It’s a worldwide phenomenon: You’re on vacation in a foreign country and decide to buy a souvenir. You know you shouldn’t pay the price they’re asking, so you make a lower offer on that “locally produced” carving. The vendor takes it. As your purchase is being wrapped, you’re thinking, “That was too easy. I could have bought it for less.”

We’re not trying to teach you to deprive starving artists of their living. But whenever someone asks for and easily gets a concession, it immediately reduces the perceived value of that concession. In business negotiations, where more is at stake, the requester will often press for even deeper discounts or additional concessions at no extra cost. Not only does the concession appear of little value, but it also encourages additional negotiating – any final agreement will be slower to come. When international negotiations involve significant travel expense, protracting the process can become an expensive proposition.

When concessions are granted during a negotiation, they should be Principled Concessions™ – concessions made with a credible business rationale. Their opposite is arbitrary concessions, which create uncertainty for the person receiving the concession. Principled Concessions help create confidence and credibility. When negotiators take the further step of proving the value of the concession, Principled Concessions help earn trust and respect, and get to closure sooner.

Your job as a negotiator is to understand, in as much detail as possible, why the party across the table is asking for the concession. Then you can link your concession strategy to the rational business reasons for the request and the value-based merits for your offer. Concession requests can be the result of a fundamental business need, or cultural or local factors of which you may not be aware.

A Negotiation Example

Recently, K&R saw a technology supplier offer some “free” equipment to a European water company to do computational work required by the digital water meters the company was about to deploy. There was no reason for this offer, except to “win the business” — it was unprincipled. The supplier also did not understand that the water company was partially funded by the local government, and the funding was dependent on a reduced carbon footprint. The free equipment would increase the water company’s carbon footprint and damage its ability to get government funding. With our guidance, the right concession offer would have been a paid services solution instead of free equipment, because it would preserve government funding, while being principled. The customer could afford to pay for services, but could not afford to accept the free equipment.

Principled Concession Formula

Credible offers are prerequisites to a Principled Concession. A credible offer is a firm offer based on a rationale related to value. A credible offer does not change arbitrarily. It changes if the value assumptions are validly disputed. Those changes are also Principled Concessions.

When a Principled Concession not only has a business rationale, but also is tied to a business value change, it becomes a more powerful motivator.

In international business, it can be ineffective to assume that a value argument that is completely apparent to you will be equally understood and valued by the other party. What cultural or regulatory factors may be playing a part in how the other party views the deal? Again, P&L (patience and listening) together with solid advance research will prepare you to work through concession requests by a negotiator from another part of the world, as illustrated by the above example. This allows you to craft a value argument that is calculated for two levels: business rationale and cultural differences. Being prepared for both means you’re using both your time and the other party’s time in the best way possible — and driving the best deal for everybody.

Sales forecasting is a critical activity for any team, but many companies have a hard time getting it right. Business pressures or subjective measures – emotions and opinion – often have too much weight, and distort the process. For business leaders who want to give their teams a dependable way of analyzing deals so they can focus on activities that will result in more closes, sales negotiator training should include some aspect of sales forecasting.

Most sales or negotiation training focuses on the process, rather than the "why" and "how." Yet this process delivers more repeatable success if we know how to analyze and predict the outcomes of our sales opportunities. Some of the most critical negotiation work happens during analysis and preparation – long before we discuss pricing and terms at the negotiation table. Negotiators who learn a structured approach to sales forecasting learn more about:

• Which factors drive customer action
• How to use those factors to separate low-odds from high-odds opportunities
• How to identify actions that improve the odds of success
• How to build achievable timelines by systematically breaking down deal complexity

Blunting the Stress of Missed Forecasts, Lagging Revenue

As we all know, missed forecasts can have serious implications for revenue and even the viability of a company. Forecast misses also have a spiraling effect by attacking the sales team’s confidence. That is why thorough sales negotiator training is so critical. It illuminates the factors driving a potential close and gives leadership a tool that provides more certainty in their forecast. Sales teams get more confidence to focus on what’s achievable, rather than just wishful thinking.

