AI in Complex Negotiations is something we at Merindol Negotiation have been pondering. Will human negotiators soon be joining video cassettes and Blackberry on the obsolescence heap as AI negotiation takes over?
Hmm – not so fast. AI offers huge potential to support negotiators. However, we have yet to see a system that has the subtlety of thought, ability to read non-verbal communication and intuitive judgement that are essential in everything except the most straightforward negotiations.
So, does that mean that AI is useless for complex, collaborative negotiations? Not at all:
We have identified 3 areas where existing AI tools can support your negotiations:
1. Research
At Merindol, we talk a lot about the importance of understanding the other side in a negotiation. What is going in their business? What are their strategic imperatives? Where does our counterparty sit in the organisation? AI makes the process of obtaining this information 100 times easier. Here is an extract from an AI-generated report that we used to prepare for a meeting with a client last week.
2. Preparation
This is where AI really comes into its own. At Merindol, we believe that negotiators should spend 4 hours of preparation for every hour of negotiation. There are several ways that AI can help reduce that 4 hours to something manageable in a busy organisation:
Identifying variables: In complex, collaborative negotiations, we need to identify all the variables, or levers, that provide value to our organisation and to the other side. What can you ask them for and what can you propose that will be valued by them? This is exactly the kind of thing that AI does well. It may not think of everything, but it can save a huge amount of time by generating a list of potential discussion points to feed into your plan.
Here is an extract from a long list of variables Chat GPT generated when I asked it to help me plan a negotiation for a website upgrade:
Move planning: Once you have identified all of the items you want to discuss with the other side, and your objectives, you need to develop your detailed plan. What are you going to propose when? What increments will work best for your price proposals? AI can help you to build a detailed plan at warp speed, although you will definitely need to sense check its ideas.
Scenario testing is a task that AI will gobble up. You can save a huge amount of time by asking an AI tool to suggest ways in which the negotiation might play out, and by planning your response to each move.
3. Coaching
Once you are in the thick of it, negotiating with a counterparty, AI can help you craft your response to a proposal or provide you with prompts “have you thought about this?”. You might not always find its suggestions practical, or even sensible, but it always helps your thought process to have a sounding board.
AI can also analyse the emails your write and suggest improvements to make sure you are setting the tone you want; collaborative, firm, friendly, etc. (we recommend Chat GPT for this). It can also analyse the communications you receive – pulling out nuances of tone, and putting items proposed into a helpful list.
To conclude…
Overall, even if AI isn’t ready yet (will it ever be?) to conduct complex negotiations for you, there are many, many ways that you can use it to support your negotiations. Ignore it at your peril – your counterparties may already be using it to get one step ahead.
Alison Sutton,
Co-Founder and Director, Merindol Negotiation
T: +44 (0) 7920 702402
E: mailto:asutton@merindolnegotiation.com
www.merindolnegotiation.com