Author: coreykupfer

You negotiate virtually every day of your life. In fact, negotiation is so common, you might not even recognize when you’re doing it.

Learning the correct vision, mindset, and tools when negotiating is essential for success. But, it’s equally as important to learn and identify what not to do.

Over the next several blog posts, I will share why negotiations fail and ways you can better prepare for a successful negotiation. You’ll be able to correct the ways you may be currently sabotaging your own negotiations.

One oftentimes surprising reason why negotiations fail is rigidity. Some people come in with a very rigid view of what they want in a negotiation. While it is important to know your bottom line (when you’ll walk away), rigidity often shows up around how things need to look or how things need to be structured, rather than the bottom line. Rigidity can be a real negotiation-killer.

Let’s break rigidity down into 3 areas:

1. 1. Preconceived notions
   2. Inflexibility
   3. Pace & timing
   4. PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS
   5. I’ve had many clients give specific instructions for how they want a negotiation structured

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For example, Miguel, a long-term client, came in once and said, “Corey, I’ve got a buyer for my company. I want to sell it, and I want to do it as a reverse triangular merger.” I said to him, “Okay, no problem if that is the way we end up going, but why do you want to structure it that way?” “My friend did his deal as a reverse triangular merger; it worked out really well, and he saved a bunch of taxes,” Miguel responded.

While the merger worked out well for Miguel’s friend, Miguel’s deal is not necessarily his friend’s deal. Instead of automatically structuring his deal the same way, I suggested we talk about his objectives and where he wanted to be by the end of the deal.

Miguel was great about it, even though he’d come in with this preconceived idea of what he wanted. Not surprisingly, his deal ended up not being structured as a reverse triangular merger, but the deal did achieve Miguel’s objectives.

It’s important to be able to let go of preconceived notions and work with the factors at hand.

INFLEXIBILITY

Some people aren’t as flexible as Miguel was. Instead, they come in with preconceived notions of how things have to be—whether that’s a specific type of deal structure, the purchase price, or deal terms—and insist on sticking to them.

Coming to the negotiating process from a very rigid place could work against negotiators and create the kind of inflexibility that can kill a good deal.

PACE AND TIMING

Every negotiation, every deal, has its own pace and its own rhythm. Going too slow can cause people to lose interest, come up with objections, or find simpler alternatives. Pushing the pace too fast can indicate desperation or impatience and cause alarm in the other party. Negotiations need to flow in their organic rhythm, which could be very fast, very slow, or somewhere in between, depending on the deal.

Several years ago I had a client, Kim, who was so anxious to get out of a business partnership that she couldn’t sleep at night. It was only after several long sessions with Kim in which I helped her surrender the pace of the negotiation to give the best chance for a positive result, we were able to achieve it for her.

When you’re rigid around pace and timing, you lose creativity. There’s no time for thinking out of the box or innovation. There’s less chance of finding an alternate route when you hit a roadblock. This kind of thinking often comes from a deep-seated fear of losing control. Whether it comes from fear or arrogance or any other driving force, a set timetable is a good way to derail a deal.

Are you rigid in your negotiations? Which do you see most often occur when negotiating, preconceived notions, inflexibility, or a set timetable? How can you work against these roadblocks?

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Even though negotiation is a part of everyday life, one of the most common roadblocks to successful negotiation is fear. Negotiating can bring up a lot of fear, discomfort, and insecurity.

As we talk about the most common reasons why negotiations fail, fear is at the top of the list. There are many ways that fear sabotages successful negotiating.

Nerves can make you talk too much

1. Fear of losing
2. Fear of success
3. Fear of the unknown
4. Fear of looking bad / letting someone down
5. NERVES CAN MAKE YOU TALK TOO MUCH
6. The nerves that come from feeling outmatched can cause you to talk more than you ought. Have you ever been in a situation where you start babbling because you’re afraid, uncomfortable, or insufficiently experienced?

In negotiations, if you feel outmatched, afraid, or desperate, you may talk a lot. It’s a bad idea to let your tongue run away with you because you may give away too much information, not listen, and not leverage the power of silence.

FEAR OF LOSING

Fears show up in many different ways. For some, fear is caused by the thought of losing. In other words, fear is caused by “needing to win.”

If this is your fear, remember, negotiation is not about losing (or winning). Negotiation is about achieving your objectives.

FEAR OF SUCCESS

A less-talked-about problem is fear of success. Odd as it may seem, you could very well be afraid of succeeding. For example, you may have a subconscious belief that having money makes you change into someone evil. Despite having a great opportunity, you may feel an internal tension, caught between the desire to do well and the fear of doing well.

You may feel anxious from this fear and be unaware of where it’s coming from. You could even sabotage your success in negotiations because you’re afraid of exactly what you want to achieve.

So, what’s the solution? Do the deep work you need to do to identify your limiting beliefs and what might sabotage you in the negotiation. Then, when you feel the fear of success coming up (which might show up as resistance or judgment), take a step back and reconnect to why you are doing this, stay grounded, and reconnect to your purpose.

FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN

If you ask a million questions when you are in a negotiation, you may struggle with a fear of the unknown. When you can’t see what the future holds, you may feel uncomfortable and seek every possible bit of information possible.

To prevent that from happening to you, start by getting clear on what criteria you need for things to be in place after the deal. List them out. If you do the preparatory work needed to get clear with yourself and identify what really matters, then you can make sure that those points are satisfactorily addressed.

If you’re in this position, you may not even know what it would take to satisfy that fear. In Take the time to drill down to what you’re most concerned with. Do the work to distinguish exactly what your fear is and decide what action to take to get you comfortable enough to move forward.

