Posts Tagged ‘planning’

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A Sales Negotiator’s Guide To Dealing With A Deadlock

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
A Deadlock During A Negotiation Can Bring Things To A Screeching Halt

A Deadlock During A Negotiation Can Bring Things To A Screeching Halt

When driving a car, the #1 thing that most of us fear is hitting a wall. Or another car. Or pretty much anything that would cause us to come to a complete stop quickly. Why are we so afraid of this? Well duh – it will damage / destroy the car that we’re in, delay or prevent us from getting to where we want to go, and may even result in damage to us. The same thing can happen during a negotiation, but we call it a deadlock.

A deadlock occurs when both sides have not yet reached an agreement and all of a sudden they reach an issue that they fundamentally cannot agree on. If negotiating was a board game, then there would be no possible moves for either side to take – deadlock.

If you are a negative person you might be willing to give up and walk away. Lots of people do. A deadlock is a powerful thing and it can affect both sides of the the negotiating table in the following ways:

  • A deadlock tests the resolve and the strength of both sides.
  • A deadlock often forces both sides to be willing to give more concessions after it occurs.
  • A deadlock is a signal to both sides of the table that what they want out of the negotiation might not be possible.
  • A deadlock can cause both sides to reduce what they expect to get out of the negotiations.
  • A deadlock can mess up schedules for both sides.
  • A deadlock can make a negotiation more expensive and riskier for both sides.

So this all seems like it’s pretty serious stuff. However, there’s more.

Both sides of a negotiation realize going in that a deadlock can occur. The key thing that you as a negotiator need to determine is which side fears a deadlock more. Generally speaking, the larger an organization is and the more layers that it has in its management structure, the less able it is to deal with a deadlock. If you are willing to risk not walking away with a deal, then your negotiating power may be greater than the other side’s.

No matter how much power you think that you have, what every negotiator needs to realize is that when a deadlock occurs during a negotiation, it’s the negotiators responsibility to find a way to resolve it. A deadlock can have a significant impact on a negotiator’s career in the following ways:

  • You may get criticized by your own management.
  • You may end up getting extra work in order to resolve this deadlock.
  • You may lose your job.
  • You may have a personal sense of failure.
  • You may become frustrated.
  • You may lose friends and damage relationships.
  • You may make people angry with you.
  • You may lose self-confidence.
  • You may start to question your own business judgment.

So there is a lot of personal risk going on here. What’s a negotiator to do? One key action that you can take occurs before the negotiations start. Every negotiation is really a team event – it’s not just you sitting on your side of the table, it’s really you, your team,  and your management structure. If you take the time to discuss the possibility of deadlocks, what might cause them, where in the negotiations they might occur, and how best to deal with them then you’ll avoid a lot of the consternation that a deadlock can cause your team.

One final point – don’t give up just because you encounter a deadlock. In fact, the longer that the negotiations have gone on before the deadlock was encountered, the better your chances of being able to restart the discussions are. The more effort that has gone into the negotiations will mean that neither side wants to let a deadlock stop progress from being made…

Have you ever encountered a deadlock during a negotiation? Did this cause the negotiations to stop? What did you do to try to restart the negotiations? Were you successful? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in deadlock | 2 Comments »

Negotiation Battle: Tom Hanks vs. Mel Gibson

Thursday, February 5th, 2009
The SAG And The Studios Are Deadlocked In Their Negations, Now What?

The SAG And The Studios Are Deadlocked In Their Negations, Now What?

In the world of Hollywood, they have the ability to make the unreal seem oh so real. However, right now they are having a great deal of difficulty negotiating to make a contract between the big movie studios and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) become a reality. Are we going to be looking at another actors strike?

Perhaps a bit of a background is needed here. The SAG is a 120,000 member union that represents, what else, actors. The SAG is currently negotiating with the major studios to create a new contract for its members – their old contact ran out back in June.

This type of negotiation is fairly common. However, what’s making it interesting this time around is that there appears to be a difference in opinion on how best to negotiate within the SAG. This is causing a split to occur and may be significantly reducing the SAG’s negotiating power.

Within the SAG there are two groups that are taking differing views of how the negotiations need to proceed. The first group, called Members First,  is lead by the SAG’s president Alan Rosenberg and their Executive Director Doug Allen. Doug also happens to be the SAG’s chief negotiator. The second group calls itself Unite for Strength and has won several key seats on the board and now, by aligning with other board members,  has a slight majority.

So what’s the issue here?

Currently the SAG is in deadlock in their negotiations with the big studios. The Members First team wants to have the SAG members vote to authorize a strike if the negotiating team needs to call one. The Unite for Strength team wants the board to vote against having a strike vote as well as having them replace the current negotiating team. Talk about bad blood!

If the Unite for Strength team got their way, then they would probably try to jump-start the stalled negotiations with the studios. They would go along with the pay terms for new media that other unions have negotiated with the studios as  an exchange for getting improvements in the traditional media pay areas.

Why does the Unite for Strength team not want a strike vote to be taken? They believe that a strike now would be a poor decision based on the current economic state of the country.

