A Negotiation Parking Lot – Momentum, Creativity and Connection

In a perfect world, we’d sit down for a negotiation, more through the open items in order – locking in approvals as we go, and emerge 15 minutes later holding our completed deal – perhaps with our arms raised in celebration…

Funny thing is, it never happens this way. Negotiations are filled with tough decisions, false starts, the occasional back-track and lots of approval procedures.

With a high number of moving parts and this level of unpredictability, it can be easy to lose our way in the discussion. One of the tools I’ve found most useful is a Parking Lot. Simply stated, a Parking Lot is a list of items that pop up during a negotiation that either can’t be resolved right away, or that don’t yet have a clear place in the deal. But for me, a Parking Lot isn’t that simple – it’s actually a great way to achieve 3 important benefits for your negotiation – momentum, creativity and connections.

Momentum

It’s really easy to get bogged down during a negotiation. One minute you’re flying through topics, and the next you’re spending 2 hours discussing whether something should be ‘reasonable’ or ‘commercially reasonable’… When you find that you’re stalled on a subject or phrase, the Parking Lot is a great way to regain momentum. Summarize the discussion for the team in one of two sentences, head over to the flip chart/whiteboard/excel file and put the subject into your Parking Lot. Everyone can rest assured that it won’t be forgotten (especially when it’s staring back at your from the corner of the room) and the negotiation can move onto the next item. Momentum (and sanity…) restored.

Creativity

When you and your counterpart are in the thick of negotiating, your brain is likely revving up to go 100mph. This rush of activity is going to help you push through the topics at hand, but you’ll probably find yourself coming up with lots of new ideas, potential solutions to problems at hand, and maybe even some exciting future phases for your business with your counterpart. The Parking Lot will allow you to capture these ideas and return to them later. Perhaps they’ll find a place in your current deal – perhaps not. But either way, you won’t have lost out on the benefit of your creative surge. There could be a game changer in there!

Connections

A Parking Lot serves as a great way to give visual impact to which subjects are creating your stumbling blocks in the negotiation. Especially when documented on a flipchart or whiteboard, you’ll start to see connections popping off the page – were you stuck on shipping terms, title transfers and export control? There may actually be an underlying taxation concern that needs to be addressed before the other – the surface – issues can be closed. Similarly, at the end of a session you may have a list of items that can be used as trade-offs to resolve the others. If you and your counterpart can both realize the relative value of these ‘gives’, you’re on your way to a deal.

As we’ve seen, the idea of a Parking Lot is deceptively simple – just a list of items – but using this tool in your discussions has the potential to radically improve the quality of your negotiation result. If you’re having difficulty implementing a parking lot, or interpreting the connections it’s displaying, working with a Negotiation Consultant may be helpful.

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Have you used a Parking Lot? Which items always seem to end up there? What’s the best connection that’s ever popped off the page at you?

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Devon Smiley is a Negotiation Consultant who is passionate about helping businesses achieve their best procurement contracts. Learn more about working with a Negotiation Consultant by visiting What is Negotiation Consulting? or get in touch by email at devon@informedstyle.com