The Book of Real-World Negotiations

PArt IDomestic Business Cases

“The most critical thing in a negotiation is to get inside your [counterpart's] head and figure out what he really wants.”¹

– Jacob Lew

Business in the United States is ripe with endless opportunities to negotiate. Whether it is internally with bosses, colleagues, or employees, or externally with clients, partners, or contractors, negotiation is ubiquitous. Many of these negotiations include a financial aspect to them, but there are almost always other issues that are part of the equation. Furthermore, the challenge for any negotiation in a business context is how to meet your short-term needs while also building the long-term relationship. Businesses are sure to fail if they sacrifice the short term for the long term and vice versa.

When I ask the companies and organizations I work with how many of their negotiations are one-time encounters compared to negotiating with the same people time and again, the responses are approximately 15% for one-time encounters and 85% for continual negotiations.² As one CEO commented to me a few years back, “Our best new customers and source of revenue are our current clients. How we negotiate with them is critical to the relationship and whether they stay with us over the long term. If we seek to squeeze every dollar out of every deal we will indeed do better in the short term, but we will lose in the long term. I have seen clients leave because of a negotiation process where they felt disrespected or how a ...