Think! Inc. began working with InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) Franchise Sales & Development in the summer of 2011. The IHG Franchise Sales & Development leaders had placed a high value on the topic of strategic negotiations however this was the first time they had reached outside the company for formal training.  The negotiation blueprinting process has proven to be fruitful in several areas including; more thorough client engagement, understanding both parties alternatives and the impact associated with those alternatives, creative ways to broaden the deal structure, providing multiple offers and proactive deal governance.  

Our research and global fieldwork have shown that virtually every negotiation, regardless of who's conducting it or where it takes place, can be blueprinted in exactly the same way.  This is extremely important, because we also found that everything that takes place in the course of a negotiation - the planning and the research as well as all the tactics used in the final face-to-face meeting - is ultimately driven by that blueprint.  But what is it?  It's essentially a picture of the entire negotiation, a picture that can be determined by anwering two questions for those on both sides of any deal:

Just as you would never dream of starting to build a house without a conventional blueprint, you can't build a deal that is worth negotiating without a plan to get where you are going.  The processes of data collection and analysis are key steps to what we at Think! call "blueprinting" a deal.  Blueprinting is a convenient way to view data-based preparation and analysis in its most basic and raw form; it essentially describes the steps needed to get your arms around all the moving parts in a complex B2B deal.