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August 07, 2004
Negotiating (or persuading/marketing) backward
Thought provoking HBS piece (via Emergic and Jeff Nolan) on Negotiating Backward. A really smart principle for any kind of planning, especially where you are trying to persuade people (kinda like marketing). Here's a quick paraphrase:
"When you map a negotiation [or selling effort] backward, you envision your preferred outcome and think in reverse about how to get there." Here are the basic steps:
1. Draw a "map" of the parties involved (the playing field).
2. Estimate the difficulty and cost of gaining agreement with each (gap assessment).
3. Identify key relationships among the parties (who influences them)
4. Focus on the most-difficult-to-persuade player (figure out how best to win them over first), win the skeptic (influential end user) and the others follow
5. Figure out how to get the right other players to negotiate (evangelize) for you
Map backward in this fashion until you have found the most promising path through the cloud of possibilities.
Posted by johnza at August 7, 2004 08:06 AM
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