Rule #1 of Negotiating - Beating Your Toughest Opponent

There is a lot of advice on negotiating out there. The problem is most of it is written to be read by  hostage negotiators, 20th century sales people or CEOs. Many of us are not any of those, but all of us have to negotiate. It could be to ask for more funding for your project, to charm a hipster barista into making an off-menu coffee or when dueling it out with a significant other over what movie to watch. We could all use some good guidelines. The first rule would be a good place to start.

Here is  rule number one of negotiating. Don’t negotiate with yourself.

We make ourselves our toughest opponent so very often, without even knowing it. This is typically a result of making the critically bad assumption that negotiating is exactly like any other social interaction. It is not. Let’s delve a little deeper.

There are two stages at which we cockblock ourselves.

When Strategizing

This is tricky to spot as it is often an unintended side-effect of analysis and preparation. Imagine the following:

• You have put together a proposal as a vendor and have a price in mind. A colleague tells you that the potential client is going through some budget cuts. You have also gathered that your biggest competitor sees this as a strategic opportunity and doesn’t intend to make a big margin on the deal. You know that the client will have to do some additional integration and certification work on which they will likely spend quite a bit of their funding. You adjust down your initial number and put in a price that is likely to be accepted by the client.
• You have a specific budget ask you need your ex-co sponsor to approve. You know that several other programs are looking for funding from the same pot and the sponsor would like to get all of them done. You recall the four previous times when this sponsor was asked for approval of similar programs and what number they were generally comfortable with. You go with a number that is in the approval ballpark.
• You are negotiating contracts with a client. You know the kind of clauses either this particular client or clients of the same size/region/type object to. You spend time changing your standard contract in anticipation of some of the typical demands, to make the process less painful. After all, why have a difficult conversation when you can side step it?

You intentions are good. You are trying to optimize the path to a decision. However, in doing so you have done some of the negotiating on behalf of your opponent even before either of you have come to the table. Learings from you analysis are to help you prep your counters when your opponent presents arguments, not to pre-empt them with a compromised starting position.

When executing

We execute negotiations through communicating. Two seemingly contradictory things trip us up at this stage and make us work for the opposition.

1. Misplaced empathy: You tell them you understand all their problems. You list them. You end up talking about problems they didn’t even think to bring to the table. Once you do this, there are only two paths available to you. Concede ground because you acknowledge your opponent’s hardships (the logical path) or you ask for what you want anyway, in which case you are now just an asshole. Neither are good outcomes.
2. Misplaced ego: You disclose how much you know about them. Their environment, their regulations, their competition, the market trends they face, their star signs, their dogs’ names. You think showing how much you know will translate to a wall of respect that stops them from pushing hard. What it really does is to set an expectation that your opening position will be wholly rational, reflecting your knowledge. That is not a good starting point and leaves you with almost no room to counter anything they say, to react incredulously to what they say or to buy time to react.

Avoiding the traps at either stage require conscious work, as what draws us to them are our intuitive behavior, typically rewarded in other social interactions. Some principles can help retrain us to take a different approach.

The Principles

Remember the following 7 principles. And remember this is all in the context of negotiating.

1. The deal is supreme. Everything else yields.
2. To establish you superiority or intellect is not the goal. Your ego needs to yield to the deal. See principle #1. (The real ego boost comes from the deal.)
3. Solving other people’s problems is not your job.
4. You are not a good simulation of your opponent. The concessions you make on your own may not even matter to your counterpart.
5. Efficiency is not the goal.
6. There’s no need to show receipts. You don’t have to explain all your reasons.
7. A victory won is sweeter than an unsolicited concession received. Let your opponent play and win their own wins. When they take, they will feel like giving.
   

Adopting this mindset will feel alien. Good! It should. Trust me, every step towards being able to directly and unapologetically state your position (without being a dick) will be more empowering than you think.

It takes two to negotiate. Your opponent knows that. Don’t leave the field before the game starts.