By applying our Planning Tools to the current negotiation, and providing advice on specific techniques to use at the table. This is most effective when the negotiators have already attended our Masterclass.
E.g. we advised a private equity firm on the disposal of a company in a situation where there was only one potential buyer – and the buyer knew this! The client judged that the sale price had been improved by between £25 and £50 million by following our advice.
This may include sitting in on the negotiations as an Observer.
E.g. we advised the developer of a renewable energy project through a series of negotiations with advisors and potential investors.
A Masterclass for the team about to be involved in a major negotiation, with a specific focus on planning and teamwork for that negotiation.
E.g. we trained and prepared a team for the negotiation of a very large and complex property joint venture. A major focus of this project was managing complexity through multi-level meetings using a consistent process, and integrating the results at the top level. The client said afterwards “We could never have got the deal done without your help.” The same client then brought us in for a similar project. He reported “We saved £50m in the first 30 minutes of our negotiations with [the other side], just because of that training”
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The Monkey is one of the vivid images we use in our training to make a key concept memorable. This image in particular has become a totem for our firm: a toy monkey attends every course, and the BBC made a documentary about us titled The Monkey Man.
A “monkey on your back” is a problem you have – in negotiation terms, that makes you want a deal even on bad terms. E.g. you’re under time pressure / you don’t have any other offers / you think the quality of the other offers is poor.
Monkeys lead most negotiators to underestimate their own relative power and so negotiate too ‘chicken’. And there is a structural reason for this error. – When you look at your own situation you are only too aware of your own monkeys. But the other party may not be aware of these factors.• At the same time, the other guy has problems too – and he isn’t going to tell you about the monkeys on his back as this would only weaken his position. • So you have a distorted view of the power balance. It’s distorted because you have taken account of all your monkeys, but have not allowed for the monkeys he almost certainly has on his back – because you don’t know about those. And the distortion is always in the same direction: it always leads you to underestimate your own power.
