One of the worst things I have discovered in Business Negotiation is that so often one party will over sell leaving very little on the table for the other party. Sure you shake hands and look them in the eyes when completed but you wonder if they can perform or if they have over promised? Will they deliver on that promise or will they fall short and then what?

No one has time to waste in the courtroom and so often that is where lopsided deals end up. That makes no sense when you have a business to run. We see this most often when negotiating with salesmen or foreign-born thinking folks who are not so into the Western Worlds win/win scenarios.

It has always been my observation that in a win/lose negotiation that more time will need to be spent in the future to offset the problems created by sacrificing the other party in order to take everything off the table for your company leaving them nothing but crumbs. Negotiating from a win/win perspective makes sense and so in Business Negotiation it behooves each side to be careful if you win too much or aggressively grind on the other party to the point they get nothing.

Because if you truly need performance for your operation from the other party and they cannot afford to fulfill their end of the deal, well everyone loses in the end and you could be put in a position of scrambling to make things happen and end up in court with the defaulting party. Consider all this in 2006.