Practising Negotiation

After the Sunday event incident, I had the pleasure of negotiating with the owner of the club as the outcome of the event was so bad.

Previously the agreement was that we would pay for the expenses of marketing the event, and he would cover the cost of staff and the band.  Based on the event turnout, he refused to pay the band.

In the end, we split the cost of the band.  In review, I think I did not negotiate well.
1. We had clearly agreed on the cost of the split.
2. The leverage obviously changed as after the event I was in a fairly poor position.
3. My worse case was to split the cost of the band.
4. My best case was that the agreement was the agreement and they should honour it.
4. When I offered to pay, I should have gone for increments.  Start at $100 and resisted hard on giving more money.
5. I have too great a sense of "fairness" in this context.  Given the relative transactional basis of this negotiation (I was really never going to work with the club owners again) I should have been more aggressive.
6. Will learn to hold the line more for next negotiation.
7. One thing was that I was able to put myself as the "good guy" with the band.  Keeping that relationship is not a bad thing, and something we can cultivate going forward for any additional events.