Negotiation Nuggets – Unexpected Demands

In my last post we looked at dealing with unrealistic demands. But sometimes, you may be faced with having to handle demands that may ‘come out of the blue’ and catch you quite by surprise, even though they may not necessarily be ‘unrealistic’. What should you do then?

Often, unexpected demands occur because great negotiators are always looking for new and even very imaginative ways of getting the best deal, by being flexible and employing one of my favourite negotiation tips: keep on looking for variables – not the least to increase the chances of doing a deal, but also to enhance it. So the best way to avoid being surprised is to employ several other important tips I have already mentioned in this series. 

First, above all, before you even start to negotiate, invest in as much time as possible in preparation – to research the other side’s position as best you can, their likely demands, their power-base relative to yours and even their preferred styles of negotiation; and then, to protect or reinforce your own power-base, formulate your own possible demands and plan your own broad strategy. 

Secondly, immediately after spending time with the usual social niceties when you first start your formal negotiations, in order to build a climate of mutual trust, goodwill and respect, get their whole agenda out on the table (and give them yours) before you start any ‘real’ negotiation, to prevent new demands being made later on. [One of the oldest negotiation tricks in the world is to make new, last-minute demands at the end of a negotiation – and it is almost always a ‘try-on’. (I call it ‘By the Way’ – which is often how such demands are prefaced!) If you are ever faced with this, and you have insisted on getting their whole agenda at the start of the negotiation, you can of course just reject any last-minute demands. But if they insist, you must threaten to start the negotiation all over again. Needless to say, it is exceptionally rare this ever fails to have the desired effect!]

Thirdly, keep the whole package in mind and keep all the issues linked rather than negotiate items piecemeal in isolation, in order to avoid the insidious negotiating trap of ‘salami slicing’.

And then, as with ‘unrealistic demands’, get the other side to explain and justify their unexpected demands before responding further; be ready to make counter-proposals rather than necessarily just reject them out of hand; and finally, don’t be in any rush to react – let alone to concede! If you need to, say you want to consider their unexpected demands carefully and call a recess (one of every negotiators ‘best friends’!). 

Meanwhile, don’t forget that all negotiators will want to open with their most ambitious demands – using the principle of ‘Aim High’ – and these must accordingly be their very best hopes. But good negotiators (including you!) will also make their initial demands sound like the very least they could possibly accept. So resist any temptation to panic when you first receive them, however unexpected they may be.

As you can see, few important negotiations happen quickly if they are to work well for both sides and one of the worst traps to fall into is to run out of time. So we’ll look at ‘Managing the Time Trap’ in my next post in this series.