A methodical approach to sales forecasting illuminates all factors of the deal and trains sales professionals how to remove subjective factors and analyze each deal in their pipeline to better gauge their odds of success. Negotiator training in sales forecasting will help professionals recognize common milestones and turn "hunch work" into a precise list of tasks that can move them to the close. Knowing when this will happen, and being accurate more often, delivers huge results across an organization.

Effective negotiator training directly addresses all the challenges that sales teams meet every workday. Selecting a resource that delivers not only the theory, but vivid application of techniques, to shorten close cycles and build more profitable long-term relationships is critical. Coursework that includes sales forecasting and pipeline analysis is a vital facet of sales negotiator enablement that your team can apply to immediate advantage and improve their win rate.

Summary: Negotiator training that includes opportunity forensics and sales forecasting results in fewer missed forecasts and more closes for a sales team.

Related Posts

• Overcoming Negotiation "Dealbreakers"
• Shaping Your Value Argument
• Negotiation Examples: Diffusing Intimidating Tactics

As many have learned, cracking the united front of a negotiation team can yield prized concessions. As with a teenager who knows how to play one parent against another to get permissions and privileges, the party across the negotiation table will pick your team apart if given a chance. Even if it’s an opportunity they don’t take, disunity can severely damage your credibility, and prolong or sometimes cripple negotiations. In an international environment, where team members can often be in different time zones, keeping a unified voice is a particular challenge.

A Negotiation Example

In a key negotiation meeting with a Japanese buyer, our team firmly held that the product we were selling had to be clearly differentiated by the Japanese before it was resold. Product improvements, service differences, solution packaging – any of these would have been acceptable to us. In a consensus culture such as Japan, decisions often take time. After days of inconclusive negotiations, our team’s manager said, “Well, if this is a real problem, perhaps you could phase in the differences over time.”

This was a terrible error. If we had continued on this path, we would have had no key differentiators and ended up in a price war with our own client. Moreover, none of us had agreed to this “phase-in” idea internally. Our manager had just lost patience. We were a team divided. We managed to recover from the error, but it added weeks to the negotiation cycle and our differentiation was weakened. Everyone lost a little bit in the end.

The Value of a United Team

A united front at the negotiating table is important. It is particularly true when someone on your team commits a blunder. When negotiating with somebody from a different culture, in addition to the mechanics of the deal, there is the opportunity to stumble on language and culture differences. If you’re negotiating abroad, the stress of travel and jet lag can take a toll, as well. When a mistake happens, your team’s response to the mistake is critical. Mistakes can scramble decision-making and jeopardize your united front.

First, there is a high probability that the other team will try to exploit those mistakes. You can further weaken your position by letting the event throw your team into chaos and blame assignment. The key is to correct the error as soon as possible. A shorter time from error to correction simplifies the fix. Then continue by showing loyalty to your team and improving your teamwork. These actions will minimize the damage of the error. Internally, it will keep your credibility within the team and retain their support. If teammates allow their team to be divided just because one team member makes a mistake, how will you maintain your position when the other side presents genuine challenges?

A few years ago we were working with a US company that was discussing a purchase of assets and subsequent closure of a facility in France. One of the seller’s two largest shareholders was against the facility closure, and kept raising the issue of French labor laws that would make the deal uneconomical. The other large shareholder favored the sale, and stated to the buyer that he was willing to underwrite the transfer of employees to another party. This immediately aligned the US company with the second shareholder. It also enabled the buyer to lower the purchase price while removing the first shareholder’s only argument against the sale. By not having a united front, the shareholders eroded their position.

Teams can and should encourage internal debate, but a unified position must always be presented to the other party. “Stand by your team” is advice that will serve you well in most negotiation scenarios. This does not mean that you should support your team members if you have lost trust in their ability to support a negotiation. If necessary, removing a team member should be done in a way that is not seen by the other side to be punitive or damaging to credibility. As much as possible, the various rationales for an internal split should not be made apparent to the other side. Debate internally, unify externally – and do your research about the culture of the people with whom you’re negotiating!

