I am going to analyze my experience of negotiations, during which I intended to sell a syndicated program Moms.com to an independent local station, WCHI. My key interests included negotiating the price per episode, the number of playbacks, and the payment cycle. The first two issues were of most importance to me. My reservation price was $35,000 per episode, and my BATNA was the $2.5 million offer for Moms.com from WWIN, as well as $10,000 per episode for Juniors from WXYZ. I came to the negotiating table with the expectation of receiving not less than $60,000 per episode and not more than five times playback.
The debate began with uncertainty because my opponent was not sure what number of playbacks he wanted to negotiate. There was a moment of silence, after which I used the anchoring technique and made the first offer of $80,000 and five runs per episode. It was a critical point of the negotiation, and I felt that my offer confused my opponent since he was sitting in silence. After he made a counteroffer of $55,000 and six runs per episode, I felt that we reached an impasse, so we decided to take a break.
The second attempt began with the reasoning of my offer and explaining how much the opponent would be able to earn based on the average projected rate of return. I was not successful since the opponent rejected my offer and offered $70,000 per episode but demanded seven runs of each episode. I tried to elicit information from my opponent, but he evaded my questions or said nothing, which caused me to disclose my information. The final critical moment was when I took the initiative and reduced the price to $65,000 per episode with five times of playback. At this point, the opponent agreed to the offer, and the negotiation ended.
I am not sure that the anchoring technique worked well for me in this case. Apparently, I set an extremely high initial price that frightened off my opponent and led to the break in the negotiation. One of the things that I would do differently next time is to express less eagerness and better control my emotions. I think that I was too eager to explain my point to the opponent and making multiple offers. As a result, I paid little attention to negotiating the payment cycle and made my opponent feel confused. Furthermore, next time, I will try not to succumb to the temptation of filling in the gap when my opponent is silent. During this negotiation, I failed to do this, which led me to reveal too much of my information and learn nothing about my opponent’s interests.
In my opinion, my opponent’s negotiating strategy was distributive rather than integrative because he made counteroffers that were not acceptable for me. For example, he demanded seven runs per episode while I could agree to five at most. Furthermore, my opponent acted more like an adversary rather than a partner. He refused to explain his position or to disclose his information so that we could reach the best possible agreement. Finally, he overused silence, which made me reveal much more information about my interests than I intended to disclose.
In this negotiation, I learned that a hostile attitude toward the opponent and unequal sharing of information hinders the establishment of good relationships between negotiating parties and prevents them from reaching the most successful outcomes. In my future negotiations, I will be more careful in revealing my information until I get some valuable data from the opponent. I will also be more cautious when making the first offer. Unfortunately, my opponent and I did not manage to craft a contingent contract, although the negotiating situation allowed for it. In real-life negotiations, I will try to keep in mind this approach to negotiations and offer it to my opponent when there is an uncertain future event in question.