10 Questions to uncover your team’s readiness to negotiate (part 2)

Carrying on the theme of the last blog about how to judge your teams’ readiness to negotiate – I outlined 4 great questions to ask:

1)    What is the insight about your counterpart for this negotiation?

2)    What is the ZOPA in this negotiation?

3)    What variables (or sponsorship assets) will you trade and what will you expect back in return?

4)    What role do you want people to play in this negotiation?

If you get satisfactory answers to those questions, you might want to ask the next 6 – just to make sure!

5)    Which is worth more to our business – the BATNA (Best Alternative) or the Essential position?

This kills many birds with one stone. It helps you understand if there is a BATNA at all, if the Essential position really is the walk away point and finally the level of value between the BATNA and the Essential position – these should be roughly of equal value.

6)    What agreement & alignment do you have from the other parts of the business?

A critical element of the negotiation strategy – is your organization supportive of the strategy and communicating the right message across the business?

7)    What happened in our last negotiation with this party?

Understanding your team’s performance and their counterpart’s performance in the last negotiation will let you know two things. Firstly, if the counterpart has any habits in their negotiations that your team can exploit, such as always rejecting the first three offers, and secondly, whether your team has developed their negotiation capability and learnt from their previous negotiations. If they haven’t learnt anything, perhaps they need to build upon their capability with additional training and coaching.

8)    What are the biggest risks in this negotiation?

Find out the size of the prize in the negotiation and the risks they have identified. Has your team considered how they will mitigate any risks in their negotiation?

9)    What is your opening position?

Have they decided if they are opening first? Have they thought through their opening position? Do they understand where the likely ZOPA for the counterparts actually is? Are they opening too extreme compared to the ZOPA? Are they pitching their opening position within the ZOPA? Can they justify their opening?

10) How will the negotiation move over time, especially if negotiations stall?

This will let you know what they expect to happen after the first offer, what the triggers are between different stances, and how they will resurrect any stalled negotiations. It shows if they have thought through the steps of the negotiation dance and the stances they will adopt as they go through the negotiation.

Satisfactory answers to these questions show you that your team is ready – anything else suggests that you need to intervene quickly to ensure success.