Never Be So Sure Of What You Want That You Won't Take Something Better

When we step into a negotiation, we often stereotype the other side into a particular role. However, people come from so very many different angles that the exact point the other side comes from can be the result of permutations we do not even expect.

That is assuming that we even consider where the other side would be coming from in the first place. Most rookies step into negotiations so full.

Of themselves.

These permutations make negotiations interesting. One should step into negotiations with the realization that 50% of the factors that matter are unknowns. Oh yeah, I know, they have these problems, these needs and these wants. But what's beyond those? What thoughts do they bring home to bed, wake up with next morn? Do we really know the answer?

You see, a bottle of water to a boat with a hole in its hull has not the same value as it is to that person on a desert island just over the horizon. And what is valuable to you could be something trivial to the other side. Except that it may not be what you think you want to coax out of them initially.

Someone asked me to put a frank value on his business recently. After memorizing ten years of his financial history, noting his key financial ratios, and reading what's written in between the lines based on what his industry is going through, I met him in his Porsche armed only with my bare hands.

As he raced to this unearthly spot some hundred kilometers away for a quiet dinner, he told me of how his products are losing their glints and he just want to know what's the best salvage value he can get by selling out.

I told him that financially his company is not on the rocks if he capitalizes his loans to the company. There's even spare cash good for a year to trunaround after paying off his creditors. And that's before collecting from the debtors. Of course, he has doubled his payroll in the last twelve months, but if he focuses on beefing up his pipeline through better positioning, his company is still good.

But not great.

To make it great, he should look for a buyer who wants his customers. Not because they want to sell his products. For all intents and purposes, they may not. But getting into the offices of his existing customers are important to them. And there are many reasons why multinationals would rather win those companies through his company's ten year record of trust building than to spend ten years of their own. To sell their own things, which may be something else, nothing to do with what he sells.

Because the technology is changing. The end customers are moving out, but then they have to move out and move on. The technological needs are as such that they have no choice. And there are many providers of choice, not many of whom has any presence in the current market but wishes to jump in.

So his products may be on the way out, but his customer base is where the value is.

That's water in a bottle.