The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide To Successful Negotiating

9.1. EACH AND EVERY DEAL IS UNIQUE

It is the uniqueness of each deal that creates opportunity and the need to plan each time.

Every negotiation you enter will have a set of circumstances surrounding it that effectively make it unique, even those which exist in familiar relationships. Your relationship, timing, market changes, the options you may have, how important the agreement is, and the issues to be agreed, will between them provide for dynamics and options that will create a unique set of circumstances. Your understanding of the uniqueness of each situation will enable you to be creative in your planning. Recognising this also helps you to get 'inside the other person's head', work with the more complex mix from clear financial values and handle the more ambiguous or intangible variables which can be even more important when you are attempting to engineer value.

CASE STUDY A negotiation between two companies which involved the supply and distribution of cardboard packaging across Europe started with an exploratory meeting during which it became apparent that 35% of the supplier's cost was associated with the distribution of the packaging to various manufacturing sites. Having understood this unique set of circumstances the buyer was able to arrange for backhauling distribution through their own business, reducing the distribution cost element by 80%. Needless to say, the buyer went on to trade the backhauling opportunity for a significant improvement in other terms. It was ...