FEAR OF LOOKING BAD OR LETTING SOMEONE DOWN

Another fear that can derail your success in negotiation is the desire to not look bad. That can surface in lying about something, pumping up something, or giving into something you ought not to because you don’t want to look less than informed or out of control. This is fear is similar to wanting to be liked.

Many people also fear letting someone down, usually somebody who is not in the room. That could be anyone from a boss or a partner, or a father or mother. If that’s a real worry for you, do the advance work to rid yourself of that load. Make sure to identify your objectives, not those of someone you are trying to avoid letting down or any other external influence, expectation, or paradigm.

Do you carry fear into your negotiations? Which of the 5 ways fear can show up do you relate to most? How can your objectives help diminish these fears?

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

You know that negotiations can fail without external preparation. Without external research and due diligence, you shouldn’t be in the game.

But, a much less talked about and much less executed amount of internal work must be done to significantly increase your chances of negotiating success. It’s far too often skimped on or avoided.

Few are willing to do what it takes to prepare internally. It seems easier to use the shortcut, tip, tactic, or technique to win, but the lack of internal preparation causes negotiations to fail.

KNOW HOW YOU STAND IN THE WAY OF ACHIEVING YOUR OBJECTIVES

First, consider your objectives. What are your true motivations, and what are the limiting beliefs, fears, or other emotions that might hold you back? Take the time and do the hard internal work to address these.

KNOW YOUR TRUE BOTTOM LINE

When preparing for an important negotiation, define your true bottom line. It’s very easy to look at it in terms of money—” I won’t take less than x dollars.” But it actually applies to every term in the negotiation, and those terms may not all be monetary. For example, some terms might include the delivery time of the product, how you’ll get paid, or how long you’ll stay on as an employee. The true bottom line can apply to every single term in the deal.

You don’t need to waste your time establishing your bottom line for every minor point, but for the major points, it is crucial to know what your true bottom line is. When it comes to true bottom lines, people may not be fully connected to the truth, so they lie to themselves and to their advisors all the time. You want to make sure your goalposts don’t move in the midst of a negotiation.

How can you define your true bottom line in a meaningful way and stick to it? Here’s a great example: Take the assertion, “I won’t work for more than two years.” Okay, but will you work for two years and a day? Two years and two days? It must be “not a day more, not a penny less.” In addition to determining the bottom line on each deal term, you should rank them by priority and determine how they relate to each other.

This defining exercise is tremendously useful because it brings your goals into sharp focus. Without knowing your true bottom line, you can never achieve clarity at the level you must have to significantly increase your chances of success in a negotiation.

TRUST YOUR HIRED NEGOTIATORS

If somebody or a team is negotiating on your behalf, don’t withhold your true bottom line from them out of fear. There is a better way. In a deal of any significance, where you have a lawyer or an investment banker or other professional negotiating on your behalf, you must be fully honest in order for that person to properly represent you. If you don’t trust somebody enough to give them your true bottom line, then you need to look for someone else to work with whom you can trust.

How do you stand in the way of your own objectives? Have you ever defined your true bottom line, and ranked factors in order of importance?

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Our success or failure in everyday negotiation has a huge impact on our goals, desires, and dreams. Putting in the extra work to not only learn how to negotiate, but why negotiations fail, will set you up for more successful negotiations.

The reasons we’ve reviewed so far on why negotiations fail, rigidity and fear, are both internal contributors. In addition to working through issues “in your head,” there are many aspects of external research and preparation necessary for a successful negotiation.

There are two major areas in which many people fail due to lack of external preparation:

Knowing who is on the other side of the table
Accounting for cultural differences

KNOWING WHO IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TABLE

Having insights about the individual negotiator or negotiators on the other side of that table can make or break a negotiation, and you should never neglect that effort. Learn their personal investment in the negotiation, individual style, preferences, motivations, and objectives. Knowing their personal investment is critical because your deal may be a great thing for the company, but if you can’t get that individual negotiator on board, you will probably never get anybody else in the company to see the value either.

The first step is to do as much research as you can ahead of your initial meeting. The Internet is a rich mine of information, if you’re willing to dig a little.

If there’s anything you can’t gather before you meet, you can size your counterpart up once you’re in the room together. Be ready to ask the right questions in order to figure out where they are coming from. What are their personal motivations, fears, and goals? Naturally, you’re not going to ask them those questions outright, but you can ask questions that elicit that information.

What kinds of questions might you ask?

• Ask about prior deals they have done and what worked or didn’t work.
• Ask questions related to what upper management is looking for.
• Ask how they can help deliver for upper management.
• Try to connect with them on a more personal level by asking about interests, family, or where they are from. Show genuine interested in that person’s story.
• Once you have a sense of what their personal investments are and you know where they are coming from, you’ll be in a better place to reassure them or help them feel comfortable.

ACCOUNTING FOR CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

There are significant cultural differences in negotiating styles and approaches, including the sense of what is proper and what is considered good etiquette, that negotiators too often ignore to their peril. Whether you’re negotiating internationally or domestically, in different geographic regions from which you are accustomed, intergenerationally, or in a different business culture, it is essential to research on those cultural, geographic, and generational differences.

For example, how you accept a person’s business card in Japan is very different from how it is done in the US. With the Japanese, you don’t just take a glance at the business card and stick it in your pocket. Instead, take it with both hands and hold it in front of you, read it, look at the person who gave it to you, and then put the card down on the conference table in front of you. If you don’t follow that protocol, it’s an insult—and the last way you want to begin an important meeting is by insulting your counterparts across the table—even inadvertently.

How have you historically prepared for negotiations? Are there any cultural differences you already know about? What can you do to better research the people on the other side of the table in future negotiations?

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!