
66 SEVEN SECRETS FOR NEGOTIATING WITH GOVERNMENT
Many American negotiators do not devote the time and atten-
tions required by the prenegotiation phase. They want to ‘‘dis-
pense with the preliminaries’’ and to ‘‘get down to cases.’’
Negotiators from other countries view prenegotiation as an essen-
tial foundation to any relationship; consequently they recognize
the need to conduct prenegotiation with care before actually mak-
ing a decision to undertake substantive negotiations.
PhaseTwo: Conceptualization
In the second phase of the process, which might be called concep-
tualization, the parties seek to agree on a basic concept or premise
upon which