Webster’s definition of negotiation: “The act or promise of each side giving up something in order to reach an agreement.” I disagree. In my experience, the best negotiation results happen when neither side gives up anything. The win-win result many find elusive.
When needs are openly communicated by both sides, we generally find common ground. That common ground is the foundation on which we build win-win agreements. Unfortunately, on the way to common ground, we often run into the roadblock called inaction. When doing nothing is an acceptable result, we have the most impenetrable barrier because there is no incentive to engage. There is nothing driving us to work hard to find the best win-win results.
When we have decision makers focused more on avoiding mistakes than on moving forward, we have the environment where inaction can seem like an acceptable outcome.
In politics, we see this often. For example, in America everyone wants our youth to have the best education possible. Most agree on the need for increased availability of great schools, great teachers and the right parental involvement. Yet politicians seem unable to agree on the right path forward. They relish in giving speeches denigrating the other side but, together, they get nothing done. In essence, inaction is better for re-election than educational mistakes. There is nothing driving the hard work of building win-win results.
This can happen in the private sector as well. In the early 2000’s my team was negotiating a new applications agreement with one of the world’s largest Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). The OEM built each computer based on the customer’s specifications. Something called “build-to-order” (BTO), so there was no such thing as a standard configuration.
Unfortunately, our sales programs historically counted on OEMs selling standard configurations. The job of our sales people was to convince OEMs to include our software in those standard configurations. Our solution lacked VIABILITY with this customer causing us to be in negotiation stalemate.
We were down to the wire and my team asked me to join the next negotiation session. At the meeting the customer executive opened by saying, “Rick, what’s going on? We want to sell more of your software. I think you want the same but you keep pushing the same terms that don’t work for us. It seems like doing nothing is more attractive to you than closing this deal. Am I right?”
It was like a left hook to the gut. We had common ground (e.g. selling more Microsoft software) and yet we were not even discussing a win-win result, let alone agreeing on one. I was new in role so after the meeting I asked my team why we weren’t restructuring the program. They gave me examples of how their peers lost jobs after agreeing to changes in our standard agreements. Doing so was a failed negotiation.
This is where it is sometimes good not to know better. I couldn’t ask the team to do something that might put their jobs at risk with our SVP, who was two levels above me at the time. Instead, I took over as lead negotiator, as did the customer executive. We spent three days constructing a program that we felt would get the results we each wanted but also a program that was completely different from anything we had even considered before.
I recall presenting the new program to our SVP. It was 7:30pm on a Wednesday evening. He was walking the halls and saw the notes on my white board. He stopped to ask how the negotiation was proceeding. About 10 minutes into my presentation, he stood and yelled, “This is stupid. We will not do this!” I told him this would get us more than the 18% growth target he’d given us. He said, “Fine. Do your deal. I do not think it will work and I will fire you when I am right.” He stormed off.
We ended that year with 73% growth in sales of application software and followed that with 57% growth in the second year of the program. We executed on a program structure that neither of us were asking for at the beginning of the negotiation. We constructed the program only after we understood each other’s needs. That program also became the foundation for future agreements with other OEMs.
While safer, inaction would have resulted in less business, an unhappy customer and no new model for others to build on. Inaction would have blocked us from the best negotiation results.
©2013 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
