You will take one action to improve your BATNA and then update your numbers.
Knowing your BATNA is useful. Improving it is more useful. Most people treat their alternative as fixed: they work out what they would do if talks fail, then negotiate around it. The BATNA is the one part of a negotiation you can work on entirely on your own, before anyone else is in the room. A stronger alternative raises the lowest deal you should accept, and it gives you a true answer when the other side asks what else you have.
The exercise takes about 20 minutes now, plus the time the action itself takes during the week. You will redo the numbers from Lesson 2.2, "Set a reservation point and a target", so keep those figures beside you.
Start with a blank page. Write down everything you could do if the negotiation produced no deal, without filtering. Include the dull options, such as staying where you are, and the awkward ones, such as asking a relative for help with a deposit. Seeing them all written down matters more than whether each one is any good.
Then mark the best alternative as things stand today. Apply the rule from Lesson 2.1 here: only count what you could actually do tomorrow. A possible role with no offer is not yet an alternative, however promising it sounds.
Wei Ling's job offer is the worked example again (her figures are example figures). Her list has 5 lines: stay in her current job, carry on applying, chase the promotion her manager mentioned, take a short break between jobs to retrain (which she can't really afford), and a role at a logistics software firm from a recruiter who contacted her. Her best alternative today is still staying in her current job. The recruiter role doesn't count yet because there is no offer.
Choose one action that makes your best alternative better, or turns a weaker option into a real one, and do it this week. Good actions are small and specific, for example:
reply to a recruiter and book the call apply for two roles that match your experience ask your manager for a conversation about the promotion timeline request a second quote from another contractor view two flats in a nearby estate so the cost of moving is real
An action that produces no new offer is still useful. A rejection, a quote higher than you hoped, or a flat viewing showing that moving costs more than expected all tell you where you really stand, and your reservation point should reflect that.
Wei Ling replies to the recruiter. The software firm moves quickly, and two weeks after she replies she has a written offer: S$5,700 a month, with a 13th month payment and no variable bonus. The office is also near one-north, so the commute and the risk of starting somewhere new are the same as with the first offer.
Work through four things in order. Identify your new BATNA and what it is worth. Remove any adjustments for factors that both options share, because a factor present on both sides cancels out of the comparison. Work out what the other side must offer to beat your new BATNA. Then note how the zone of possible agreement, from Lesson 2.3, has changed.
Wei Ling's BATNA is now the software firm offer, worth 13 months of S$5,700, which is S$74,100 a year. In her earlier calculation she added S$150 for the commute and S$200 for the risk of a new job. Both offers now share the same commute and the same new-job risk, so she drops those adjustments.
The first company pays about 13 months a year: 12 months of base plus a variable bonus of about a month. To beat the software offer, the first company's base must be at least S$74,100 divided by 13, which is S$5,700. Her reservation point rises from S$5,500 to S$5,700.
Her estimate of the first company's limit is still about S$5,900. The zone of possible agreement narrows from S$400 (S$5,900 minus S$5,500) to S$200 (S$5,900 minus S$5,700). A narrower zone can look like bad news, but the higher reservation point means any deal she accepts is worth more: at least S$2,600 a year more than her old walk-away line would have allowed (S$200 x 13). She can also turn down anything below S$5,700 without worrying, because she has a written offer to go to.
There is one more factor. The first company's bonus is variable, and the software firm's 13th month is contractual, so it is more certain. If Wei Ling values certainty, she might push her reservation point a little higher than S$5,700. That is a judgement call, and any judgement call like this belongs in writing with the reason next to it, so you can check later whether it still holds.
Decide in advance how you'll answer this, so you're not improvising under pressure. The answer must be true. Inventing a competing offer is the kind of bluff Lesson 6.3, "Where hard bargaining becomes dishonest", warns about, and in a small market it's easy to get caught. You don't have to give details such as the other firm's name or its figure.
Wei Ling plans to say that yes, she has another offer, and she would prefer to join the first company if the package works. She won't name the software firm or give the S$5,700 figure unless she decides it helps her case.
If your BATNA is weak, you don't need to announce it. You can answer honestly without inviting a lowball, for example by saying you're happy where you are and will only move for the right role.
You are finished when you have four things on paper: your list of alternatives with the best one marked, one action completed or booked, your reservation point recalculated in writing with the old figure beside it, and a one-line answer to the alternatives question. For the activity, record the action you took and show how your reservation point moved, with the old and new figures side by side.
This week, take one action to improve your BATNA. Then rewrite your reservation point and note how it changed.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).