negotiators all over the world fail to reach agreements or reach suboptimal agreements because they don't know what to do when they come up against an emphatic no I learn to turn an emphatic no into a yes by understanding my own interest and understanding the other party's interest when I was negotiating for pumpkins in France now interest is a term we use in negotiation and it means the motives the concerns that are underlying that emphatic no so let me tell you about negotiating for pumpkins in France my husband and I were on sabatical and we were
writing and we had our daughters in the local school the teacher there saw a couple of American parents as an opportunity to have a Halloween party for the French children he wanted them to carve pumpkins into Jackal lanterns for their party and my job was to find the pumpkins and I looked everywhere for the pumpkins I could find these things called kge they were about this big around they weigh a ton and you need a machete to get into them in negotiation terms these cores were my batna my best alternative to a negotiated agreement the
K was my fallback but it was actually terrible so I kept looking finally I found a farm stand that had pumpkins a woman Madame pte came out of the back I told her I was interested in pumpkins she gave me the price and I quickly accepted the price because my batna those Kor was terrible and then she asked me how many pumpkins I wanted and I had 32 children I quickly counted she had slightly more than 32 pumpkins but a lot of them were little so I told her I wanted all of them and as
soon as I did that she's turned and starts walking away going no no no so I had to think really quickly about what my strategic options were to try to turn that emphatic no into a yes one option was to offer her more money but I didn't really think money was the interest underlying her no because she had given me a price and I had already accepted it another option would have been to ask her how many pumpkins she'd sell me but I wanted a pumpkin for each child so I thought that option wasn't going
to generate a solution that was going to meet my interest I also thought of explaining to her what my interests were that I wanted to do the Halloween party for the venos children but I also didn't think that was going to get to her interest just mine so my last option was to ask her why not why won't you sell me all your pumpkins but then I thought lots of times negotiators don't like to reveal their interests they're afraid that doing so makes them vulnerable to your exploitation so I needed a fall back if she
wouldn't answer my direct question I knew I could make her an offer and then maybe if she said no we could engage in some conversation to understand what was behind that no a third option is to ask her well under what circumstances would you sell me all your pumpkins so ask her to make me an offer I decided to start with the first question and ask her directly why she explained if she sold me all her pumpkins she wouldn't have any SE to plant the next year I in turn explained my interest to have pumpkins
for the Vos children to turn into Jacko lanterns and I offered to bring all her seeds back November 1st if she would sell me all her pumpkins she agreed negotiators often think that the only way to win a negotiation is for the other party to lose but if you understand your own interests and you learn about the interests of the other party you can often reach an agreement in which both parties win Madame p and I did she got her seeds and I got all the pumpkins
