Chapter 9: Step Three:Using the Blueprint to Create Value

OVERVIEW

Now that you’ve completed the first two steps of our Strategic Negotiation Process—Estimating the Blueprint and Validating the Estimation—it’s time to go on to Step Three: Using the Blueprint to Create Value.

You began this process by establishing a negotiation goal to “create joint value and divide it given concerns for fairness in the ongoing relationship.” And, as you’ve seen, numerous small steps are involved in attaining that goal. But all the work you’ve done so far has been engineered to bring you to this point—the point at which you can actually begin to create value, which you do in two ways.

First, you do it by putting a deal on the table that, if agreed to, leaves both you and your customer better off than your alternatives to agreeing—your CNAs. This can be difficult because many times you find yourself across the table from a buyer who either hasn’t truly diagnosed their CNA or, worse yet, has misdiagnosed it and believes that it’s better, faster, or cheaper than it really is.

Second, you create value by trading as many prioritized Wish List items as possible so you can “expand the pie” that’s being negotiated and therefore create more value for both sides to divide. This is also difficult to accomplish because, more often than not, either one or both sides hasn’t even taken the time to think through all the items up for negotiation, much less rank which are most to least important. In addition, even those customers who have thought through what they want are more than likely to keep that information close to the chest.

Nonetheless, having estimated and validated your own and your customer’s most likely CNA and Wish Lists, you already have a great deal of information about your customer, very possibly even more than they do. Moreover, you’re now much closer to answering the two questions that need to be answered if you want to create and divide value between you and your customer: What are the consequences if we do not reach agreement? and What items are likely to be included if we do reach agreement? And, most important, having gathered that information, you’ve shifted the balance in your favor and are now in a position to make use of that information to begin preparing the kind of offers that will enable you to attain your goal.