Negotiation Planning Document

You will be completing the attached negotiation planning document, which contains 7 key elements:

1. Issues: List the issues that you are negotiating. For example, in a negotiation with a textbook publisher, you might list advance payment, royalty rate, number of free author copies, and permissions responsibility as the key issues up for negotiation. Please include 3-5 issues.

2. Position: For each of the issues under negotiation, indicate your desired position or outcome. For example, the author negotiating with the publisher might want a $5,000 advance payment, 15% royalty rate, 100 free author copies, and the publisher to pay for all permissions.

3. Interests: For each of the positions you have stated, indicate why you have adopted that position. For example, the author might want a $5,000 advance because she needs to make a loan payment; the 15% royalty rate might be desirable because another publishing house has promised her at least that much; she might want 100 free author copies because she has promised her large, extended family a gift, etc.

4. Priorities: For each of the issues under discussion, indicate how important it is using a rank-order scale. In our example, the most important issue might be the advance payment, so the author may rank that as #1, while the free copies might be second most important, so that would be ranked #2, etc.

5. Reservation Price: The negotiator needs to indicate the very lowest amount she would accept in the current negotiation before exercising her BATNA. In our example, the author might grudgingly agree to a $1,500 advance, 10% royalty rate, 20 free author copies, and taking on the burden of obtaining permissions herself before exercising her BATNA of self-publishing.

6. BATNA: The negotiator needs to state what will happen if she fails to reach a mutual agreement -- in this case, with the publisher. Perhaps there is another publishing house that the author can use. Perhaps the author will self-publish. Another possibility is to simply wait 6-12 months and hope that a better offer comes along. The BATNA should be a one-sentence statement.

7. The final step is to then complete the planning document from the point of view of the other party. Of course, you will never know what the other partys BATNA, reservation price, etc., is, but it is important to do as much research and thinking as you can. Justify your responses with an explanation.

Negotiation Planning Document Notes: Indicate the priority or relative ranking of the issue in the "rank order" box. Indicate your position (stated demand); and for each position, indicate your underlying interest (the underlying reason for making that demand)