Negotiations

My kids have been into The Greatest Showman lately, so I get to see it a lot. And my wife downloaded both soundtracks, yes, the original, and the Reimagined. After having seen the scene for the song The Other Side and hear the song 100s of times it got me thinking that this is a beautiful display of negotiation.

​Now we all know that negotiation is a powerful tool in business if you understand how to do it. While preparing this article I did a little research on similar articles and there are TONS!
I particularly liked this one: https://www.cheerfulegg.com/2018/09/02/what-hugh-jackman-can-teach-you-about-negotiation/
The only thing the above article didn't dive into was the actual terms. So, I'll pause. Go read the other article and come back.
Welcome back!
So in the terms negotiation Hugh starts at 7%. This seems reasonable and very well may be in the ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement). Now, Zac rejects this and offers out 18%. This is clearly outside the ZOPA based on Hugh's retort of "why don't you just ask for 50%? (Nickels on the dime). This next part is interesting, Zac offers out again, coming down 3% to 15%. The dynamic has shifted because it was Hugh's turn to offer! This was a critical point where Zac should have stayed quiet and let Hugh offer up.
So, now Hugh is sitting with 15% and offers up 8%. This is a 1% increase. Zac comes down to 12%, another 3% drop. Clearly we have uneven movement in this negotiation. Car dealers are notorious for this. They'll move $500 a time while the buying is coming up $1,000s.
Back to Hugh, he says, "maybe 9". As if well I guess... he's only come up 2% while Zac has dropped 7%. All the while, he didn't seem that interested at first. Zac, now offers 10% and they shake! Hugh gives up 3% from his original position and Zac comes down 8%.
From this we can deduce a couple of things:

1. Both were happy with the deal.
2. The ZOPA was probably 9%-13%.
3. The final deal should have ended up closer to 11% or 12% IMHO had Zac done a better job.
4. Doing some homework before the negotiation, like Hugh did, could have served Zac better. Zac may have been better served to take the offer and come back to Hugh. We would have lost the song and dance scene but the result may have been better.
5. Not negotiating over shots could have helped Zac as Hugh largely had the upper hand in this case.

Cheers and Happy Negotiating!