#252: BATNA Beyond BATNA & a Harsh Negotiation Truth
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Negotiation Goals
I. BATNA
The best negotiation skills are pointless if you don’t know when to accept a deal. That again requires preparation. And determining your BATNA. It’s a key concept that helps you decide when to shake hands or walk away.
BATNA is a term coined by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their 1981 bestseller, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Without Giving In. It stands for “Best ALTERNATIVE TO a negotiated agreement.” Said another way, it is the best you can do if the other person refuses to negotiate with you — if they tell you to “go jump in a lake!” or “Get lost!” So it is not necessarily your ideal outcome — unless your ideal outcome is something you can get without the cooperation of the other person. It is the best you can do WITHOUT THEM.
—Brad Spangler, Beyond Intractability
Imagine you’re negotiating a salary with a new company while already holding a $85k job offer elsewhere. Your BATNA is to take the $85k offer if the new company suggests you “Go kick rocks.”
II. Beyond BATNA
Negotiation guru Chris Voss sees a crucial downside to BATNA. When it becomes too big a psychological anchor, we tend to gravitate towards it. It quickly turns into our target. So what does he tell his clients?
I tell my clients that as a part of their preparation they should think about the outcome extremes: best and worst. If you’ve got both ends covered, you’ll be ready for anything. So you know what you cannot accept and have an idea about the best-case outcome, but keep in mind since there’s information yet to be acquired from the other side, it’s quite possible that best case might be even better than you know.
Remember, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better. Once you’ve got flexibility in the forefronmt of your mind you come into a negotiation with a winning mindset.
—Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference
Imagine walking into those salary negotiations knowing your worst-case is your $85k fallback offer and your best-case is something a bit above it. To your surprise, $90k is their starting offer. And instead of thinking “Yay, I’ll take it,” you realise the best case you set was just the beginning…
III. A Harsh Negotiation Truth
In business as in life, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
…is an often-quoted sentiment from Chester L. Karrass’s classic negotiation Bible. Probably because it’s also the book’s title.
It quietly replaces what Voss calls the subjective and emotional F-bomb (fairness) with something less comforting but more useful: preparation and leverage. It’s all about what you can get someone to agree to without being laughed out of the room. 🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com