How to Negotiate Past No

When You Hit a Brick Wall, Turn Left . . . Or Right . . . And Start Walking

Even the Great Wall of China has two ends.

I must admit that I am as guilty as the next person of the sin of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

When you hit a brick wall, you need to walk around it, particularly if you’re thinking you need to get out the battering ram or buy a few sticks of dynamite to blow it up.

When your bargaining partner says no to every iteration of what you want and you find that you’ve bloodied your forehead from banging your head against the wall, its time to change the conversation.

Make a move, any move. Shake things up. Disrupt yourself.

One of my most difficult mediations involved three companies, all from different countries – the United States, New Zealand and Australia. The parties were stuck in their own evaluations of the value of the dispute (insurance/jet engine failure) and couldn’t get in the same ballpark on price. Two full days of posturing by the attorneys, anger on the part of the clients and impasse for the mediator.

Months later, I continued to “work” the case. Each telephone call hit the wall of party certainties about their probable victory.

Still, they’d sunk tens of thousands of dollars into settlement discussions and millions in litigation fees and costs. They wanted to settle. The question was not if, it was when and how.

I asked a colleague what he’d do and he said, simply, “insert something new into the mix.”

I had no idea what that something might be so I simply called one of the attorneys and told him he needed to “insert something new into the mix.” You don’t have to have all the answers, or any of the answers. You just have to move a different piece on the chess board and see what happens.

“Arbitrage!” the attorney shouted, without a beat. “Let’s play with the value of money.” Together we devised a strategy that would take advantage of the shifting values of the dollar and the kiwi – the New Zealand dollar.

And that’s what closed the deal.

Here’s my best advice when you can’t close a deal.

Don’t give up. Learn what’s standing in the way. When what’s standing in the way is immovable, accept the brick wall’s existence and walk around it. Or invite your bargaining partner to your side of the wall and ask him what he’d do to get around it.