Tom Hanks supports the Unite for Strength team. Mel Gibson supports the Members First team.

Just to make things a bit more complicated, the studios are insisting that their current offer on the table is their final offer. It contains some provisions that no SAG members likes such as a proposal to eliminate mandatory meal times (I mean come on, an actor has got to eat…)

So what should a negotiator make of all of this back-and-forth?

First, the public SAG split is bad news for the actors because it transfers power to the studios. When the other side of the table is in disagreement, your position is stronger. However, this also means that reaching an agreement with the SAG will be more difficult – the studios need to get all of the SAG to agree to a new contract.

It looks like SAG has done a poor job of PLANNING their side of the negotiation. There is a critical question of what is more important: money from traditional (films, TV) media or money from new (DVD, Web) media. Pick your poison, but this is an issue that all of the SAG needs to get behind.

Both sides of the table are at fault for allowing the deadlock to continue for six months. One subtle point here is that the studios may be willing to live with a deadlock because there is no current threat of a strike and the longer they wait, the greater the split within the SAG grows.

If the SAG replaces their negotiating team, then there will be a great deal of negotiating ground that will need to be revisited as the two negotiating teams meet for the first time and work out their negotiating positions.

What’s to be learned from this negotiating mess? A couple of key points: negotiations need to be planned out before discussions start so that inter-team squabbling can be taken care of BEFORE the talks start. Next, replacing a negotiating team during negotiations is a radical step that should be avoided at all costs – it’s just too expensive in terms of time. There’s a lot more to learn here, but I’m pretty sure that time will reveal what mistakes were made and which side ended up with more negotiating power…

If you were a member of the SAG, which team would you want to be a part of (the Tom Hanks team or the Mel Gibson team)? Who do you think has the stronger position in the negotiations right now? What would your next steps be if you were the studios? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in strike | 13 Comments »

Single vs Team Negotiation: Which Is Better?

Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Sometimes It Takes A Team To Complete A Negotiation Successfully

Sometimes It Takes A Team To Complete A Negotiation Successfully

Sorry – that’s a trick question. Most of the time when we talk about negotiating skills, we talk about how you can improve how YOU negotiate. However, in the real world, negotiations are often done by teams of negotiators.

The reasons for this are fairly simple: negotiations more often than not can take a long time and just the physical strain of active negotiating can wear a single person down quickly. Additionally, often special subject matter knowledge is required in order to hammer out specific issues and no one person posses all of that information. It takes a team to negotiate well.

There is, of course, one additional reason for preferring to negotiate using a team instead of a lone individual. During a negotiation so much is happening that a single individual is often hard pressed to stay on top of all of it.

Using a team for your negotiations allows you to use a group of people to capture all that is occuring. You can also use the team to jointly review what has transpired and make better decisions.

There are several reasons for not wanting to use a team as a part of a negotiation process. Here are three of them:

  • Requires Coordination: When you are the sole negotiator, once you know what you want to accomplish and how you are going to make it happen, then you are set. However, if you have a team of negotiators, then you need to make sure that everyone on your team REALLY understands what the goals are. This can be a challenge to do, especially if your goals change during the negotiation.
  • Sharing Information: In order for a team of negotiators to work together successfully, they need to all be aware of the same information. This will require that all information about the negotiation be collected, shared, and reviewed prior to the start of the negotiations. This can be a challenge under the best of circumstances and if the team is geographically distributed then it becomes even more difficult.
  • Showing Disunity: In the end, negotiating is all about power. Having team members become confused or showing disunity will reduce your power and increase the other side’s power.

With all that being said, you would think that nobody would ever use a team to perform a negotiation. However, you would be wrong. There are a number of compelling reasons why teams should be used more often for negotiatons than they currently are:

  • Better Coordination: Using a team allows you to distribute the tasks of negotiating among team members. This means that documents that need to be produced or facts that need to be checked can be done in parallel to the negotiations and this will speed the process up and reduce confusion.
  • More Experts: A single negotiator can only provide his / her expertise to the negotiations. A team can provide a much broader collection of experts and this should help the discussions move much faster.
  • Moral Support: Since a negotiation can continue for a long time, it’s easy to become disheartened if it appears as though an agreement will never be reached. If you are working with a team, it will be must easier to “keep a stiff upper lip” and not give up.
  • Listen Better: One set of ears can only hear so much. In fact, not only can multiple ears simply hear better, but they can also hear things differently which might help the negotiation move along faster.
  • Plan Better: A plan that is created by a single negotiator is as good as that negotiator. A plan that is created by multiple negotiators is often much better because it reflects the different inputs of multiple people.

What has your experience been: do you do better when you negotiate by yourself or when you negotiate as part of a team? When you are on a team, what role do you play? Which type of negotiation more often leads to a successful outcome? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in strategy | 1 Comment »

How To Hire A Negotiator

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
Sometimes It Is Desirable To Bring In A Negotiator From The Outside

Sometimes It Is Desirable To Bring In A Negotiator From The Outside

In life, there are some situations that you will be called on to negotiate in order to get what you want / need.  However, there will also be situations in which you have the time (and the budget!) to reach out and get outside help.

