Negotiations of the 25.09.2017

During this class you had to play two different bargaining simulations. I will talk about them one at the time. 


I. First bargaining simulation

The 2 dollars' game 

For this simulation we had to imagine we were with our best-friend and that we found 2$. 

It was our first negotiation and we didn't have any information except our "secret instructions". Each trainee negotiator had received a little piece of paper with instructions for the coming negotiation and one could never inform his partner what was inside the paper and what he needed to get from the negotiation. We had to win the sum written in the bullet  only by using cunning and strong arguments. 

Let's see how this first negotiation between me and Celia went : 

Celia's secret instructions : 

My secret instructions :  

To resume : Celia had to get 1$ and I had to get only 50 cents. 

My strategy : Telling that I was the one who saw the 2$ first (therefore I was the one who found them). That way, I was sure to get at least the half of the 2$ or even more. (The fact of saying that I was the one who found the money might have wronged the negotiations because with this argument Celia tried but could not get the half of the money she needed). Anyway, it was a tactic, I was ordered to get as much money as I could and that's precisely what I did. 

Problem : I forgot the context of the negotiation (me and my best-friend) because I though that, as we were in a class of negotiation, what the teacher wanted to see is our ability to get "as much of the 2$ as possible" (as written on the secret instructions). 

The negotiation : As said previously, I told Celia that I was the one who found the money. After this argument, she found herself a bit blocked because I told her that as I was the one who found the money, it was normal that I get more money than her BUT I also said that she was my best-friend and and that I liked to share with the people important to me, therefore I wanted to gently offer her some of the money (to me this shows that I didn't completely ignored the context of me and my best friend, I just used cunning to get money). 

At a certain moment, I even said to her : "Look, I found the money, therefore, it's mine, but as I like you, I will share. Knowing that you wont get the half of the money, what the sum you want ?" I was a bit severe, but I would have accepted to give her up to 0,99 cents. That way, the 2$ would have been almost split in half but I would get 1 cent more than here and therefore win the negotiation. 

Results of the negotiation :  I got 1,05$ and Celia got 0,95 cent out of the deal. I must confess that I felt a bit bad when I knew that her instructions were to get 1$ but she was really close to get them with 0,95 cent. 

Global results of all my classmates : 

Personal interpretation and note to myself : 

I must always care about the way my partner will feel at the end of the negotiation and if he/she discovers that I made a lot more money out of the deal than needed. Otherwise, if one day I'm led to do business again with this person he/she will have bad feelings about me and this future negotiation could turn out difficult.

II. Second bargaining simulation

This situation was quite different than the first one. Indeed, we had information about the context and the personality of the person in front of us (in our instructions). I didn't "win" the negotiation, indeed, I had to remember that I will depend on this person for a long time to come and that this simulation is only the first of many contracts with this other person. Therefore I prefered to do a king gesture thinking about the futur negotiations coming. Let me develop how the negotiation went :

Anthony's secret instructions : 

  

My secret instructions :

My strategy : Being nice and accepting to "lose" the bet in order to built trust between me and my colleague. 

The problem : My colleague was fierce (strong personality + secret instructions).  And insisted to get all of the 2$. I had to fight to get something out of the deal but also remain nice in front of my colleague in a difficult economical situation.

Also, my colleague advanced an incoherent argument saying that he's a student without incomes and therefore he needs the 2$ to pay his rent. If he's supposed to be my colleague, he must be paid for his work (even if he's in a sandwich course). Therefore, as for Celia in the previous simulation, it was difficult for me to give an other strong argument (I could, but if I did, my colleague could say that I'm unmoved by his complicate situation and that I'm selfish).

The negotiation : My colleague wanted the 2$ to pay his rent. I manage to get 0,49 cents out of the deal and he got 1,51$ because he needed it more than me. That way, for the negotiations coming I hope he will remember that I was really nice to him and be nice in return to split the benefits of the negotiation in half. Otherwise I won't consider him a a stable and trusty person and I will find another partner to do business with. 

Learnings out of the simulation : At a certain point of the negotiation, Anthony proposed to get the 2$ entirely because he needed it and said that he will reimburse me. I was afraid that it was an untrusty promise and I didn't accept it by saying that I agreed to help him but that I needed to get at least something out of the deal. At the time I didn't think of the possibility to get the promise written in a contract. It could have been a great solution to get the 2$ with a slight delay. However, if I asked Anthony to write his promise down in a contract he might not have accepted it... Such an attidtue would have immediatly shown me that I was dealing with someone worthy of my and my companie's trust. 

Note to myself : Do not hesitate do accept a great deal by asking the person in front of me to write his/her promise on a contract. If the person does not accept to make a contract, that would mean that he's not worth doing business with.