LIVE8 Negotiation -
Janine Olah
For my
preparations for the LIVE8 negotiation, I used the negotiation checklist. My overall goal was to get the potential
audience for my concert to be able to access information about the concert on
the WorldWideWeb. The issues I had in
meeting this goal were to obtain a domain name, and at the same time keep as
much money as possible in my departmental budget. The most important issue was to get the
domain name.
I set my Resistance Point at $1,200,000.00,
which represented the one million dollars I had left in my department’s budget,
plus the $200,000.00 that my boss said he could collect from other
departments. It was difficult to decide
on my initial offer, but I eventually chose to anchor the negotiation much lower
than my reservation price to see what would happen. My initial bid was $300,000.00. My BATNA was that I would have to pay an
outrageous sum for one of the other two domain names.
I didn’t
know a whole lot about my opponent, Kameron Morral, other than that he was from
Turkey and that his domain name had been “under construction” for a while. I assumed that his BATNA would be just to
keep the domain name and wait until another person wanted the name. As for his resistance
point, this was nearly impossible for me to determine. I knew that of the three other domains I
contacted, two wanted 5 million dollars and one of them was willing to let
theirs go for free, so there was quite a range.
As far as
the situation, I was more impatient because the concert was going to start in
two weeks and the website was going to be shut down on that domain in one
week. Since Kameron site had been idle
for some time, I didn’t feel he’d have much urgency to sell.
Looking at
the fairness norms, I wanted to focus on the charity aspect of the concert so
that he might feel a sense of moral obligation to sell. There were a few topics
of discussion that I wanted to avoid.
One, was the fact that I was about have my current website shut down
and, two, the fact that two other domains were trying to get 5 million dollars
for their similar sites.
When I first
contacted my negotiating partner I wanted to make sure that I didn’t sound too
desperate. I also wanted to focus on
interests by stressing the charity aspects of the deal and tried to appeal to
his sense of goodwill. I framed my request as an opportunity for him rather
than a need of mine. I never mentioned
my other domain name that was being challenged. I led with my initial $300,000
offer, a full 900,000 lower than my resistance point.
I was
pleasantly surprised when Kameron returned with an offer of $475,000 because
his first offer was already lower than my resistance point. My counteroffer to his counteroffer was to go
up just a bit to $325,000. I tried to
appeal to his emotions by adding the slight dig about taking money from
starving children and I added a sense of urgency for him by mentioning that the
domain name might not be worth much after the concert, so the time to sell was
now.
His next offer
was $375,000, and even though this offer was well within my bargaining range,
my role explained that I was to save as much as I could. So at this point I used the norm of
reciprocity by sharing some information with Kameron about the other three domain
names in hopes of gaining some empathy from him. I also “expanded the pie” by offering him
tickets to the concert and advertising mention, along with my offer of
$350,000 which was splitting the
difference between the two latest offers.
At the end, I avoided asking a yes or no question to seal the deal. That offer was accepted.
I felt the
negotiation went well and that each of us had some of our interests met. I was pleased that I ended up well below my
reservation point.
No comments:
Post a Comment