Preparing is essential, even if it’s someone you know

When it comes to gathering information about the other party, every day is different. Don’t assume that you can begin any negotiation without special preparation, no matter how well you know the person. When a seasoned purchasing agent sees a regular salesperson, the purchasing agent often opens the conversation by saying, “What’s going on with you these days?” Pleasantry or preparation?

A neighbor who’s about to ask you to stop parking in front of her house begins by saying, “Hi. How is the family doing today?” Pleasantry or preparation? After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, even the least skilled negotiator first asked how the person on the other side had fared in the storm. No one pressed for resolution of matters until housing and offices returned to some normalcy.

Even if such questions have been a pleasantry for you in the past, start making them part of your preparation and treating the person according to the answer. I have actually put off a negotiation if the person sounded stressed out or confessed to being under a deadline. It’s good manners. It’s good negotiating.

Recognizing faults that can trip you up

People use three statements when a negotiation goes badly because they failed to find out something negative about the person whom they negotiated with.

• “Nobody told me!”
• “Who knew?”
• “I wish I woulda known!”

Never say those words again. When you use these phrases, you’re missing a good opportunity to learn an important lesson: Get to know the person you’re negotiating with before you make a deal with them. If a negotiation goes sour because you got into a deal with someone who was unethical or dishonest, you should say:

• “I screwed up. I didn’t investigate enough.”

or

• “I saw some signs and I ignored them.”

Failing to find out enough about the person with whom you’re negotiating is the most common mistake people make in the preparation phase of a negotiation. In fact, people repeat that oversight every day all across the country when making the largest purchase of their lives: the purchase of their own family home.

Focusing on the Negotiator’s Interests

When I talk about interests, I don’t mean things such as baseball (not that it’s a bad interest and can’t make a difference in a negotiating session once in a while). I’m talking about the person’s negotiating interests. You want to know what that person is interested in getting out of the negotiation. It’s almost always more than money. (If you’re buying a used car from an individual, money may be the only consideration, but that’s about the only time it is.) I can’t think of a negotiation of any importance that does not have issues other than money attached to it, and often these issues are more important than money, especially to the person across the table or to that person’s main client.

For example, if you find out that the negotiator had a bad experience with your company’s delivery, quality, or communication, you had better believe that these issues will be important in this negotiation, even though the person on the other side of the table may be reluctant to bring them up. You also need to be alert to the possibility that the interests of the person whom you’re negotiating with and the person whom he has to please are a bit different. The person you’re negotiating with may receive his bonus based on some cost-saving formula. His boss may be focused on timely delivery.

Be sure you find out all you can about the boss/client so you meet the needs of both the negotiator and his client

Making it personal

When you’re buying a used car from a neighbor, you may think that the neighbor doesn’t have a client in the sense that I’m using the word here. But your neighbor wants to make his wife proud of him when he goes home. In this example, the wife is your neighbor’s client, the person whom your opposite number has to please.

In other words, a very personal issue always lurks in the background of every negotiation. You and I and your business partners and your friends and everyone else in the world have someone whom we want to make proud, from whom we want a pat on the back, to whom we have to answer. When you know who that person is and something about him or her, you’re way ahead in helping the person on the other side of the table present the results of the negotiation in the best possible light. Many a time I have made a friend for life and preserved a favorable result by suggesting ways to present the results of our negotiation to that special person.

A quick aside: When negotiating with your teenager, many parents often are frustrated because the teenager truly believes that he or she shouldn’t have to answer to anybody. This attitude sets them temporarily adrift, without the social anchors that you worked so hard to lay all around them. You have no one to go to and nowhere to turn to find an ally because your teen is listening to no one, except perhaps some other teens whom you’re not all that enthusiastic about to begin with.

This lack of a “client” is one of the things that makes negotiating with teenagers so difficult. Forget about negotiating specifics when this happens. Lay your frustrations aside and try to tether that teen somewhere, anywhere, before he or she drifts out to sea. When you want to make an ally out of the person across the table, find out who the real client is and figure out how to make that person happy. Part of your job is to make your counterpart’s job easier. Do that, and you’ll come away with a better result and someone who actually may feel indebted to you.

Aiming to please

If you can figure out your opposite’s key client, you’ll be able to make a deal with this person much more easily because you can actually help your opposite move up in her organization. After you know the person or people whom your negotiating partner wants to please, you can study those people so you know what your opposite number is up against. You may also be able to put in a good word for her.

Let me walk you through an obvious situation. You’re negotiating with someone from an organization. Whom does this person (the negotiator) need to please? Who gives this person her annual performance review? The person your negotiator has to please may not be the person who has to approve this particular deal. He or she may not be the person with whom your opposite number has the most direct contact.

When I say client, I’m referring to the person whom your opposite number needs or wants to please. No matter how much power your opposite number has, negotiating with you is just the first step of the process. Your counterpart must take the result of the negotiation to somebody (as do you), and you both want that somebody to be pleased.

How to Determine the Negotiator’s Level of Authority?