Employing this principle begins with a clear-eyed assessment of your negotiation team’s weaknesses. Be brutally honest with yourself in evaluating how critical factors like tight deadlines, lack of patience, insufficient alternatives, lack of understanding of the customer, poor cash flow, or product credibility issues might affect your position. Poor teamwork is another weakness, making a team susceptible to divide-and-conquer tactics by the other side. Teamwork is so important that it is the subject of our third principle of negotiation. We will discuss that in detail in our next post.

When assessing a negotiation team’s strengths, the three most important considerations should be:

There are strong culturally-based norms about making decisions in public (in a meeting) versus in-private, hierarchical decision-making versus consensus (team decision-making). There are also norms about "trading" issues versus treating all issues as standalone. A recent example of the consequences of misunderstanding these types of sensitivities occurred in a negotiation in sales between an American seller and a Japanese buyer. The buyer threatened to break off negotiations if the seller resorted to “sales tactics,” such as discounts which are only available if the buyer makes the decision before end of the quarter. When the seller offered an “incentive” for the buyer to close by end of the year, the buyer became upset and refused to return the seller’s calls. If you are unaware of these types of sensitivities, you will lose effectiveness (and time and money).

Additionally, difficult negotiation conditions can arise when one side doesn’t or won’t reveal their criteria for making decisions. Sometimes it is employed as a tactic, sometimes it is a cultural predisposition. This deprives a negotiating team of the ability to articulate value and build on their strengths. If you don’t know the decision criteria, your leverage to affect a positive outcome will be limited and you are likely to be in a defensive position throughout the negotiation. This can result in your having to defend your weaknesses at the negotiation table. In many cases a team can make educated guesses about decision criteria, putting their proposal on the table and explaining what assumptions were made and why. This transparent approach can lead to a fruitful discussion about the true negotiation outcomes needed.

To be an effective negotiator, aggressive research of each side’s business weaknesses is necessary, as is contacting as many people as possible who may yield intelligence about the other side’s values. In many respects this process is a positive one for both sides. Your ability to entice the other side to make a better deal is highly dependent on your ability to strengthen their business by, for example, understanding their competitive weaknesses and helping them become more competitive through partnering with you. For international negotiations, this includes learning something about how the other team’s culture may impact their approach to business. For example, we know of a number of situations where failing business operations would have meant that a manufacturer would need to close facilities and lay off workers. In places like Germany, France and Japan, layoffs are considered to be socially and economically repugnant. In this environment, a business partner’s approach that allows for the outsourcing of those facilities and the repurposing of labor to other activities can be more valuable than the pure financial deal that the outsourcer might offer.

If the other side values your strengths, then you can have confidence that the weaknesses can be overcome. Likewise, if you understand the other side’s weaknesses, it provides you opportunities to deliver value and get a better return for your company.

"Face" is a person’s standing in the eyes of others. In negotiations, that means looking good to each negotiation side, peers, management, spouse and family. It avoids putting someone in an awkward position that could humiliate or embarrass them, particular with a direct confrontation. When confronted negatively, negotiations can quickly deteriorate. However, giving someone "face" makes them feel good and helps form good business relationships.

A Business Negotiation Example – Saving "Face"

At K&R Negotiations, we have extensive experience in business negotiations. We’ve collected numerous negotiation skills examples from a wide variety of business negotiations. Here’s an illustration of saving face from our collection of negotiation examples.

View Additional K&R Negotiation Examples

• Diffusing Intimidating Tactics
• The Power of “Face”

In our two previous posts on international negotiation, we discussed the importance of P&L (Patience and Listening) and the dynamics of credibility and leverage. One is a practice, the second is a conceptual understanding. They are interlocking and dependent. Patience and listening yield trust and information. Trust and information help us generate credibility and leverage – the two things you must have if you want to negotiate successfully.

