Three claims: your BATNA is most often your biggest source of power; options make you stronger, so work to improve your BATNA; and be sensitive to how your counterpart perceives your BATNA, including when to signal or share it.

Power comes from the alternative the other side believes you have, not only the one you have. Preparation therefore includes improving the real alternative and deciding what, if anything, to reveal about it.

The title page of a 2015 Psychological Science article. Its finding: negotiators with no alternative felt less powerful but made higher first offers and reached better outcomes than negotiators with a weak alternative, because the weak alternative acted as a low anchor on their own first offer.

A weak BATNA is useful as a floor but harmful as a reference point. Set the first offer from the value created and the counterpart's alternatives, then check it against your floor; the effect disappeared when negotiators focused on a countervailing anchor.

Summary of three findings: phantom alternatives (uncertain options) make negotiators feel powerful and raise aspirations, counteroffers and distributive outcomes; imagining strong alternatives that do not exist leads to more ambitious first offers and better outcomes; and holding multiple alternatives that are all worse than the BATNA can suppress aspirations.

The psychology of alternatives affects ambition even when the alternative is not real. That is useful for setting a first offer but dangerous at the walk-away moment: the decision to reject a deal must rest on the alternative you can actually execute.

Advice on targets: focus on achieving the target rather than avoiding the resistance point; direct the counterpart's attention to their own resistance point by describing their situation without a deal; and avoid round-number goals, since a precise higher number may be a stronger anchor.

Two levers in one page: the target sets your own ambition, and talking about the counterpart's no-deal situation moves their attention toward their limit. A precise number signals that the figure was calculated rather than chosen.

Definition: the point of indifference where agreement is as good as no agreement. Always enter with one, but do not dwell on it, because it can anchor you low and lead you to concede too much too early, given that people expect and reward reciprocal concessions.

Compute the resistance point before the meeting and then stop looking at it. It is a stop-loss, not a planning reference; your concessions should be planned from the target down.

A number line from 100 to 114: buyer's aspiration 102, seller's reservation price 104, buyer's reservation price 110, seller's aspiration 114. The bargaining zone runs from 104 to 110 because the buyer's reservation price exceeds the seller's.

Both aspirations lie outside the zone. Each party's target is unattainable if the other holds firm at its limit, and nobody sees the zone directly during the negotiation; each side only knows its own reservation price.

A diagram of the seller's and buyer's ranges overlapping between the seller's reservation price and the buyer's reservation price, warning against aiming automatically for the midpoint of the perceived ZOPA.

The midpoint of the perceived zone is the midpoint of two opening positions, which each side chose strategically. Splitting the difference rewards whoever opened more aggressively.

A wheel of three benchmarks: your result against your initial aspirations and expectations; your result against your counterpart's; and your result against similar others with the same power, time pressure and alternatives.

Comparing against the counterpart is the trap: a deal can be excellent even if they gained more. Aspirations and comparable negotiators are the meaningful benchmarks, and they must be written down before the negotiation.

A bar chart from Galinsky, Mussweiler and Medvec (2002): negotiators who focused on their target price achieved better objective outcomes (about +0.4 standardized) but lower satisfaction (about -0.5); those who focused on their BATNA did worse objectively (about -0.6) but felt more satisfied (about +0.4).

Satisfaction tracks the reference point you compare against, not the value you obtained. Focusing on the floor feels good and pays less; this is why the debrief needs the target written down in advance.

Four dimensions from Curhan and colleagues (2006): instrumental outcomes (money, benefits, power), self-image (not losing face, acting on your principles), the process (voice, fairness, ease of reaching agreement) and relationships (impression, trust, foundation for future dealings).

In a three-year customer contract the relationship dimension has economic weight: renewals, references and expansion depend on it. Score all four after each negotiation.