Our working assumption is that many of our clients’ negotiations are conducted in the context of long-term relationships.

Unfortunately, most common approaches to negotiation treat each interaction in isolation and see the signing of a contract as an end point.

We believe that each negotiation presents an opportunity to build a profitable long-term relationship. Even if the payoff from a relationship may not be easily calculable today, today’s actions will affect tomorrow’s payoffs.

The challenge is to move from an approach that tends to focus only on short-term results to one that also builds opportunities for future value creation.

Executing this shift requires, amongst other things: more systematic preparation; a more detailed negotiation strategy; more internal coordination and alignment to enable execution; and better review and follow-up.

This is not about compromising today in order to maintain a relationship and do better tomorrow, nor is it about letting the other side “win” so that you can also “win”. Instead, it is about creating a profitable relationship for all partners in both the short-term and the long-term.

Effective negotiation behaviors and processes, implemented across your organization, should enable you to meet your company’s interests very well, while also enabling further opportunities for all partners to create long-term value in the relationship.