Why two pies are better than one!

When negotiating, it is tempting to think about the potential deal as a single thing. It is after all, one deal. However, this can make it difficult to always find a win-win situation.

If you consider the deal as a pie, then unless the pie is exactly divided into two equal pieces, one side will end up with more of the pie than the other; they could be considered to have won!  However, if you had a second pie, there is more to divide. One side could get more of one pie, the other gets more of the other, resulting in a win-win. The more pies the better!

In many negotiations, the two sides tend to restrict themselves to the obvious elements of what they are negotiating and it can be difficult to reach an acceptable compromise. This is particularly the case when you are negotiating about something that is fixed and unable to be divided equally. For example, if you are buying a used car, there is little that you can do to change the product – the car is what it is. The only way that you can negotiate is to bring in other variables such as a full tank of petrol, road tax etc.

To create a successful deal, you need to think about all of the possible elements that you can include in it and see how you can use them to get what is important to you. One great example of this was the sale of footballer Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool to Barcelona. 

On the face of it, the sale is very simple, Barcelona pays Liverpool a large sum of money and the player moves to play for Barcelona. They cannot buy part of him, they have to buy all of him so there are not many variables to consider. The typical variables will be how much is paid, when those payments are made and whether any additional payments are made based on performance. All fairly straight forward, particularly as the player himself wanted to move.

However, this was the third world class footballer that Barcelona had bought from Liverpool in about 5 years. Liverpool wanted to avoid this happening again so they added a clause to the contract that if Barcelona wanted to buy any other Liverpool player in the next three years, they had to pay at least ￡100m for them, no matter what their actual value.

This is a great example of adding more pies! By thinking creatively, Liverpool not only sold a player who would rather not play for them, got paid millions of pounds but they effectively prevented one of their major rivals signing another of their players.

So, when negotiating, try not to constrain yourself to just the obvious variables. Think about all of the things that you might want to achieve out of a negotiation before you start. That way you can create more variables that can be traded and so end up with a more satisfactory deal for everyone. More pies are definitely better than one!

Read more about this at https://www.hoolock-consulting.com/book. We are also running public negotiation skills training in Guildford this year, https://www.hoolock-consulting.com/sales-negotiations.