EuroMouse

In this last role play, Celia and I were the EuroMouse representatives. We had the government on our side. We made the the strategy together, but the government told us that they would remain fair and that’s what they did.

At the meeting 4 mayors of surrounding towns of our construction site were also present. They were angry because of the noise and increase in traffic caused by the construction site molested them. Moreover, they were upset that they had not been included in the initial negotiation (when the government sold the land to us and made profit out if it) but this wasn’t our fault, we just bought the land from the government and didn’t know that people had been expropriated from it… That’s what we explained to the mayors.

The government officials chose to led the conversation. For their interest it was important that the project did go on (economical reasons).

We chose to take a lot of time and patience to hear and try to understand the complaints of the mayors. We really wanted to make them feel heard by us and me insisted on the values of our company to reinsure them. We also wanted them to see that the project would benefit their towns too.

They complained about the fact that they were left out of the negotiation when the government sold the land to us, that the construction project was the source of a administrative nightmare because all the authorizations we needed. Also they were afraid that their towns would be transformed in the surrounding town of our Park in Florida but we explained them that those towns had been build from scratch by us. That there was nothing there before.

The deal we got was the following:

- The government will provide the towns with extra administrative workers that would be paid for by the government and by EuroMouse.

- The government will reinvest the profit made during the transaction in the construction of new roads that led to the construction site (to solve the traffic problems)

- The mayors would be present in future meeting concerning the project.

- The town’s farmers will be our exclusive suppliers.

-A financial compensation for the towns. At first the mayors asked for a big amount to money that we didn’t accept. To make them lower their expectations we asked them to explain the exact reasons for which they felt they need to be compensated.  They explained that they needed to calm the people that were feeling wronged.

The mayors wanted an annual payment instead of a pay-roll tax. We counter-offered the first offer of $3 millions (that we couldn’t afford with a annual payment only) by one at $950,000. They did not accept it. We made a more generous offer of more than a million but with pay-roll taxes. However, they made a final offer for an annual payment of $1 million, we immediately accepted.