What are some other ways to generate credibility and leverage? Over decades of collective experience as international negotiators, K&R has formulated six principles that serve as a guide to the fundamentals of negotiating. In following posts, we will discuss tools and techniques for defining value, negotiation priorities and managing the negotiation process. They all revolve around K&R’s Six Principles™.

These principles align with our core philosophy of negotiation. We believe that it’s more important – and in the long run, more lucrative – to build “Win Wisely™” situations where both parties can leave the table with their major objectives met and be satisfied with the value they have received. The Six Principles are your guide for creating these situations.

Principle 1: M.O.R.E. – preparation is key to a winning negotiation.

Lack of preparation is one of the top causes of poor negotiation results. Preparation means rigorous information gathering, not only about the transaction at hand, but about the other side and their likely motivations. In international negotiation, this also means studying your counterparts and considering how national, or even regional, cultural differences may come into play.

The M.O.R.E. acronym outlines three necessary elements and their outcome when preparing for a successful negotiation.

Motivations

Thorough preparation requires that we probe and gather information to gain a more complete understanding of both the customer’s and the seller’s motivations and objectives. Why are they acting as they do? We also need to understand why we, including our team, are acting as we do. The relationship between motivations and objectives is simple. Motivations are the “why,” and objectives are the “what.”

Why is a buyer taking certain steps to improve their business? Why is the seller motivated to get cash up front or not? Usually the answers to the “why” questions come from looking at the current state of the person, their business and their history. Experienced negotiators do their research and host planning sessions to gather this kind of information early in the negotiation process. This information is used to build a solid foundation of knowledge that reduces the possibilities of surprise.

One common preparation error is to assume that the other side is “like us.” It is easy to do – we filter our information unconsciously to match the way we are used to seeing it. The tendency for humans to discard information that does not fit our own mental model is well known. When working internationally, you need to be careful not to let unfamiliarity with local standards cause you to discard important negotiating information.

Here’s a negotiation example from a recent situation where a better understanding of motivations and objectives could have resulted in a better deal.

Have you considered all the factors that influence the behavior of the people with whom you are negotiating? Buyers are often motivated by specific weaknesses in their business, and the objectives they seek are steps to remedy those weaknesses. To them, a deal that does not address those objectives becomes low priority. Vendors may be motivated by seasonal cycles, so cash may be key to them when they need to build inventories to address those cycles.

For buyers, a winning proposal is expressed in terms that are relevant to their motivations. If they are worried about risk, factors like the vendor’s track record and market position will have a strong influence on their behavior.

Early time spent understanding possible motivations can save substantial time in closing the deal at the end of the process. In the end, motivations drive actions in negotiations.

Objectives

These are your and the other side’s true goals. What is the outcome they seek? Revenue and profit are two common business objectives. Determining the true objective of the other party – what the problem really is – is critical to developing the proper requirements.

Fundamental questions at this step of the process will explore what both parties are seeking to achieve as a result of the relationship or the contract. Credible value statements are more powerful if they link to the measurable objectives of the other side. For publicly traded companies, the objectives are often aligned with statements and promises management makes to shareholders. Vendors or buyers that align with a company’s corporate objectives usually will get to closure sooner, and with better terms. For public entities, offers that address fundamental mission goals will be more successful.

Requirements

While motivations are the “why” and objectives are the “what,” requirements are the “how.” In other words, the requirements in a negotiation are the steps agreed to by the parties to achieve the objectives. Most proposals should clearly outline the objectives and focus on requirements. Either I am telling you how I will achieve your objectives, or you are telling me.

Miscalculating or cutting corners on the objectives will usually produce inaccuracy in the requirements and eventual disagreement on whether a deal is successfully fulfilled. For example, we often hear that IT projects disappoint because there is clear understanding of neither the expected deliverables nor the division between customer and vendor responsibilities.

