Negotiation

First of all, a big Thanks to all those who read my blog.

Coming to the topic of the week for me - Negotiation. I had the opportunity to be involved in a lot of serious "negotiation" meetings this week. I have always believed that negotiation is an art and we cannot put it into a set process.

There were two negotiations in which I had to try and convince my business competitors. In both the cases, the competitor was clearly losing out. My boss(who BTW is a master negotiator) was of the opinion that there is no scope of them accepting our proposal. I told him, "Lets see, I am taking it as a test of my negotiating skills".

In both the cases, here is what I did:

• Started the discussion by stating the most important objective of the project. Given that it is an external compliance project, timelines were of utmost priority.
• Then we mentioned the problem(cannot be reproduced for confidentiality) and the impact it has on the most important aspect of the project. Gave a 5 minute boring talk on history of the project and the root cause of the problem.
• Then we listed the possible options for the project. Till now we were not talking abt the individual vendors but only abt the larger project.
• As one option, the project could take a rigid stand and decide that we cannot compromise on quality and hence increase the timelines.
• The second option was to "bend" the quality procedures to meet the most important objective of the project. Then we put across a list of hard facts -- the nature of project, the kind of test cases and what is the risk in "bending" the procedures.
• It was quite clear that it is in the benefit of the project that we choose the second option, but it was not easy to convince the other vendor.
• Then we came to the benefits that I had listed down for the competitor. This part took the most time as it they were not willing to accept. We did not even once get into an argument- - the whole discussion was pretty professional and I must also commend my competitor for that.
• After a while, I went into a "friendly" mode and said, " See, I agree what we are discussing is not what you are supposed to do, and frankly what I am doing is also not what I am supposed to do. But we are both trying to be flexible in the interest of our customer. I am sure they will be very appreciative of this".

And guess what, they relented -- not once but in two occassions in one week !!!

Lessons for me from these two negotiation experiences:

1. Believe in what you are doing and do not give up till the end.
2. Be as simple and as straight forward in your approach.
3. Do not try to act smart or trick the other party.
4. Talk about the larger picture and what is most important for the larger objective.
5. Talk abt various alternatives and then come down to the alternative that you are sugesting.
6. Come down to the specifics on how the alternative helps the other party. Quantitative figures are very important.
7. Never get argumentative or emotional during the discussion(I have a lot to improve here).
8. Do not spoil the goodwill and relation with the other party.