Negotiate over food

Set the conducive environment

Their office is their territory. Your office is your territory. In either case, there are interruptions…colleagues, emails, phone calls. Their office, you put up your guard. Your place, the other side will be tempted to put up their guard.

Find a restaurant with a pleasing ambiance. You are at ease, and so is the other party.

Captive audience and time

Office meetings typically follow an agenda. Sometimes quite rigidly. Once the arguments are made, the conference is dismissed.

A meeting over a meal allows mixing social experience with the business. Often people schedule a lunch or dinner for sixty to ninety minutes. You have a captive audience and captive time.

Remember to leave your laptop home, and the smartphone turned off in your pocket. A paper presentation (preferably paper napkin) works best at the table, and your prospect can keep it.

Once both sides have made their points, use the remaining time to connect socially.

People do business with people they like. Now you have the time. Make yourself likable. 

Satish Mehta
Author, Speaker, Coach
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