Ensuring Stakeholders Understand Negotiation Terms

Remember the childhood game of telephone? One person whispers a phrase, it passes through a chain, and by the end, it’s completely distorted. Funny as a kid. Disastrous in business. Recently on Friends with Benefits, we talked with Franz-Josef Schrepf about how this same dynamic plays out in partnerships. You have one vision, your partner has another, and by the time that vision moves through sales, marketing, and leadership, it’s often unrecognizable. This is how deals stall. How expectations misalign. How “strategic” partnerships turn into transactional ones. So, how do we avoid a game ofCall me maybe?"Over-communication and executive alignment. It’s not just about making sure your teams are on the same page, which can be a challenge in and of itself. It's also about making sure each stakeholder understands the partnership in a way that ties to their goals. 📈Executives care about revenue and growth. Frame the partnership in terms of impact on pipeline, market share, and competitive advantage. 🤝🏼 Sales teams care about ease and speed. Make sure they understand how the partnership helps them close more deals, faster. 👀Marketing cares about positioning and demand. Ensure they see how the partnership expands reach, adds credibility, or unlocks a new audience. Before you can communicate effectively, you have to deeply understand what each person values, the goals they're trying to reach and how they define success. Otherwise, you’re just playing a giant game of telephone where no one walks away with the right message. Great partnerships aren’t built on handshakes and hype. They’re built on clarity, consistency, and alignment at every level. If your partnerships aren’t driving results, ask yourself: • Do I fully understand what my partner (and their leadership) actually cares about? • Am I communicating their value in a way that makes sense to them?

Unclear expectations are a project killer When I first started managing projects, I thought everyone would be on the same page. Alignment on roles, responsibilities, timelines, & deliverables Spoiler alert - they weren't. Fast forward 6 months: → A task was delayed because no one owned it → A stakeholder expected something we never agreed to → The team was frustrated by murky priorities It all came back to unclear expectations. Now, every time I kick off a project, I focus on 3 key things: ☝ Define roles & responsibilities Who owns what? Don't assume people know. Spell it out. RACI charts work wonders. ✌ Clarify deliverables & deadlines What are we delivering and when? Be specific. Confirm alignment with your team/stakeholders. 🤟 Overcommunicate early Repeat key details. Document agreements/decisions. Follow-up to ensure understanding. Clarity by setting expectations prevents future problems. It also establishes trust, teamwork, and successful delivery. When everyone knows what's expected, they can execute instead of guess. PS: what's your go-to strategy for setting clear expectations? 🤙

“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.” — Neil Strauss A friend of mine does a lot of marriage counseling. He shared this observation with me: “Most of the problems I see come down to missed expectations. Too often, those expectations were unspoken.” That's not just an issue in marriage relationships. It’s true with our stakeholders, too. There are expectations that something will be included in a project—or that it won’t be. It was never talked about—or at least, not clearly discussed. But the expectations remain. So much of project management comes down to managing the balance between expectations and reality. The more aligned stakeholder expectations are with the reality of what we’re delivering, the more likely the project is to be viewed by them as a success. What are some ways to maintain that balance? Here are some ideas from our Essentials of Project Management course: ✔️ Give more visibility to assumptions. Document them. Review them with stakeholders. Update them. Don't keep assumptions tucked away in your head. Pro tip: People say all the time: "Don't assume! You know what the word assume means, right?" That's terrible advice for projects. There are always assumptions. The problem is when they're overly optimistic or not communicated and considered. ✔️ Use exclusions to help stakeholders understand what they WON’T be getting. For the longest time, I chafed against documenting exclusions. If I didn’t tell someone they were going to get something, why should I have to tell them they aren’t? Because they make assumptions. Pro tip: Out-of-scopes don’t always mean "never." They might just mean they’re exclusions for the upcoming delivery. It’s okay for something to be out-of-scope for now but on the roadmap for later. ✔️ Have frequent check-ins. The frequency can depend on the project, but our experience shows that reality and expectations can start to diverge if your check-ins are more than two weeks apart. ✔️ Validate scope as it’s completed. In those check-ins, let your stakeholders see what’s been done. There’s nothing like actually seeing a deliverable to help a stakeholder understand if there's alignment with their expectations. ✔️ Increase trust with your stakeholders. As obvious as this may seem, it's worth being reminded that the dirty little secret of business is that everything is done on relationships. When there's trust, you're just checking in. When there's not, you're checking up. Understanding flows faster and more clearly when there's trust. 👉👉 What else would you add to this list? ------------------------------- “I thought my husband would ____________.” “I grew up in a house where my mom would _____________ so I assumed my wife would as well.” Yeah, that's a recipe for trouble. Marriage relationships can struggle because of missed and unstated expectations. So can projects. According to Neil Strauss, being more clear about expectations can avoid premeditated resentments.

One of the biggest pitfalls to avoid in M&A or any complex sales cycle (in life for that matter) - Miscommunication (or lack of) and misunderstanding. Some #tejtakeaways below extracted from my own mistakes! Seems OBVIOUS I know yet - we have all lost money, deals, clients, business partners and even personal relationships as a result. So many things impede us from winning but poor communication shouldn’t be a reason. Think about your last “loss” - it wasn’t one material reason (such as a valuation or money/fees) but rather a misunderstanding (lack of communication) or frustration (not being heard or miscommunication). These issues can be unilateral or mutual but not if we lead with genuine curiosity, especially during volilte times. Here’s one of my tenets I deploy during discovery (if not at the kickoff of due diligence) to be a more effective negotiator: 🔹Pre-negotiation alignment and roadmapping - for all internal and external parties🔹 It’s extra work up front but exponentially increases the chance of deals closing. This requires being inquisitive, ‘active listening’ (thanks Christopher Voss) then auditing those findings with all parties. Here’s how: 💡 Before engaging in any negotiation or deal, we should clearly know our: - NON-NEGOTIABLES - minimal outcomes/expectations (quantitative + qualitative) - NEGOTIABLES - range of numerous outcomes/ scenarios 1️⃣ Create a side by side list of each for yourself and team. That’s your high level deal map for what will lead to either success or failure, quickly. 2️⃣ Gather the same data sets but from the other party’s perspective (‘active listening’). Inquisitively interview them to understand their vision/path to success. 3️⃣ Now merge all that data and extract the key themes. If what they desire and need is vastly different that yours, that needs a joint audit and conversation to confirm or amend. Once you explore further, it may change for the better and you’re on the way to a likely successful outcome. If not, it’s time to walk away and move on (it may save the relationship). Sounds simple, and it can be logically, but our emotions/wants get in the way. That’s silly so don’t let that happen. Step back, rethink, and don’t over complicate or hang on because we tried to fit a square peg into a round hole in the first place. We’ve all been there and it’s never a long term, high reward win. Qualify + decline: low probability deals to save capacity for high value + high quality deals (and better fees), not to mention saving head/heartache and time! LinkedIn Any additional thoughts or tips?