Cross-culturally, requirements can cause problems. A simple example: while in the US the regulatory obstacles to layoffs are relatively low, in the E.U. it can be quite expensive to downsize. In Japan, it may be culturally impossible. A requirement statement in a negotiation that mandates downsizing to generate savings will be received very differently in each of these three geographic locations, and have different financial outcomes.

Understanding of Motivations and Objectives, and then outlining the Requirements, is critical to effective deal-making.

Edge

Gaining the E in M.O.R.E. is getting the edge, or advantage, by putting due diligence into the M, O, and R.

It is imperative that internal and external planning and fact-finding activities for either side be comprehensive, leaving as little to chance as possible. A business entering negotiations with a potential customer will plan early and often, engaging a competent, cross-functional team to explore as many questions as possible about the motivations and objectives of both parties. Not only does a seller need to understand the buyer, but a buyer also needs to understand the motivations and measurements of the seller. This way they can understand what the seller needs to make the sale successful for them.

In our next post in this series, we’ll discuss Principle 2: Protect your weaknesses, utilize theirs.

Negotiation tactics are techniques or actions intended to influence a negotiation. However negotiation gamesmanship consists of techniques or actions, unrelated to the merits of the transaction, used to gain an advantage in a negotiation. Thus, gamesmanship is a subset of tactics. For example, yelling, screaming, intimidation or walking out are types of gamesmanship tactics.

Why Understand Negotiation Games?

Gamesmanship is not for everyone, but all negotiators should recognize and understand these tactics. Gamesmanship as a tactic is used to cause confusion, intimidate, accelerate or improved leverage or momentum. Thus it’s a key skill to recognize gamesmanship tactics when they occur so that the skilled negotiator can deal with them.

Some negotiators develop reputations for frequently employing gamesmanship. For instance, some negotiators are well-known for employing various types of intimidation tactics to gain concessions. The professional negotiator will recognize such tactics and refuse to take the bait, avoiding unnecessary concessions.

K&R Negotiations has extensive experience in business negotiations. Here’s an example of intimidation tactics from our collection of negotiation examples.

A Business Negotiation Example – Recognizing and Diffusing Intimidation

In the above scenario from our collection of negotiation examples, the lead negotiator and other members of the other side’s team believed in negotiating through intimidation and arrogance. They used negotiation tactics to intimidate Harvey into a concession. However they misjudged him: Harvey recognized their approach and used humor to diffuse the tactic.

"You lied to us."

That was what we heard from across the table on the opening of our fifth consecutive negotiation meeting during a Japanese engagement. The actual issue was minor, having only to do with the meeting’s start time. But tensions were high. Days one through four had started at eight a.m., usually stretching until two or three a.m. the following morning. The man making the accusation was a key Japanese negotiator from the customer’s procurement organization. He had been difficult, not because he was hard to work with, but because he was detail-oriented – and often right. In the preceding days he had used good logic and persuasion to push costs of the deal onto our side.

In New York this issue might have been resolved with an apology and a mild expletive. Then everybody would have gotten back to work. But this wasn’t the case in Japan, where a tremendous credibility problem had been created when our teammate was attacked in front of 40 people. Marked as a "liar," she would have real difficulty operating in a culture where partnership and relationship are critical to an agreement. To complicate things, she was one of our two top negotiation leaders, and knew the deal inside and out. What to do?

We reverted to facts. The actual issue was that she had made a side agreement to change the start time with the speaker’s management, and they had neglected to tell him. When this became known, her credibility (and by extension, our whole team’s credibility) was preserved. We could continue our negotiation.

But there was an important follow-up step. A major accusation, in a public forum, was a real "face" issue for our team. We prevailed on the Japanese accuser’s management for a suitable public apology in the same forum. On their own, they removed him from any future negotiating session. His credibility was now gone, as he had embarrassed his own team. We closed the deal – good for both sides, but in some ways better for us than if their team had kept one of their stronger players.

