You will be able to list every negotiable issue and rank them for trading.
Ask most people what a negotiation is about and they'll name one number: the salary, the rent, the price. Then they spend the whole conversation pulling on that one number, and every gain for one side is a loss for the other.
Arjun nearly did this with his retainer. "Send a proposal with a number," the manager said, so he thought about the number. When he sat down and listed everything the two of them would actually have to agree, the list ran to eight items. Most of them had nothing to do with the monthly fee.
Nearly every negotiation has more terms in it than people notice. Timing is one: when it starts, how fast things are delivered, when payment arrives. Scope is another: how much work, what's included and what counts as extra. Then come payment terms, contract length, how either side can end it, and the extras, such as equipment, credit, a course fee or a review date.
Arjun's list for the retainer:
The monthly fee The number of videos each month How many rounds of revisions each video includes Turnaround time from brief to final cut Payment terms, meaning how many days after invoice he's paid Contract length and the notice needed to end it Who owns the raw footage and project files Whether he can show the work in his portfolio
A job offer has its own list: base pay, bonus, start date, title, leave, flexible work, a learning budget and the date of the first pay review. A lease has rent, length, repairs, furniture, the move-in date and the conditions for leaving early. Write yours down before you think about any of them in detail.
Next, give each issue two scores from 1 to 5. The first is how much it matters to you. The second is your best guess at how much it matters to them. Your guesses come from the interests you mapped in lesson 1.4, Map the interests in a real negotiation, and the research from lesson 3.1.
Arjun scores the monthly fee 5 for himself and 4 for them. Payment terms get a 5 for him too, because late payment has hurt his cash flow before, and he guesses a 2 for them, since a large company pays suppliers on a cycle and rarely cares much about a few days either way. Turnaround time he scores 2, because he has slack in his schedule, but he guesses 5 for them: with three launches coming, fast delivery in launch weeks matters a great deal. Contract length and notice he scores 3, while the director, who worries about sales slowing down, might score it 4. Raw footage ownership is a 1 for him and a 3 for them. Portfolio rights are 4 for him and probably 1 for them, as long as he waits until each launch is public.
His guesses could be wrong, and that's fine. He'll test them with questions in the conversation.
Now look at the pattern. Any issue you score low and they score high is your trading currency: something that costs you little to give and is worth a lot to them. These are what you offer in exchange for what you care about.
For Arjun, fast turnaround in launch weeks and handing over the raw footage are both cheap for him and valuable to them. Flexible notice might be too, if he can live with it. Payment terms run the opposite way: they matter a lot to him and probably little to them. So a natural trade appears before he's even spoken to the manager. He can offer fast turnaround in launch weeks and the raw files, and ask for payment within a shorter period in return.
The fee is the issue where both sides care a lot. That's where the hard bargaining will happen. Having other issues to trade means the fee doesn't have to carry the whole negotiation, which is how lesson 2.3's advice about adding issues works in practice.
Last, mark any issue you won't trade at all. Some terms are close to fixed for you, whatever is offered in exchange. For Arjun, it's the right to show the work in his portfolio after each launch, because his next clients find him through it. For someone taking a job, it might be flexible hours for childcare. For a tenant, it might be the move-in date.
Make this decision at your desk, days before the meeting. Under pressure, people trade away things they later regret, simply because the other side asked confidently. If you've already written "not for trade" next to an issue, it's much easier to say, calmly, that it isn't on the table, and to offer something else instead.
The activity asks you to build this list for your own negotiation, with both scores for every issue, so you can see at a glance which ones you can afford to give.
List every issue in your negotiation and score each from 1 to 5 for importance to you, with your guess of its importance to them.
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