Page 16 - Becoming a Better Negotiator

judgment, your BATNA is significantly less than that amount.
but failure to plan is planning to fail.
Once you have a goal, time should be spent mapping out a strategy to get there. Very few parties come into a mediation with a defined strategy. Often, it takes parties two or three exchanges of offers before either party feels confident about where the other side is headed. Mediators spend hours in hallways as lawyers and their clients discuss their next move. If you are three steps into a negotiation before you have a sense of where the other side is going there is a far higher probability that a misstep has been taken. Better settlements are possible if the road is mapped beforehand.
Take the time to simulate a negotiation. Hopefully, you know where you want/need to end up (target price and reservation point). Now make assumptions about your opponent’s target price and reservation point and run through several if/thens. If I do this, they will do that. If nothing else, the real negotiation starts to look familiar to you earlier in the negotiation.
There may be unexpected twists, but you will be better prepared to interpret and respond to them if you have an end in mind and a roadmap for getting there. The party with a defined negotiating strategy is also more likely to send a consistent message about value and settlement ranges.
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