Contract Negotiations

Negotiations are a way of life for all business people. Collaborative negotiations are the basis of most good business relationships, whether among peers and departments within a company, between superiors and subordinates, or between companies.

Positional or competitive negotiation, or hard bargaining, is when both parties start as adversaries and tend to remain that way throughout the process. Manipulative tactics are common, and the parties are inflexibly positional, ignoring the real issues and needs behind their positions.

Principled or collaborative negotiation is when both parties work towards developing or maintaining a long-term, cooperative relationship, in which both parties can gain mutual satisfaction. In this type of negotiation, the key is to turn a face-to-face meeting into a side-by-side solution of the problem.