Two Americans in town to meet with buyers asked me one of the toughest questions facing negotiators in China: Should we try doing business with someone who has burned us before?
It’s a great question anywhere - but in China it carries a little more weight. If you are a buyer in China you may have [...]
Category Archives: China Negotiating & Recession
Fool me twice - a calculated risk in China?
October 23, 2008 – 3:23 am
Culture & Negotiation in China: Using the “R” word.
October 21, 2008 – 1:09 am
Two counter-parties can look at the same situation and draw radically different conclusions. Negotiators, you have to remember, carry a lot of cultural and nationalistic baggage - and sometimes an innocent statement can have toxic results.
A friend of mine was in China meeting with chemical suppliers – as he has been doing once a year [...]
Watch out for these shady counter-parties in a China Recession
October 17, 2008 – 3:42 am
One technique that many negotiators use to raise their BATNA (Best Alternative to No Agreement) is to find a broad range of counter-parties to deal with. If there is another candidate waiting in the wings, your ‘no-deal option’ becomes much stronger. You can always walk across the street to your new potential counter-party.
This is a [...]
China Negotiation Focus: Variable Compensation Plans in Down Markets
October 16, 2008 – 2:21 am
Let’s take a break from big-picture theory and focus on an actual China negotiation case: Compensation.
Up until very recently, many international companies had been relying on performance-based compensation plans to encourage good performance. Commissions, bonuses, profit sharing, stock ownership — all serve the same purpose, and they all work just great… in a growing market. [...]
Negotiating power shifts with changing economic fortune
October 14, 2008 – 1:32 am
Power and Negotiation. Even in the best of times, analyzing and managing your relative power in a negotiation is tricky. When counter-parties are from different cultures, it becomes even more difficult. Then you throw in a global recession, and understanding and managing power and status becomes very risky.
Americans and Chinese counter-parties always seem to be [...]
