Anyone who tells you they don’t “believe” in win-win negotiations doesn’t understand win-win negotiations.
It’s a little like saying they don’t “believe” in gravity. Gravity doesn’t need anyone to believe in it. It exists, and so do win-win negotiations, whether you’re aware or not.
First, win-win negotiations are not warm and fuzzy Kumbaya sessions. Second, they are not exercises in “fairness” so everyone is happy and the deal ends in unicorns and rainbows.
Win-win negotiations occur any time you have multiple variables and you try to develop some options that will work for the other party on one variable so you can get another variable agreed to as you’d like (e.g., you agree to pay a higher price, but in exchange you get Grade A quality and delivery by Friday).
In business negotiations it is rare that you will be dealing only with a single issue. Once you add multiple variables, and you start thinking about how to balance and exchange value on those variables, you are in a win-win negotiation. The goal is for each party to finish feeling that the deal meets important interests for them. That creates greater mutual satisfaction with the deal and improves the longer-term relationship.
Many professional negotiators might read this and be surprised to learn they have engaged in win-win negotiations for all these years. (Cue Monsieur Jourdain.) The difference is those of us who are aware have developed strategies that increase the value and outcome of the deals we do. Other are achieving sub-optimal results.
For more on this topic, read “Getting to ‘Yes'” by Roger Fisher and William Ury.
