There’s a popular misconception that in a negotiation you can either “win” or preserve your relationship with your counterpart (your boss, a customer, a business partner) but you can’t do both. People assume they need to make a choice between getting good results by being hard and bargaining at all costs or developing a good relationship by being soft and making concessions to build the relationship. Thinking that way is called positional bargaining and it is dangerous, however, because you need both: you have to be able to stand firm and maintain important relationships. 

In almost all business negotiations — resolving a conflict with a customer, convincing others of a change in policy, agreeing on a budget for next year, for example — there is a lot more at stake, and chances are strong that you’ll need to continue to work with the other party going forward. If you were to try to use positional bargaining in those situations, you wouldn’t get impressive results. Perhaps most dangerously, there is an underlying assumption in this approach that you’re in a zero-sum game: If you gain something, the other party has to give up something in return. In the vast majority of negotiations there is always more value to be created than originally thought. To negotiate more effectively, you need to shift your approach away from this combative and compromising approach and toward a more collaborative one.

Our negotiation services are especially useful when you

• see negotiation competence as a key strategical topic for your organization.
• need someone neutral to lead your negotiations with another party.
• are searching for a Shadow Negotiator to adjust your chosen negotiation strategy.
• want to train your team in interest based negotiation.

I&P Negotiation Consulting

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