Shift the axis of dispute

If, as we contrarians like to, we see a negotiation as not a straight, two-dog tussle between service provider and client, but a multi-dimensional game of passive-aggressive rent-seeking that is merely staged within the intellectual construct of a bilateral negotiation — think of the negotiation as a kind of papier-mâché ecosystem on which a totally different struggle for memetic survival wages — then possibilities open up for those who genuinely seek to move the negotiation on.

Firstly, remember the array of interests here. There are many — as many as there are participants in this drama; more in fact — and those of the notional “buyer” and “seller” — should we call them “hosts”? — are the most weakly held.

Imagine the battlefield is populated not by loyal soldiers with an unwavering unitary commitment to the defence of the realm, but hastily rousted rabble of confused mercenaries, not really sure what they’re doing on, whose side they’re on, where they are meant to be standing, or how they even came to be in the middle of this fight. Each of them — the negotiators, salespeople, professional advisers, credit committees — each one has her own private agenda, and that is to make themselves look like what they are doing is necessary. It doesn’t have to be necessary; just to seem that way to whomsoever is paying their bill. That bill should be as large as it can be without seeming out of proportion to the value of the negotiation.

Now, a negotiation where all concur, at once, that “we are agreed, then” will not put fuel in a mercenary’s stove.

Negotiators