Chapter 3: Establishing aNegotiation Goal

Before you take the first step in the process of blueprinting a negotiation, it’s important to think about why you’re conducting the negotiation in the first place, what you hope to get out of it: the goal. This may seem obvious to you, but you’d be surprised how many people enter into negotiations without giving much—if any—thought to why they’re doing it. Most of us focus on what we are doing, the tactics of the negotiation, rather than on why. And as I mentioned before, the goal you set, or the lack of a goal, can have a significant effect, not only on the negotiation and its outcome, but on any long-term relationship you may hope to establish with your customer. So setting a goal is an extremely important part of the process.

SELECTING A NEGOTIATION

The best way to set a goal, in fact the best way to learn how to use our process, altogether, is to start off with a particular negotiation in mind. Think about the deals you’re currently involved in or are about to get involved in. By selecting one of them to use as an example and following it through the entire process, you’ll not only learn how to blueprint negotiations but you’ll be able to start doing it right away. You should bear in mind, though, that to derive the most benefit from learning the process, the situation you select should have certain traits regarding its complexity, its ongoing nature, and its timing.

First, it should be a negotiation that is fairly complex, that is, one in which there are several variables to be negotiated. Negotiations usually involve numerous variables, and it’s actually the existence of those variables that makes the process so beneficial. So the more variables in the situation you select, the more benefit you’ll be able to realize from the process. It’s for this reason that the Strategic Negotiation Process is not applicable to negotiations over commodities—products or services for which price is the only variable. As I’ve already noted, however, there are very few such products or services. There are normally at least some variables—such as price, volume, or payment terms—in any negotiation.

Second, it should be a negotiation with someone with whom you have, or hope to have, an ongoing relationship. This is because if the deal you select will be a one-time event, you’ll have a different perspective on what may occur during the negotiation. Although our process can be applied in virtually any negotiation, it has been designed to be of maximum benefit in situations in which you will be doing at least two deals, you’re already in a relationship, or you’re hoping to get into a relationship with the customer.

Finally, the situation you choose should be one in which you are not so early in the sales process that there’s still a lot of selling to do, but not so late that the deal is very far along. Selling and negotiating are—or should be—intimately connected, but they’re not the same thing, and if you’re at an early stage in the sales process, you need to continue executing that process before beginning to blueprint the deal. At the same time, one of the greatest benefits of the process is that it enables you to develop a strong negotiation plan well before you start a conversation with a customer. So the earlier you begin the process, the better and more effective your plan will be. In this respect, the best situation to select is one in which the customer has decided that it’s either you or someone else, and it’s time to start talking “deal terms.”

Once you’ve selected a negotiation to use as an example, think about the goal you’d like to attain for this particular deal, and write it down here. Don’t worry about making it perfect—just get it down. Later in the chapter I’ll come back to consider this goal again.

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