Car salespeople truly understand how to use modest concessions to extract much larger ones.
First, they spend a long time legitimating the sticker price and suggesting that it’s not only fair, but nonnegotiable.
Worst Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement: In a negotiation, your WATNA represents one of several paths that you can follow if a resolution cannot be reached. Like its BATNA counterpart, understanding your WATNA is one alternative you can use to compare against your other options along alternative paths in order to make more informed decisions at the bargaining table.
The following items are tagged WATNA.
Car salespeople truly understand how to use modest concessions to extract much larger ones.
First, they spend a long time legitimating the sticker price and suggesting that it’s not only fair, but nonnegotiable.
At last, the deal is done. After 18 months of negotiation, eight trips across the country, and countless meetings, you’ve finally signed a contract creating a joint venture with a Silicon Valley firm to manufacture imaging devices using your technology and their engineering.
The contract is clear and precise. It covers all the contingencies and has strong enforcement mechanisms. You’ve given your company a solid foundation for a profitable new business. As you file the contract, a question dawns on you: Now what?
When you’re getting ready to meet with more than one party, the usual steps of two-party negotiation apply.
Lessons from the New Wave of High-Stakes Deals
Satisfied Employees, Satisfied Customers
When Setting Goals, Beware Backlash
Here are some concrete guidelines for fostering a strong relationship between negotiating partners drawn from The Global Negotiator: Making, Managing, and Mending Deals Around the World in the 21st Century.
Don’t be caught unprepared by hard bargainers, warn Mnookin, Peppet, and Tulumello in Beyond Winning. Here is their Top 10 list of common tactics.
In 1995, a new government came into power in the Indian state of Maharashtra and canceled a 20-year power purchase agreement with the Dabhol Power Company, a joint-venture formed by Enron, General Electric, and Bechtel. Claiming that the deal was improper and even illegal, the government declared publicly that it would not renegotiate.
There are two main reasons the winner’s curse is a common and dangerous trap in negotiations.
Will Your Negotiations Get Sidetracked?
Coping with Negotiator Emotion, Both Fake and Fleeting
Dear Negotiation Coach: Dealing with an Uninformed Buyer
On August 2, 2004, Barbara Cox Anthony and Ann Cox Chambers, two sisters who together owned 73% of Cox Communications, announced that they wanted to cash out the minority shareholders of their company. Their initial offer was $32 per share, or a 14% premium to the preannouncement trading price of approximately $28 per share.