Negotiate the Why, Not the What
Two people can negotiate the exact same deal and walk away with completely different outcomes, depending on one thing: whether they were arguing about positions or interests.
A position is what someone says they want. An interest is why they want it. Most negotiations fail, or end in a worse deal than necessary, because both sides spend the entire conversation trading positions back and forth—price, terms, timeline—without either one asking why the other side cares about the number they're defending.
What a position hides
A customer says, “We need this delivered in 30 days.” That's a position. It's specific, it's stated with confidence, and it's usually treated as non-negotiable the moment it's said.
But the interest behind it could be something else entirely. Maybe a past vendor slipped a date, and this customer isn't actually asking for speed—they're asking for certainty they won't get burned again. A negotiator who accepts the stated deadline at face value ends up negotiating the wrong thing: a calendar that was never really the problem.
Why this changes the conversation
Once you're negotiating interests instead of positions, the conversation stops being adversarial by default. If the real interest is certainty rather than speed, there might be a dozen ways to deliver certainty that don't require compressing a 45-day project into 30.
Ask, and you might find one. Skip the question, and you'll quietly rearrange your schedule to eat a deadline that didn't need to exist in the first place.
The question that gets you there is simple, and it works because it's curious instead of adversarial: “Help me understand why 30 days matters specifically.”
Know your own walk-away point before you sit down
There's a companion idea worth knowing before any negotiation starts: your BATNA—Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement, meaning what you'd do if this deal falls through. Most people walk into a negotiation without having properly named that alternative, and it shows up in the room whether or not it's said out loud: a negotiator who doesn't know their alternative tends to treat every concession as urgent, when some of them genuinely aren't. Once you know your BATNA, you have confidence. Your alternatives and options flow easier so you can negotiate an acceptable agreement.
What this looks like in practice
Before your next negotiation, whether it's a customer, a vendor, or an internal stakeholder, do two things beforehand.
Write down what you believe their position actually protects—their real interest, as best you can guess it, not just their stated ask.
And write down your own best alternative if no agreement is reached at all.
Walking in with both answered changes what you're willing to trade and what you're willing to hold.
This is one slice of what GWA's Negotiating For Business Results program covers in full—building options that satisfy both sides, using objective standards to break an impasse, learning to commit late instead of early. In the room, it's backed by a BATNA worksheet and real practice negotiations over three days, not just a slide explaining the concept.
If your team is still negotiating positions instead of interests, that's worth fixing before the next deal.
Click here to book a free consultation and ask about our Negotiation Skills Program.
Kind regards,
The Executive Team
Gary Waldron & Associates
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