The negotiating team for respective counter parties to a proposed agreement is a critical success factor. Therefore, it is important that attention is paid to the quality of the negotiation team and the negotiation strategy.

My sharing today focuses on experiences in preparation for and actually participating in negotiations.

I am of the view that the precursors to setting up a negotiation team include identification and comprehension of the subject matter and deciding whether or not the prospects align with the strategic direction of the organization. This will eliminate the risk of engaging in activities that do not add value to the organization and thereby amounting to sub optimal utilization of capacity.

The process involved in the initial stages of negotiation planning may take the form of exhaustive deliberations at Management and/or Board of Directors level.

The next stage is to select the negotiation team which will have the onerous but hopefully, exciting duty to deliver the deal!

It is recommended that the negotiation team is given clear terms of reference with parameters for negotiation and expected outcomes.

The negotiation team therefore, must have the competence to conduct cost benefit and risk analysis, identify deal makers and breakers, permissible forbearances, and so on. This will assist the team to develop a negotiation strategy and hopefully play it out during the negotiation meeting/s with counter parties.

I have encountered admirable negotiation teams and propose to share one in particular.

In this case, for some time during our negotiation, my questions from the legal perspective were being answered and very well so, by a certain member of the team from the counterparty whom I was very sure was a colleague in the profession. Later on, I was surprised to learn that the gentleman was in Marketing and never set foot in law school! What is my point here?
If you are part of a negotiation team, take it upon yourself to understand the aspects of the deal beyond your primary role in the team. The marketing professional I have described above, did not abdicate his role to “sell” the product, but added value to the team by being able to speak with a certain level of eloquence and know how on a number of issues surrounding the proposition to sell such as legal, financial, governance, risk and so on.
I thought that this was an excellent strategy in that the team members who were experts in certain fields preserved themselves to participate at those critical levels which demanded the best of their finesse and acumen. This approach creates synergies that make a high powered negotiation team…every member of the team should be seen as a force to reckon with!

There is so much to say on this topic and I thought I should start here.