Workshop Information- Eric C. Gould's Batna.com

Eric C. Gould's Batna.com, the negotiation resource center, is quickly becoming the hottest place on the internet for negotiation information and skill development. Be sure to check it out for negotiation information.

Workshops and Training Overview If you're looking for a way to sharpen your negotiations skills and want the most effective system available, then check out Negotiating in Silicon Valley: The Workshop Series, presented by Eric Gould. Based on his extensive research and modeling of great Silicon Valley negotiators, this class will teach you to enhance your power and improve your outcomes. In the context of relevant examples and activities, attendees learn to:

Work better deals more quickly and efficiently
Get people to the table
Avoid concessions and decrease your losses
Exceed your aspired outcome values
Employ methods of fairness
Tame the most difficult negotiating beast
Build long-term business relationships

* Overview of workshop issues and topics.

* What past attendees are saying.

Research Results	Questions Answered in Class
Contact Information	Negotiation Success Factors

Research Overview

Our research on negotiations books and tapes, as well as celebrity and university classes, has shown that these resources indeed make people more knowledgeable about negotiating, but only slightly improve their negotiating ability. After investing anywhere from a day to three weeks on learning, most people did not achieve the improved outcomes they'd hoped for.

Our research discoveries are incorporated in the new workshop series: Negotiating in Silicon Valley.

Individual attention and feedback.
Multiple classes given in short sessions.
A safe and confidential environment for experimentation.
No memorization of technique or tactics.
Role play and interaction with an expert player.
Relevant practice exercises and case studies.
Maximum practice time modified to your dominant learning style.
Malleable curriculum designed to maximize students' unique skills.
Curriculum compatible with students' personal styles.
High intensity and focus.

As a result, we set out to uncover a new approach that fills the gaps left by traditional teaching methods, an approach that:

Consistently leads clients to better solutions in less time
Builds on each individual's knowledge and personal style
Teaches tools that easily extend to any negotiation

Eric Gould, the area's leading negotiations consultant will teach Negotiating in Silicon Valley: The Workshop Series.

In all his work, Eric draws on his twenty years experience in business negotiations, as well as his Silicon Valley based negotiations research. For Eric, negotiating is actually an outgrowth of his original career path as a booking agent for celebrity speakers on the lecture circuit. The lure of the hi-tech industry quickly switched him to negotiations consulting [1983] for premier Silicon Valley companies and high-promise start-ups. His outcomes are consistently exceptional.

Eric's teaching style reflects the best of a Harvard Law professor touched with a dose of rock-and-roll promoter. He brings across not just ideas and theory, but real skills that maximize each client's unique negotiating ability and style.

"... willingness to take risks, great modeling, creativity and patience help teach us all valuable lessons."

Bruce Patton

Thaddues R. Beal Lecture on Law

Co-author 'Getting to Yes'

Harvard Negotiation Project

June 13, 1997

Cambridge, MA

Target Audience

This class - and it's presentation style - were designed for people who live and breathe the Silicon Valley business world, and it will be best appreciated by those involved in:

Licensing arrangements
Patent agreements
Distribution deals
Venture capital funding and investments
Purchase and sales agreements
Business partnering relationships

email : eric@batna.com

phone: 415-999-2532

20 Questions Answered in Our Classes

1. Do tough, hard-ball negotiators make better deals?

Can inflexible commitment to a predetermined outcome lead to missed alternatives and mediocre solutions? How often does driving a hard bargain involve overlooked opportunities?

Where does your negotiating power come from? How can you maintain power regardless of your predicament?

What do you lose by giving in? How is your firm commitment to your own interests crucial to the problem solving process?

If someone has a strong emotional reaction, does it have to mean delay in the negotiation? Are antagonism, stonewall tactics, and stalling inevitable?

If your counterpart capitulates on an important issue, how committed are they likely to be when it comes to meeting your needs? Does capitulation impact the long-term effectiveness of deals?

Typically we all walk into negotiations intending to do good problem solving. How does the average negotiation so often turn into a contentious tug-of-war? How come it's so easy to get sucked in? How can you get back out and move the dynamic from tactical maneuvering to side-by-side, cooperative problem solving?

How can you mediate your own negotiations so communication is productive from the start?
Good communication requires that you respond to what people mean, not necessarily what they say. How can you know what people are really thinking? Are there research proven techniques that don't rely on guessing or intuition?

Are objections really stumbling blocks? Might the word "no" be the sweetest word you can hear?
Is the cycle of indecision like tying shoes - the faster you try to tie, the more you fumble around? Or can the process be expedited?

