Book: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution - Harvard Business Review
Negotiate as a corporate while keeping good customer relationships.
An interesting and counter-intuitive thought floated by the writer is that discounts that are offered to customers during negotiations solely for the purpose of retaining the customer is a move that most often backfires. Customers tend to devalue the company and its product. The worst of all it actually ruins the chances of a good long term relationship. A cycle of constant discounts and suspicion build up over time. The best strategy is to adopt a method where a deal and a relationship with a customer are not intertwined.
"BATNA" - Best Alternative to Negotiated Argument.
This is a useful concept whereby every negotiator before heading into the negotiation phase researches and finds alternatives. Thus giving them more leverage in a negotiation.
Author encourages the Managers to take an active role in this process and thereby increase their salesforce's confidence that saying "NO" to a customer is alright as long as they have evaluated some BATNAs.
In my view it makes better business sense to build confidence and trust in your customers and maintain a strong position by having alternatives to the current deal.