Finding out how much authority the negotiator has is a critical piece of information to obtain very early in the process. The last thing you want to do is to make a deal, shake hands, and then have the person say, “I’ll get back to you in a week.” If you know ahead of time the limits of the negotiator’s authority, you can handle matters differently. For example:

• Present some of your information in writing so the person has a document to add to the presentation they will make to the ultimate decision maker. Then information they present is more in line with your presentation.
• Be willing to accept a slightly lesser deal within the authority of your opposite number rather than delay matters while higher approval is obtained.

The easiest and most comfortable way to find out how much authority someone has is just to inquire at the top of the first negotiating session. “Do you have to check with anyone else in order to close this deal?” is a comfortable way of asking.

Some people like to hide the limits of their authority and act as though they have sole decision-making power when, in fact, they have to get the approval of a lot of other, more-important people before they can act. In large organizations, the limits of authority are generally pretty well spelled out, so you can find out pretty specifically what the other person’s authority is. But you have to ask. It’s worth the effort to keep probing on this subject until you know.

Keep in mind that the limits on authority can be about a lot of things other than just the dollar limit that can be negotiated. Limits on authority can cover any aspect of the deal. Anything that commits another department or an affiliated company almost always involves getting approval from that other department or company.

In a large corporation, even people with a great deal of authority to enter business agreements can’t alter the corporate policy on whether disputes are settled by arbitration or litigation. That decision is made in the legal department for the entire corporation. So you want to find out the limits to authority that are important to you and to closing the particular deal that you’re working on.

Identifying the Person Conducting the Negotiation

Usually, you already know the name of the individual with whom you’ll be negotiating. If you’re negotiating with a large company, however, you may not know the name of the particular person (or people) who will be in the room with you. Ask. Ask whomever you are dealing with. But ask. Ask before you get there. It’s good manners. It’s good negotiating. After you know the negotiator’s name, find out as much as you can about the individual or individuals who will be in the room.

You probably already have a good idea about how to research an individual — use the search engine Google (www.google.com). The results are usually awesome. But suppose that you’re dealing with someone who hasn’t risen to Google status. Not everyone has a bio on the Internet. Humpf. Right away you know that this person isn’t so scary after all. The corporation may be huge, but if you can’t find the individual person you’ll be negotiating with on the Internet, well, how scary can he or she be?

Don’t assume that the person won’t be a tough negotiator because he or she is far down the totem pole. Sometimes those at the bottom of the corporate ladder are the very toughest to deal with. They often have less flexibility than someone higher up and often are trying hard on every level to show the boss how worthy they are of a promotion.

Ask friends who have dealt with this person what they can tell you about him or her. Ask acquaintances. Ask the person who is setting up the meeting. Ask competitors with whom you have a relationship if they know anything about the person you’ll be negotiating with. Make a cold call if you have to, but ask. Find out all you can about the person. If you meet in their office, note the pictures, hobbies, interests, and art that are in the room. The more you know about the person, the smoother your talks with them will go.

Understanding the Opposition

The most common mistake made by folks who are getting ready to negotiate is failing to learn all they can about the person with whom they are negotiating. You may be negotiating with the largest corporation in the world, but you’ll be in a room (or on the phone or on the Internet) with an individual representative of that corporation. Find out all you can about that person.

Obviously, you want to know the name and title of that person. If you will be negotiating with more than one person, you’ll want to know the names and titles of everyone on the team. You can easily find out the negotiator’s name just by asking him or her, if no one has bothered to tell you. Usually, you will be handed a card. If not, I also say something like, “I want to put all your information in my address book. What is your correct title?” And from the negotiator’s name and title, you can tell a lot. For example:

• Position: A person’s title usually tells you a lot about where the person stands in the organization’s pecking order.
• Lifestyle: A person’s name, which you can look up in a number of sources, including your local phone book, can lead you to personal information, such as the
• Neighborhood the person lives in
• Church the person may attend
• Schools the person’s children attend
• Areas where the person may shop

These details can give you insights into the individual and certainly something to talk about — which doesn’t obligate you to talk about them. When you find out about sensitive material, exercise discretion. The exception would be if you discovered something which, if true, would cause you to pull out of the deal. In that case, you would want to clear the matter up early and discreetly, rather than waste a lot of time with someone with whom you aren’t going to do business anyway.

The amount of time and energy you put into this kind of preparation reflects how important the negotiation is to you. Or to the other side. If you find out that the person you’re negotiating with is the president of the company, you know right away that this negotiation is important to the other side, so you may be inclined to take it more seriously. Perhaps the president is looking you over for other business, or the ramifications of the deal are greater than you had initially thought.
But much more important than what you discover from the name and title, you want to know a few other things:

• What is the negotiator’s authority?
• Who is his or her client?
• What interests are driving this negotiation for the other side?

These are three key questions that you need to answer in order to know about the person who will be sitting across the negotiating table from you. Answering these questions is an essential step to success in the negotiation. Negotiators who fail to ask these questions are so common that, when you pursue the answers yourself, you will not only be more successful in the negotiation, but you will often leave the negotiation having made yourself a friend of the negotiator sitting on the other side of the table.