WIN-WIn SCenario - a true story

Healthy Skin Ltd., a large international company in the field of healthcare, was interested in expanding its business. For this reason, it approached ZSC GmbH, a research and development unit in Germany, and expressed interest in a new healthcare product ingredient, which ZSC was working on. The parties sat down to negotiate the deal and very quickly agreed on a price of €32 per kilo for 500,000 kilos a day. However, one problem remained. ZSC would not agree to sell exclusively to Healthy Skin. In addition, Healthy Skin would not invest in the new product if their competition had access to this particular ingredient.

Neither side was witting to move with respect to this key point. Due to the question of exclusivity it looked, unfortunately, tike the deal was going to fall through. Recognizing the deadlock, Healthy Skin decided to bringDoug Skeen into the negotiation to help find a way out of this impasse and solve the problem. Doug, well trained in dealing with dispute negotiations, had to find an alternative, which was acceptable to both parties.

Doug's first step was not to argue the position of exclusivity. This had not brought the parties forward. Instead he asked questions about why there was resistance and what motivated each party's position. He wanted to understand their reasons. Soon he discovered that ZSC realty wanted to do business with Healthy Skin. In fact, they fell that €32 per kilo was a very fair price and were happy that Healthy Skin was going to buy almost the whole quantity ZSC produced. But Doug also found out that ZSC had a prior agreement with a small company, Thompson & Co., for 150 kilos a year for a locally-sold product. This was the reason why 6C could not grant Healthy Skin exclusivity. It had nothing to do with Healthy Skin's major competitors.

0nce each party’s reasons were known, it was soon clear that their interests were not really in conflict with each other. As a result, they began discussions again and a deal was quickly reached. Healthy Skin was granted exclusivity except for the couple of hundred kilos for Thompson & Co. Thanks to Doug's expertise, both Healthy Skin and ZSC were able to come to a win-win solution.

Joseph Daniel McCool, Career How-ToNovember 26, 2007

Vocabulary:

expand [iks'pænd] – vb. расширять

ingredient [in'gri:diənt] – n. компонент

access [æk'sεs] – n. доступ

exclusivity [iksklu:siviti] – n. эксклюзивность

resistance [ri'zist(ə)ns] – n. сопротивление

deadlock ['dεdlɔk] – n. тупик, безвыходное положение