone, it is where both parties can agree. Think of your and of your client ZAPA. Are you creating values for your client? What ha...