Getting outside negotiating help can be especially critical if the type of negotiation that you are preparing to start is of a very technical or detailed nature. If you can find someone who has “been there, done that” you can significantly improve the odds of being successful in the negotiations. Now the big question is just how does one go about hiring a negotiator?

The challenge in interviewing someone to do negotiating on your behalf is that negotiation is a very difficult job to do. The reason that negotiating is such a challenge is because it doesn’t just require one or two specific skills, but rather a whole collection of skills that we really don’t find in business.

At a very high level, a good negotiator has the ability to show good business sense while at the same time displaying a deep understanding of how people think and act. It is a rare thing indeed to find both of these qualities in a single individual. Couple that with any special knowledge or experience that you are looking for and choosing the wrong negotiator to represent you can appear to be all too easy.

The following 10 characteristics of a good negotiator are what you should be looking for when you are interviewing possible candidates. It’s going to take some probing on your part to uncover these traits, but it will be worth the effort:

  1. Must have the ability to negotiate well with members of YOUR team. If the candidate can’t win the confidence of your team, how can you expect him to succeed in the negotiation with the other side?
  2. Must show that he/she has the ability to construct a plan and the commitment to follow it through. The ability to realize that not all information may be available before the negotiation starts and the willingness to check facts and alter plans as new details emerge are also critical.
  3. Did I mention the need for sound business sense? The ability to see through the fog of negotiations and identify the issues that will have an impact on your bottom line is key.
  4. The ability to deal with both ambiguity (both before and during the negotiations) as well as conflict during the actual negotiations.
  5. The willingness to aim high when setting goals for the negotiations.
  6. The ability to realize that a negotiation is a process and the patience to wait for the other side to reveal more so that the process can move forward.
  7. The ability to personally connect with both your team and the other side. Yes, negotiation is a business process, but the personal touch can make all the difference when it comes to closing the deal.
  8. A realization that his / her personal integrity is what matters above all else.
  9. The ability to, no matter how heated a discussion gets, listen with an open mind to what the other side is saying.
  10. The self-confidence that is needed to see a negotiation through from start to finish.

What else do you think should be added to my list? Is there anything on the list that you think could be dropped? Which one of these 10 items is the most important in your opinion? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in negotiation skills | 2 Comments »

The Power Of Planning Your Next Negotiation

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Planning Before You Start To Negotiate Determines How It All Turns Out

Planning Before You Start To Negotiate Determines How It All Turns Out

Your parents, teachers, best friends, financial planners, parole officers, etc. were all right when they told you that in order to be successful in life you really need to plan, plan, plan. In the world of business, planning is a part of almost all activities; however, it’s in the area of negotiations that business planning will provide you with the greatest return on your investment of time.

With all of this being said, you would think that planning would be second nature to anyone who is getting ready to enter into negotiations. You would be wrong.

It’s not so much that folks forget to research the other side of the table (Google has made that easy to almost instantaneously), but rather that we don’t spend enough time understanding what WE are trying to get out of the negotiating.

The following steps will help you to put together a great plan for your next negotiating session:

Pick A Good Negotiator

Maybe the negotiator is you, but if it isn’t, then make sure that you pick someone who know how to negotiate. Included in this person’s set of skills should be a strong ability to work with teams and the ability to control their emotions.

Plug In To Your Power Sources

The key to having a successful negotiation is to make sure that you are negotiating from a source of power – hopefully a more powerful position than the other side of the table. This means that you need to take the time to identify your sources of power.

Remember that we always have MORE power than we initially think that we do. Additionally, study the other side’s sources of power also. They almost always have LESS power than we initially think that they do.

One Night Stands vs. Long Term Relationships

Are you preparing to negotiate with someone that you will end up having a long-term relationship with? If so, then this means that you have not only short-term goals, but also long-term goals that need to be considered.

Why Are They Willing To Negotiate?

Making sure that you truly understand why the other side of the table is there in the first place can be key to creating a solution that works for all. If you can uncover what their motivation is, then you have solved half of the problem of creating a solution that will work for both of you.

Goals Are Good

Knowing what motivates you is just as important as understanding the other side’s motivation. You need to further understand what it’s going to take in order for you to leave the negotiations feeling satisfied. This means that you need to have very clear goals so that you’ll know when you have reached them.

Become A Time Lord

One hidden aspect of any negotiation is that everything changes. The things that we are negotiating for have had a value in the past, they have a different value today, and they’ll have yet another value sometime off in the future. We need to be able to realize this and consider all three values when we are negotiating for something.

There you have it – the basic building blocks that need to go into the planning that you do for your next negotiating session. With these taken care of, you’re almost guaranteed to be successful!

What type of planning do you do today before you start a negotiation? Do you always have a chance to do this preparation or do you find yourself being thrown into negotiation sessions unprepared? Which of these planning steps do you feel are the most important to you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in planning | 6 Comments »

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