14 experience-based tips and tricks to get to yes faster, cheaper and better in any negotiation

1. 14 NEGOTIATION HACKS TO CLOSE
DEALS FASTER AND CHEAPER

2. 14 NEGOTIATION HACKS TO CLOSE DEALS FASTER AND CHEAPER
Most commercial lawyers like a good contract negotiation. It gets us out of
the office and doing what we do best.
After a while though, when the novelty wears off, ongoing negotiations can
often become frustrating, bad tempered, and crucially, way too expensive.
So if ‘getting to yes’ quickly, effectively and efficiently is more your thing
than debating the hypothetical nuances of convoluted legal drafting, each of
these fourteen hacks could serve you well.
1 Don't negotiate - It seems obvious, but the first question we should
be asking is ‘do we actually need to negotiate this contract at all?’
Surprisingly often, we don’t. Granted, a global services deal will need
some detailed discussion, whereas a software licence probably
doesn’t, but at the end of the day, work at the boundaries here. After
all, our terms are part of our products and services, and just because
others negotiate particular contracts doesn’t mean we have to, subject
of course, to the next point.
2 Start fair - It’s amazing how little needs negotiating if we start with a
contract that’s fair and reasonable for both partners. In fact, it’s a pre-
requisite for a non-negotiable contract because we’ll simply fail if we
don’t incorporate the needs of our customers/suppliers into our
commercial model. Even if we do negotiate though, we’re setting a far
more constructive tone if we start with balanced terms that we
genuinely believe work for everyone. Negotiating back from an
extreme position may be billed as tactically astute, but it’s actually
nothing more than unnecessarily time consuming and expensive
posturing, and best left to the amateurs.
3 Don’t sweat the small stuff - Using negotiation ‘chaff’ (those
defence flares used by military aircraft), is a surprisingly popular
practice in contract negotiations. Theoretically, we throw out loads of
decoy points that we claim to care about, ‘reluctantly concede’ those,
but only on condition we get what we actually wanted. Cunning, right?
No, not really. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence is going to see
through this tactic, at best ignore us, or more likely get annoyed and
try to take us to the cleaners. Play it with a straight bat. Ask only for
what we need. Influence our partners to see our perspective.
4 Check egos at the door - Contract negotiation is not a competition
with winners and loses, yet I’m constantly amazed at just how many
people get this one wrong. If we force our partners into a poor deal for
them, we are guaranteed to suffer the consequences. Think buyer’s
remorse and stick to win-win. Always.
5 Keep it simple - I don’t even want to think about how much of my
one and only life I’ve spent discussing what contract terms are meant
to say but just don’t. Pages and pages of incoherent nonsense when a
plain language paragraph would have done a far better job. If we keep
it clear and simple everyone can understand it and we don’t need to
waste time struggling through the undergrowth.
6 Forget sales bonuses - Although sales bonuses have probably been
proven to get us to yes faster than anything, they very often get us to
a very poor outcome. Then we bring in the lawyers who give us a
hundred reasons why the deal doesn’t work and we have to unravel it
and start again, with a fair degree of ill feeling for the wasted time.
Best not to incentivise sales to ‘sell tenners for a fiver’ (as a very good
friend of mine has been known to say).
7 Minimise facetime - Sometimes, we need to do business face to
face, but with today’s technology, we rarely do. Flying-in for long
meetings takes up unnecessary time, exhausts everyone, and
inevitably, they’re not very productive. Better to meet first to build
some rapport then work remotely via webshare tools.

3. 14 NEGOTIATION HACKS TO CLOSE DEALS FASTER AND CHEAPER
8 Location, location, location - I particularly love the luxury of
negotiations. Five star hotels, great food, bright, riverside offices in
the best cities in the world and all on expenses. Every bit the high-
flying executive - and completely insane if we want to close the
deal fast on any sort of sensible deal budget. Instead, try putting
everyone is a windowless room in a lower basement with bad
coffee and a takeout pizza menu. Everyone will want to go home
asap.
9 Lock everyone in - This one works particularly well when a few
stubborn points can’t be agreed towards the end. Put the
negotiators in a room and tell them they can’t come out until
they’ve done the deal. Maybe think about not feeding them so
often too. Just like children, they’ll soon work this one out. (Just
for the record, I don’t lock up or starve my kids).
10 Announce the deal - If CEOs go public on a major deal it has to
happen on time. Company valuations are sensitive to these things.
11 Keep it in the room - Put the decision makers in the room. There
are few things more inefficient than negotiating with people who
have no authority, whether that’s business teams or lawyers. It’s
frankly disrespectful too.
12 Incentivise efficiency - Amazingly, quite a few businesses still
use advisers (consultants, lawyers) for deals on a time and
materials basis. In other words, the longer the deal takes, the
more these people make. They’re incentivised NOT to agree!
Instead, put advisers on a fixed fee deal with a bonus/tip if they
can close early. (This doesn’t contradict my sales bonus point. Poor
advice from a law firm in order to close a deal fast is professional
negligence).
13 Use one law firm - I’ve been kicking this one around for years.
Why not negotiate the commercial deal without instructing lawyers
and then jointly instruct one firm to document the deal on behalf of
both parties? That’s immediately halved the legal bill, before
accounting for the relentless bickering between two law firms.
14 DIY - Why not just take external advisers completely out of the
picture and do the work ourselves? It is possible to do far more
work in-house by putting contracting tools and processes in that
replace the need for deep specialist experience with tool-based
expertise. Yes, there’s an upfront investment, but a substantial ROI
on every deal that follows. More detail on this in my July 2016
article, ‘What law firms can learn from lawyers’.
So there we go, fourteen ways we can save a tonne of time and money
closing deals. I'd love to hear your own experience.
David Meredith is a partner with UK law firm Temple Bright. He
helps businesses achieve better deals for enterprise technology
and outsourcing services, strategic partnerships and joint
ventures, and advises general counsel on strategically scaling in-
house commercial contracting teams.
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4. 14 NEGOTIATION HACKS TO CLOSE DEALS FASTER AND CHEAPER
▸ Don’t negotiate
▸ Start fair
▸ Don’t sweat it
▸ Check egos
▸ Keep it simple
▸ No sales bonuses
▸ Minimum facetime
▸ Location
▸ Lock-in
▸ Go public
▸ Give authority
▸ Incentivise efficiency
▸ One law firm
▸ DIY