Go to the difficult areas first

Sometimes in our culture we are too polite for our own good or we avoid the ‘elephant in the room’ and skirt around or avoid the real issues that need to be discussed with our employees or customers / suppliers.

A good friend of mine is the CFO for a large sports wholesaler and retailer in Europe and has learnt a lot of good lessons from his Entrepreneurial boss and founder of the business. One such lesson is related to negotiations is:

“Go the difficult areas first”.

The temptation when negotiating with a potential customer or partner is to address the ‘easy’ areas first and that should pave the way for a more productive conversation on the ‘difficult’ areas. However, with this approach you could have wasted a lot of time agreeing the easy things if there is no way you can agree on the more contentious points. Instead, get them out of the way first.

Go to the difficult areas first.