Half of a Negotiation's Outcome Is Decided by the Preparation Before You Sit Down
In negotiations between business owners, results change less by how you speak than by what you prepared before sitting down: the order in which you will convey things, the figures you will confirm, the range you can concede and the range you cannot. If you enter with those arrangements vague, your judgment wavers with the atmosphere of the room.
The central point of this article is the judgment of arranging your preparations before entering a negotiation. Separately from habits of speaking in negotiation or techniques of conveying, it narrows its focus to what the business owner decides in advance.
Mercury's Roughly 88 Days, and Retrograde as a Period for Review
Mercury goes once around the Sun in about 88 days. It moves quickly, and is a planet read in connection with communication, discussions, and the exchange of documents. Mercury has retrograde periods, when it appears from Earth to move in the opposite direction, and they arrive three times a year, each lasting about three weeks.
The retrogrades of 2027 begin on February 10, June 11, and October 7. This site's way of thinking reads a retrograde period not as something to fear as a period when things do not advance, but as a period for confirmation and review. In negotiation terms, it is suited less to deciding new conditions all at once, and more to washing out discrepancies in existing promises and figures.
Using the Retrograde Period as a Period for Preparation
If the negotiation schedule can be chosen, there are two ways to think about the arrangements. One is to place the occasion of an important final agreement after confirmation is finished. The other is to deliberately assign the retrograde period to preparation and confirmation, and wash out discrepancies in conditions and flaws in documents during that time.
Neither is the correct answer. What matters is to build the review period of about three weeks into the design of your schedule. If you treat the retrograde period as "a period to avoid," the freedom of your schedule narrows; if you treat it as "a period in which to do the work of confirmation," it becomes part of the arrangements as it is.
Negotiation schedules are often decided by the other party's circumstances, in which case you cannot choose the timing. Even then, you can use the fact that it is a retrograde period as a reason to carry out confirmation carefully. The movements of the stars do not decide whether a schedule is lucky or unlucky; they are a guide that tells you where to place the weight of your preparation.
The same thinking about arrangements applies in negotiations between self-employed people as well. Because there is no organizational approval process, an immediate answer on the spot is more likely to become the decision itself — so arrangements that decide in advance what you will not decide are, if anything, more effective than in a company organization.
Three Things to Decide Before You Enter
The first is the line you will not concede. Is it the price, the delivery date, or the period? If you try to protect everything equally, you will somewhere make a sudden, large concession. Deciding the order in which you will protect things in advance is the judgment of drawing a line.
The second is confirming the figures. Are you and the other party looking at the same figures in each of your hands? If the discussion proceeds while the premises are off, what you thought was agreed will turn out to be a discrepancy. Before the negotiation, reconcile your own company's figures with the figures already presented to the other party.
The third is to decide what you will not decide. If you decide in advance which items you will not answer on the spot, the judgment of taking things back to consider does not waver. Here is one concrete work example: in a situation where a long-standing client consults you about changing conditions, you decide in advance that you will not answer immediately on the amount, but will confirm the reason for the change and its impact on the whole, and take it back with you. This is the concrete example this article places. Not answering immediately is not a failure of negotiation; it is something to decide in advance as part of the arrangements.
Looking Back at Negotiations on Mercury's Cycle of About 88 Days
Mercury's cycle of about 88 days can also be used as a unit for looking back at negotiations. About once every three months, confirm whether the conditions and promises of continuing business still match the actual exchanges. If that regular confirmation exists, situations where you first notice a discrepancy at the table of a large negotiation decrease.
A business owner's negotiations are not something to view by the win or loss of each occasion. They are the practice of reconfirming, from time to time, the conditions for continuing business over the long term. Mercury's fast cycle becomes a guide for creating the rhythm of that confirmation. A horoscope does not predict the result of a negotiation; please use it as a tool for not neglecting preparation and confirmation. The one who decides is, in the end, the business owner, and the quality of the preparation supports that decision.