What is the basis of good problem solving? What determines a good business relationship? What sorts of processes occurs in a conflict free environment? What integral role does conflict play?
Why is it so often difficult to negotiate with people you know and like? Why do people drive an easier bargain with friends? Does caring about your counterpart mean making more concessions?

Negotiators often feel they have little to work with, little flexibility, little knowledge of others, minimal resources. How can the reality of these problems be addressed to allow better, more creative problem solving?
Can understanding your own needs more thoroughly lead to better outcomes? How often is what you really want different from the starting position you show the other side? Does this facilitate or hinder the outcome value?

Is it possible to make zero concessions, and still be appreciated - even liked - by the other side? Or is negotiation really about compromise?
Is it reasonable to expect that your counterpart will always resist your point of view? Or is it possible to assert your needs so they're positively received and respected by the other side?

13. What should you do when bad behavior pits people against each other? How can you drive the discussion back to the issues and curb childish games without taking an authoritarian stance that alienates your counterpart?

14. How do you get buy in? How come things go along so nicely until the terms have to be firmed up, put on paper?

Should hammering out solutions be approached after discussion, or as a piecemeal process throughout the negotiation?

16. How do people's emotions really figure into business deals? How can the discussion be kept tied to the objective facts?

Is it ever useful to purposely stray from the facts? Does dealing with emotions undermine your professional credibility? Can it ever yield better results?

What does an engineer look like? What does an accountant look like? How are they dressed? What do they bring with them to meetings? What do their cubes and cars look like? Is the engineer male or female? What about the accountant? Now picture the folks in marketing. How are they different?
Are your attributions detrimental or helpful to your negotiations? Or both? Does prejudice significantly influence the way you interact with people? Do people's ideas about you determine their reactions to you - before you've even opened your mouth to talk? How can you minimize the effect of prejudice on your negotiations.

Do you really always have to take the time to make a personal connection with people? Is it ever OK to just do business? Is there some way to get everyone on the same team in a hurry without the traditional team-building approach?

What value is there in communication that more or less asks you to mind read? What value is there in your subjective interpretations of someone's actions?
Won't you avoid conflict if you respond to people's words and ignore their raised eye-brows and brusque tone? To what extent are people responsible to say what they mean and mean what they say?

Do you need to outmaneuver these games before you can negotiate a real solution? How can you know when your being played like a violin? What if you become over-suspicious and erode trust?
How do you address someone who's lied to you? Is dishonesty always a bad thing?
How can you shut down these games and get things back on a manageable track ASAP?

Research Findings: Negotiations Learning Requirements

1. Individual attention and feedback.

Individual, or semi-private classes of individuals whose background and skills are complimentary get the best results in the shortest time possible. The benefit is continuous interactive feedback, with the difficulty, pace and type of exercises moderated to your existing skills experience level, and personal style.

Clients have a higher retention rate when information is presented in smaller chunks. Multiple sessions afford the opportunity to practice and master the skills presented, so you can troubleshoot and then build on them in subsequent sessions.

For best results, students should bring scenarios from their real negotiations to class and aggressively practice on those. Some real negotiations involve sensitive information. In addition, many students are uncomfortable pushing the boundaries of new skills in a large class setting. In order to be truly comfortable with the learning group, and profit maximally from it, students need small, supportive, confidential environments.

An interactive learning approach develops broad underlying skill sets and problem solving approaches, and teaches the student how to extend these methods to the toughest negotiations with ease and fluidity.

Like a tennis pro strategically decides when to let you learn from mistakes and when to keep up the rally, practicing in the presence of experts can prevent stop-and-start-over practice. In addition, you are countered at exactly the level that is challenging for you and still lets you experience success. This has been shown to be the most effective skill development technique available for clients of all levels of experience and ability.

Practice exercises and case-studies should be designed to be relevant to each industry, and then further modified to students' personal negotiations. To improve the outcome of real negotiations, it's important to build learning exercises around students real stories, taking into account their specific business environments, as well as the specifics of deals and the players involved. Like road bilking won't necessarily improve your times on a mountain bike course, generic negotiating practice does not tend to increase the outcome values of specific deals. In addition learning new skills in a familiar environment helps students learn more is shorter time periods.

Talking about it is only one component of improving any skill set. It's essential to spend 70% - if not more- of instructional time in active practice of skills and challenge situations. In addition, when information is presented, it's important that the delivery be compatible with students' learning style. Not everyone learns best in the same way. It's important to have class notes available for those who find note taking a distraction. Likewise, it's important to have visual aids available but not mandatory, and to have a flexible class structure that allows for ample back and forth discussion time for students who profit most from verbal exchange.

