The BATNA should be an assessment of your present business assessment. It forms the basis for your strategy and informs your action plan — but the BATNA is itself an essentially static description or snapshot of your organization’s assets, liabilities, capabilities and resources. It has numbers and time. It is a cold-blooded assessment of your organizations health- and [...]
Author Archives: Andrew
China Purchasing Managers – Renegotiating Deal Terms in a Recession
December 3, 2008 – 3:01 am
China purchasing managers are negotiating successfully for better deal terms. The lucky ones are going for more advantageous terms in future negotiations — but a few are learning to give bad news about deals that were negotiated in the past.
Right now, the power balance is in your favor. Smart purchasing managers, however, will take [...]
Purchasing Managers in China: Separate Interests from Positions
December 1, 2008 – 12:57 am
Go to ChineseNegotiation.com and read about the difference between position-based negotiation and interest-based negotiation.
Simply stated, position-based negotiation is about tactics and relative power base. It is standard win-lose, competitive negotiation. Interest-based negotiation is about your own long-term strategic goals – and how to best match them with the goals of your partner. This [...]
Procurement and Purchasing Departments in China: Now is the time for Internal Negotiations!
November 20, 2008 – 5:45 am
Purchasing managers in China seem to have an easy job these days – everyone wants to sell and there are very few buyers. That seems to give Chinese purchasers a huge advantage. The fact is it makes your life much easier with one counter-party – the seller. But it makes your life very dangerous and [...]
Chinese Purchasers and 3 Types of Western Suppliers
November 18, 2008 – 2:16 am
Purchasing managers in China can expect to meet up with 3 kinds of overseas suppliers. Some know China well and have good experience operating here. Others are new to China, and don’t know much about doing business here – but they know it. This is a great opportunity for building a solid relationship and securing [...]
Two Views on Negotiating with Clients
November 13, 2008 – 1:27 am
I ran a seminar on negotiations at a big MNC in Shanghai yesterday. The participants were a mix of Chinese and European managers and salespeople who all had a great deal of experience, and are very high-level in terms of skills and authority within the company.
One of my main points was this:
“Don’t continue negotiating with [...]
China Negotiation for Purchasing Managers – Special Situations
November 6, 2008 – 3:35 am
Buyers in China — particularly Purchasing Managers for large international businesses — are already encountering a special negotiating situation which I call, “whose problem is it”. That’s when your counter-party tries to make his weakness your problem.
You’ll hear it when someone owes you money or a supplier is trying to defend his price (or other [...]
Crossed LIMBs means you are in Deal Territory
November 5, 2008 – 3:11 am
We’ve been discussing Batna and LIM. Batna, you’ll recall, is your Best Alternative To No Agreement. It’s what happens if your negotiation falls apart and you can’t reach an agreement. LIM is simply your framework for stating your priorities in the negotiation. L is what you would really like to get, but don’t expect. I is [...]
China Negotiating Basics – Setting LIM (Like, Intend, Must) priorities
November 3, 2008 – 3:31 am
Chinese negotiators usually have a pretty good idea about what they want from a business negotiation. Just make sure you don’t put yourself at a disadvantage by A) not having a systematic set of priorities, and B) keeping those priorities too secret for too long. The basic framework for setting negotiation priorities is the LIM. [...]
Chinese Negotiating Counterparties and the Generation Gap
October 22, 2008 – 2:07 am
More and more Chinese negotiators are sitting down with westerners who are investigating China for the first time — since their own home markets are having so much trouble. Unfortunately, when westerners do research about negotiating in China they are usually reading about ‘old-school’ Chinese negotiators who are now in the 50’s or 60’s. They [...]
