Getting to Yes (part 4 of 4)

Wed, Jun 1, 2011

The easiest case ever. Here is the background of the case. My client, Ms. Taylor, brought her custom-tailored clothes to Elegance Cleaners for dry cleaning. Unfortunately, their machine destroyed the clothes. Ms. Taylor asked for a compensation of $330 and the counter offer was $80.

My counterpart and I represented as Ms. Taylor and Elegance Cleaners’ lawyers respectively. We both knew each other. In fact, we had good impression on each other before. This helped a lot in the negotiation. Without having to ask many questions, we totally understood our interests, and reached a successful agreement shortly. Why was it considered as a successful agreement? According to GTY, a negotiation is successful when:

1) It leads to wise agreement.
2) It is efficient. In other words, it doesn’t take so much time or effort.
3) It enhances a strong relationship.

In this case, I did not focus deeply on the money aspect. There were way more things I could get apart from the compensation money. I’d rather talk about our relationship, and Ms. Taylor’s desire to go to Elegance Cleaners for dry cleaning service; it was next to her favorite Italian restaurant). Therefore, I proposed a reasonable price for the damage goods and considerable discount for future services. Final agreement is: $120 for compensation and 15% discount for services for 2 years. Both went home happily and felt good about our relationship.

What we had started with was called positions. I wanted $330, and she insisted on $80. By arguing only on our positions, we would definitely destroy our relationship in no time. To avoid doing so, we focused on interests, not positions. And when our relationship was better, listening to her pouring her heart out was a piece of cake. With the malfunctioning machine, she would have to replace a new machine and compensate other clients like me as well. It was impossible for her to pay me what I had asked for. However, on my side, I needed to make sure that I would receive a reasonable compensation. As a consequence, the final solution was that she would pay me a minimal compensation plus discount on the service. This was one way to break down the compensation to mitigate the burden she was facing after the accident.

I cannot emphasize enough how importantly relationship means to negotiation in business transaction. A few months ago, I was looking for a second-hand SONY Walkman MP3 player. After looking around on five.vn - a Vietnamese version of EBay - I called one guy who listed his MP3 player for sale and arranged an appointment at his house. On having small talks with him about his place, I found out he was a Christian. I was a Christian too. A Christian meeting another Christian was like a person meeting his brother. He and I seemed to have known each other for several years. After that, we agreed on the price of the MP3 player without going back and forth many times, and I went home happily with a second-hand MP3 player in a good condition with a guarantee that whenever the MP3 player had any problems he would bring it to SONY Service Center given valid warranty. That was how relationship got me a nice deal. No matter how big and small the deals were, strong relationship sorted all out.