Negotiation

I believe I did fairly well in the negotiation, but I may have prepared a looser strategy than my opponent but I came prepared with what I wanted to walk out with and was not going to budge much from there. I had looked at the scores ahead of time and let my partner take the first step of suggesting the location he had in mind. He assumed I wanted to go to a particular city, which happened to be in my best interest anyway, and I just ran the negotiations based on what seemed like my concession towards his first suggestion... That city would have been my first choice anyway. :)

I believe I know what may have influenced my tactics in the negotiations we did in class. I have been easily "manipulated" by the skilled salary negotiators in my work place in the past few years. I was hardened early in this year with negotiations when my company's managers themselves admitted I was well below where I should be on salary and they were willing to make up for it by helping "influence" HR with accepting the terms of the negotiations. This may have been yet another tactic, but it allowed me to reflect on what I had done incorrectly in the past for negotiations... I always was told what I should be doing for the year, and I didn't ask what parts of the plan were negotiable. I would assume that this was all mandatory and that I had no say in the plan, and they would gladly accept my signature and I would work away. When I let it be known I was offered a job by an associate company with a salary well above my current range, my manager had seeked guidance from upper management and they stated they wanted to talk. I had some grounds to stand on when requesting what was negotiable and let them start the talk... they revealed that nearly everything on the plan was "adjustable." One would need to ask to know this, and few had.

I believe this is on the borderline of ethical, but each manager has their own style of negotiations. Some choose only to reveal what is necessary and only when asked. This changed my tactics with customers as well. I would let them kick out their own numbers first in negotiations, and when I knew they didn't have any references to draw upon or alternative choices to compare to, I would reveal just enough cards to let them see that the figure presented was the best that we could do.