Week 2

On Monday we did the Knight-Excalibur exercise. I was the representative from Excalibur trying to sell the pistons for a profit and trying to get the name out there with free advertisement. My asking price was $616 including the quality control insurance program. I further explained the insurance plan and how this would be a good deal. My fellow negotiator said that he knew that we were looking to get into some government contracts and asked what I could exchange for some free advertising. I said that I could eliminate the rush fee. He then mentioned that he thought they were worth more like $500 and asked me if our pistons were worth the extra $116. I said that they certainly were! He suggested splitting the difference to $558 including the quality insurance, no rush fee, and the free advertising. We struck a deal.  Before the negotiation, I looked over the negotiation strategies in the textbook and planned to implement some. But when the time came to it, I completely forgot any of the strategies. Also, I neglected to realize that I would have 2000 pistons that would have to be sold at a loss for $100 each. If I had realized this, I would have pushed selling more pistons and avoided mentioning the quality insurance program.

On Wednesday we did the Universal Computer Company exercise. I was the Phillips plant manager trying to get the Crawley plant manager to cover some costs of fixing their faulty modules. My negotiating partner seemed to approach this problem as if we were from two different companies (I mentioned a few times that we are working for the same company, but he was only concerned about his plant). He was very competitive and argumentative, but I kept hammering what I believed right back at him. We argued about how to interpret the 95% acceptance level. I was starting to get scared that he wasn’t going to cover any of the costs and make my plant look bad. I was thinking that I had more to lose than he did because my plant has been plagued by poor quality. Eventually I asked him what he suggested we do and he said to split the cost of fixing the 12 types of faulty modules 50/50. I said that that was not logical and I said that I would agree to 75/25 if Crawley sends an employee over to Phillips to fix the faulty modules and Crawley incurs 75% of these costs. Finally we reached an agreement. Before this negotiation, I planned to write down and use two negotiating techniques (forbearance and probing) and one closing technique (alternative). However, the negotiation did not go as I planned (there was a lot more arguing back and forth) and I did not get to use any of these techniques.