Preparing yourself for negotiation success with a company from another country or culture can seem overwhelmingly complex. There are many layers to the process to consider. In later chapters we will discuss the tools and techniques for systematically analyzing and managing all the variables.

But at the core of the process are universal dynamics that, like Newton’s laws, are the same in any country. Among these are the dynamics of credibility and leverage. When both are managed well, the chances are high for a favorable deal. Whether we are training companies how to negotiate or engaging with them as negotiation partners, we begin here.

Credibility

In short, credibility is the ability to inspire belief. It determines the likelihood that someone will act upon what you are saying. That’s because credibility has two components. You are credible when you are not only trustworthy but when you have proven yourself as capable by reliably doing what you have promised to do. Credibility is what makes persuasive value arguments believable and compelling. As we explained in the last chapter, being a good listener is the basis of generating credibility. Without it, your ability to illuminate roadblocks to the deal and express the value that you deliver is severely compromised.

• Listen carefully
• Deliver what they promise
• Treat people as individuals, not stereotypes
• Have the facts
• Do not automatically reject what others say
• Anticipate the effect of their speech
• Accept responsibility for what they say

For you to win wisely at the negotiating table, what you say must be understood, valued, and believed. Think of a few people whom you find extremely credible. Do the things they do to earn your trust and belief line up with the list above? Beginning with P&L (Patience & Listening), credibility is the cornerstone of effective communication. Hand in hand with leverage, credibility is a formidable asset.

Leverage

The concept of leverage originally comes from physics, referring to levers in a pulley system; the more you have, the more easily you can move objects of heavier mass with less force. In negotiation, leverage is the ability to move people closer to your way of thinking. Your value arguments are your levers. The more credible value arguments you have, the more easily you can move people closer to your point of view voluntarily, and thus with less force.

What exactly is leverage? At K&R Negotiations, we’ve developed the concept of the Leverage Slope, defining the relationship between the buyer and the seller. The buyer wants the optimal solution at the lowest possible price, and the seller wants the best price for their product. A good negotiator in a sales organization will convince the buyer that these are the same thing.

The seller’s leverage is driven by the unique characteristics of the value they provide to the buyer. It is influenced by incumbency – if the buyer already has had a good experience with you, you should have an advantage. At the bottom of the Leverage Slope are commodity products or solutions. These are relatively undifferentiated – both in their descriptive characteristics and the value they provide – and available from a number of vendors. With a commodity product, the main purchasing factor is price, which competition naturally drives down.

Further up the slope are competitive products, which have some uniqueness and value that separates them from the other alternatives. A seller can negotiate a higher price by successfully articulating some kind of unique value as a competitive advantage. However, keep in mind that there is usually a price point at which the buyer will look for less optimal solutions.

The peak of the slope is the seller’s best position. This “transactional monopoly” is where the buyer’s clear best choice is to go with that offering because of the value it provides. Sellers in this position have a lot of leverage. As a seller in this position, use that leverage wisely by explaining your value fully, so that the buyer feels good about their decision and the relationship. This will pay off in later transactions, when you may not have that degree of negotiating strength.

Sometimes the concept of leverage has a negative connotation. People can view it as a weapon used against somebody in a disadvantaged position. When people view leverage this way, the expectation is that the person with leverage will use it arrogantly and refuse to "negotiate." This is misused leverage, and likely to damage otherwise profitable relationships over the long term. The best leverage is not born of intimidation. It comes from a clear, mutual understanding of value. As a good negotiator, it is your job to reveal and express this value to your counterpart.

There are many additional sources of leverage – both for the buyer and the seller. Certain common buying tools, such as RFPs or reverse auctions, are intended to move solutions to the buyer-preferred (lower) end of the leverage slope. Incumbency with good performance provides leverage for the seller. But even incumbency with average (or in some cases poor) performance can provide leverage if the cost of change is high. Almost no one changes cars mid-lease, for example – too much leverage for the seller is in play. External events create leverage as well. Y2K fears drove a lot of actions. Laws such as Basel III, because they set dates for compliance, also create leverage, particularly as those dates get closer. A good negotiator will look at as many sources of leverage as can be identified – for both sides.

