The Kremlin School of Negotiation. Igor Ryzov

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      Value is something your opponent is willing to pay you for.

      I would advise a company like this to build a demo hangar, which would serve as a first important step: it ensures the market has at least heard of them.

       Lever

      By its very name, this category implies there may be pressure on you. If there is interest in what you have to offer but you face a lot of competition, then I recommend boldly stepping into negotiations and revealing your benefit.

      ‘What, straight into combat, without any manoeuvring?’ you might ask. This I can understand: to all appearances, this category hardly differs from ‘opportunity’. Only the vector has changed: here, rather than ‘irreplaceability’, the high rating is for ‘importance’. However, the two do differ in quite marked ways.

      While prior preparation for negotiations is still essential, in this category there is some room for bargaining off the bat. Naturally, your opponent will try to put pressure on you by emphasising that there are other options available to them, they have companies queueing up to work with them and the like. But if you prepare your negotiations and arm yourself well (we’ll look at techniques, plays and negotiation preparations in more detail later), then success awaits. In this category, you have all three components of success in your hands.

      Once again, I would like to note that combat is not a ‘tough’ position: it is simply the stage of negotiations that begins when both parties understand the benefit the other side seeks. The negotiations themselves can be as tough or as gentle as you want: that is down to you and your opponent.

      If you’re a valued employee who meets targets and whom the company has an interest in retaining, you can boldly ask for a raise. Your employer will negotiate with you, whether they have a potential replacement for you or not. This is in contrast to the previous two categories, where there was no scope for bargaining.

       Partner

      There is interest in you, and you are hard to replace.

      Now, in this category it might appear that success is in the bag, but you can’t relax just yet. Yes, go into combat; yes, go out there with all guns blazing to declare your benefit. But be careful: your opponent won’t be dozing. For purchasing agents, for example, suppliers who fall into this category are a big danger. Managers of ‘stars’ face this headache all the time. This is because once we reach the top right-hand corner of the matrix, we often start behaving not as a partner but as a counter-lever. We lean in to our position, throw our weight around more.

      You can be certain that the other party – be they a purchasing agent or an employer – will always be on the lookout for a replacement. So you need to be aware that even if you’ve won the battle, you can still lose the war. Don’t forget the relationship aspect of negotiations; here it’s more important than ever.

      And so we can see that, even in this category, it is practically impossible to get by without some form of manoeuvring. Yes, go into combat; yes, reveal your benefit, but in later negotiations you will need to manoeuvre to encourage trust in you. And for this, you need to foster the three most important components of trusting relationships. They are:

      1. Attentiveness to the opponent and their values.

      2. An ability to listen.

      3. Professionalism.

      At the start of the 2000s, we were supplied by a well-known factory in Moldova. In the early days our partner made every effort to accommodate our wishes, and we grew together. Supply volumes continued to increase, and by the mid-2000s these were quite considerable (around seven million bottles per year). At this point our partner, realising how dependent we were on them, started imposing their own rules. They introduced unfounded price increases of quite a significant margin, as well as minimum sample sizes. As a result, we started to lose trust in them, and, naturally enough, we made the strategic decision to transfer 30 per cent of our supply to another producer. Our new producer was, of course, delighted with the situation. And our old partner very quickly started fussing over us and making their excuses. But it was already too late.

      If you fall into the ‘supermarket’ or ‘opportunity’ category, forget combat for a while and focus on manoeuvres. Combat (bargaining) is possible only when your opponent feels you are important.

      Before beginning negotiations, make sure you possess the three most important negotiation components: strength, means and resources.

      Make a forecast using the forecast matrix, and only then decide whether to make a manoeuvre (arm yourself and improve your position) or to head straight into combat. When it comes to building your strength and arming yourself, I would recommend studying the Chinese stratagems. Several of them feature in this book. You will remember, under the fourth postulate of the Kremlin school of negotiation (rolling out the red carpet) was the stratagem ‘Show your enemy there is a road to life’. For the negotiations on security systems, I drew on the following stratagem:

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