What’s Your Negotiation Strategy?

When we advise our clients on negotiations, we often ask them how they intend to formulate a negotiation strategy. Most reply that they’ll do some planning before engaging with their counterparts—for instance, by identifying each side’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) or by researching the other party’s key interests. But beyond that, they feel limited in how well they can prepare. What we hear most often is “It depends on what the other side does.”