Negotiations
... my opinion a somewhat deceptive tactic, because we probably should have told them to rethink their numbers. However, you don’t always get a second chance in the real world to take back an offer. We ended up negotiating a deal for 5 years where we would pay $45,000 per title, with 40% up front. We agreed to then pay 12% for every year after. Even though the other team was reluctant at first, we also managed to work Juniors into the deal for $17,500. The overall deal had a net value of 2.8 million dollars. One of the key elements that influenced the outcome of the negotiation was simply the goodwill attitude that was set forth by both teams towards each other when we first entered the room. A cooperative environment was established, there were no intense or hostile feelings and no one behaved in an arrogant or over confident manner. I also feel that the personalities of the lead negotiators on each side had an impact on the outcome of the negotiation. They both did a really good job of leading their groups and made it feel like a real situation even though it was only role playing. Another factor that may have influenced the outcome was the amount of times my team “broke away from the table” to punch numbers or discuss offers. My team seemed to do this a few more times and for longer periods of time than the other team. I feel that this made us more confident with the numbers being thrown around and ultimately may have been a reason that we did so well in the end. Learning about my behavior and that of others was to me the most important part of the whole experience. The thing I learned about myself was how frustrated I felt when I could not tell if someone was bluffing and even more frustrating was not being able to call them on it if I did suspect they were bluffing. I learned that you just have to negotiate around it and try to get more accurate information out of them in a more indirect way. For example the other team tried to start off by telling us that they could not go below $70,000 per title, I thought they were probably lying but I could not say that out loud. So we just said we cannot go that high and you are going to have to come up with another number if you want to reach an agreement. I learned that communication skills are essential when working within a team. Even though there was one main person leading the negotiation we all had to communicate our thoughts and ideas in a way that conveyed to the other team that we were unified. I also learned that even if you team is falling apart internally you have to keep a cool and collective front, so the other team cannot act upon this weakness. This was something that I learned from the other team in the first negotiation, but saw i...