In most business negotiations, however, value to the buyer is the positive force that shifts positions and gets the deal done. We’ll focus on that as we go forward in our series.

In its essence, good negotiation is good communication. When the person across the table from you is from a different country, you’ll see and feel just how critical good communication is!
In K&R’s world, negotiation is the interaction between people to reach agreement. To reach that agreement your job as a negotiator is to understand exactly what everybody wants out of the process. You will succeed when you reach an agreement with terms that satisfy all involved. In subsequent posts, we will discuss the mechanics of articulating value. But for now, let’s focus on negotiation as communication.

In most international negotiations the role of communicator bears huge responsibility. If this responsibility falls on you, remember the two most important qualities to bring to the table: P&L. For many businesses, P&L means Profit and Loss. In negotiations, it means Patience and Listening.

• Patience means showing composure, having grace under pressure, and taking the time to work through the whole negotiation process. This is especially important when negotiating internationally, because already-complex details may take longer to communicate. Misunderstandings may be easier to create and tougher to unravel. People from other countries may also do business at a more deliberate pace than you are used to. Patience is the rock upon which all good negotiators stand.

• Listening means hearing with thoughtful attention. It means focusing on what the other person is saying rather than thinking of your own response. Good negotiators hear and capture every detail that will help them to understand hurdles to the deal and to form persuasive arguments. If you’re not a good listener, you can’t be a good negotiator, period.

Poor Listening Habits

These two bad habits can hamper your ability to create the credibility and leverage that are needed to win big deals.

Pseudolistening:  You look like you’re paying attention, but your mind is far away. Negotiation is the time to tune out all distracting thoughts and focus! If you are negotiating with someone whose first language is different than yours, it’s easy to miss or misunderstand an important detail if you let your mind drift.

Self-Centered Listening:  Self-centered listening means that you’re rehearsing your answer in your mind before the other person has even finished speaking. Let the other person finish, then begin thinking about your answer – every time. This is not easy, but it’s essential.

Effective communication begins with patience and listening. Why? Because patience and listening get you information, which gives you knowledge. And knowledge gives you credibility. We’ll discuss the principles of credibility in our next post.

With dazzling new opportunities come more potential pitfalls. Even without the culture variable, negotiating in business is already a complex process. Culture, language, and fundamental, unspoken approaches to business can all make international negotiations more complex than domestic negotiations. While acting in a way that would normally create a good impression in your culture, you may inadvertently create the opposite in someone else’s culture. For example, setting an agenda for a meeting with someone you don’t yet know may be appropriate in the U.S., while some Japanese may view it as arrogant and presumptuous.

However, this boggling diversity also yields rich opportunity. The "win/win" outcomes that we train our clients to achieve can sometimes develop more naturally in countries where social harmony and stability are valued as highly as profit. While two American companies may take the "winner/loser" view of dividing profits, negotiation teams from other countries may value employment of the extended corporate family more than profit. This can create room for win/win scenarios that don’t necessarily involve contention.

Nurturing these global opportunities requires rigorous preparation and forethought. Our goal in this series of blog posts is to help you prepare on two levels:

• By showing you the universal, bedrock principles of negotiation that K&R Negotiations executives and associates have used to close hundreds of millions in transactions across the globe

• By helping you consider the international dimension of these principles and to share with you what we have learned – sometimes the hard way – over years of serving our global clients and partners

No matter how much faster and smaller the world gets, all players at the table want to walk away with a clear understanding of the value they have received and delivered. Making that value clear and removing the roadblocks to the deal – whether institutional, financial, or cultural – is the job of the negotiator. In the posts to come, we will try to make that job easier, hopefully turning the wild new world of global business into an arena where you and your team can consistently close better deals and create longer, more profitable relationships – wherever your business dealings are conducted.

Thank you for reading.

Mladen Kresic
CEO, K&R Negotiations