Since we all negotiate every day, students of negotiation should not be treated like blank slates. Each student brings a rich array of experience with them to class, and they should be shown how to incorporate their existent skills into an overall model that includes new skills . In addition, they should first focus on skills that will change their outcomes most drastically: Depending on the student, this may mean first refining old skills, first learning new skills, or concurrently focusing on both. It's important that the content and pace be modified for students' unique needs.

Perhaps even more important than being shown to build on existing abilities, students must learn to negotiate in a way that is compatible with who they are. Most athletes have unique components of their technique that are effective because of their own body type or approach to an event. Likewise, it is not inherently beneficial to model each student after a prototype expert negotiator. While modeling of successful techniques is part of it, students must be coached to take their negotiation to the next level: Modifying expert techniques to meld with their own unique style so they become even more effective.

A fair percentage of class time is often non-productive - stories to which student's don't relate, excessive explanation or obscure elaborations, tardy classmates and extended breaks. All these things lead to day-dreaming, or at least general disengagement from the class flow and focus. It's important that classes immerse students in the material that they're learning. A language immersion class strives to transform students' internal worlds so that, instead of haltingly stumbling along, they can think and dream in a new language. Likewise,negotiation coaching should help students internalize negotiation skills. The experience should plunge students into the mind set of an Expert Negotiator.

Success Factors in Negotiation

1. Aspiration levels and opening offers
2. Detailed planning
3. Communication skills

Delving into the success factors can change the way you think about negotiation, and how you interact with your counterparts. You'll be able to take and build on the system you've learned, gaining more from all your negotiations (and other interactions as well.)

1. Aspiration Levels
According to our research and multiple studies, negotiators achieve more - in material form, as well as in their own satisfaction - when they begin with extreme rather than moderate demands. Negotiators who set their opening offers lower than their actual aspirations (because they like the other party or are afraid of seeming greedy) may end up settling for a less satisfactory result than might have been obtained by being more "selfish." But making an offer that others see as outrageous and unreasonable is no boon to your outcome. Effectively executed, ambitious opening offers can have even greater impact on outcomes than concessions that are made later on. It's the effective execution that we address in class. (Rubin, Pruitt, Kim)

2. Detailed Planning
Detailed preparation and planning results in reduced stress and anxiety, as well as strikingly better outcomes. Lack of preparation is perhaps the most serious handicap negotiators give themselves. In fact, the more experienced the negotiator, the greater the chance they've fallen into an standard preparation routines that minimally - if at all - account the particular people or issue they're confronted with. We tend to rely solely on our past partisan perceptions and current tool set.

Thorough preparation does take time up front, but it invariably saves time in the long run. Most of us feel prepared when we know what we want, and what we'll settle for, but confining the scope of our knowledge to our own bottom line limits how creative we can get with solutions. A powerful advantage can be achieved via shrewd planning. (Fisher, Ertel)

3. Communication Skills
While most people have formal training in reading, writing, and even presenting, few have taken training in listening. Most people believe they are good listeners. However, when given a five minutes listening test, these same peoples' opinions are radically changed.

"Conversation in the United States has become a competitive exercise. The first person to draw a breath is declared the listener."

Nathan Miller

The main problem in most negotiations exists in getting people to really listen to each another. Everyone wants their own uniqueness understood before they will allow themselves to be influenced by another opinion. But listening is a necessary preliminary to analysis. Real communication occurs when we listen to truly understand... to achieve the speaker's frame of reference with regard to the subject matter. To listen well, we must control our urge to interrupt, interpret, judge, or argue - but it is of course important that our own message comes across, too. A good negotiation requires the genuine intersection of two sets of interests. (Rogers)

Class Origins

I then studied the "competition" taking the most popular classes, those offered by the every present ads in airline magazines, as well as the most scholarly ones: Harvard Law School's Teaching Negotiation to Senior Executives and their multi-week Program for Instruction of Lawyers.

I found those doing the biggest deals could or would not attend public sessions held in classrooms because of busy, inflexible schedules, or the fact that classroom settings often don't provide a safe environment for experimentation. Another downfall of these group classes was that they provided little or no individual feedback, and they were often aimed at the lowest common denominator.

After my tour of the class circuit, I set out on an exhaustive literary search, delving into not only negotiation, but also game theory, bargaining, interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, and social psychology. I spent months seeking to prove or disprove my own perceptions and some of the ideas others had taught me as fact.
I have synthesized the best of all the above, combined it with my knowledge and experience of Silicon Valley business people and the types of deals on their tables, and boiled it down to three critical negotiation success factors. These success factors are the basis of the curriculum. Also, see t he questions answered in our class.

Contact at eric@batna.com, or 650-529-9922