What, in general, did you discover settlement from this workout? What surprised you? What would you do differently if you had a chance to do the exercise again? In the Sally Soprano’s Case I was Lyric Opera’s Service Supervisor, and I discovered some curious aspects of this negotiation. First of alI and more important I verified the requirement of being well prepared to begin a negotiation since when you remain in the negotiation you face a great deal of things that you do not even envision that can change the direction of the settlement and being prepared with the most information you can have, assists you to be concentrated on your goals and no to capitulate to other’s deal and desires without losing you owns.
For this case I prepare far better than the case prior to so I was confident of my self and I identified my alternatives really clear, so I knew my resistance point were $45000, and $28000 (alternative point) was the cash I was going to pay to the soprano, however $30000 was the deal to the primary role character so I knew death of that last number will be not that helpful for the theater interests.
Second I found out that if you start talking about the person and not immediately about the negotiation you can build some trust and that will be a little simpler to have more info about your counterpart so you can really have a better offer than before.
Third and also very important, I learned that having a BATNA is essential to negotiate with anyone, and you have to think of that before the negotiation start, because when you are in the negotiation you can easily lose the objective of your mind and having a BATNA helps to stay focused.
Other thing that I hadn´t consider properly was the amount or kind of information that the other person had, so it was a great and very pleasant surprise when I was negotiating with Sally’s agent, and he came out with the notice that the local TV will give the Theater $45000 for televising the play; this I triple asked him, I even ask in Spanish to verify If I had it right, and he swear it was true. If I had a Chance to do the exercise again I would probably give more time to think about what does the other person’s information limits are, although I think that is very difficult, but it can be made by trying to get more information of your counterpart at the beginning of the negotiation.