📝 Workbook · Business · Unit 7

Workbook · 7A — Reading the room

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Exercise 1

Exercise 1 — Negotiation lexis

Complete each sentence with ONE phrase from the box.

Word bank — drag or tap, then tap a gap
  1. Don't take €40k as their final number — that's their  drop , not their walk-away point.
  2. Before you go in, know your  drop  — otherwise you'll concede too early.
  3. Give them a  drop : let them win on payment terms while we win on price.
  4. The 'March 31st' deadline felt like theatre — I'd  drop  if I had a stronger fallback.
  5. We don't have to say yes today. Let's  drop  with the smaller version first.
  6. That's below our  drop  — we walk.
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Exercise 2

Exercise 2 — Past modals

Complete each sentence with must have / might have / should have (or the negative).

  1. (Near certainty) They ___ ___ (know) about the competitor bid — they didn't blink at our number.
  2. (Regret) We ___ ___ (ask) for their budget in the discovery call, not in the offer.
  3. (Possibility) She ___ ___ (be) bluffing about walking away — hard to tell.
  4. (Near-certain 'no') He ___ ___ (see) the pricing deck before the meeting — his questions were basic.
  5. (Criticism) You ___ ___ (offer) the discount so early — it anchored us low.
  6. (Possibility) The CFO ___ ___ (override) her at the last minute.
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Exercise 3

Exercise 3 — Position or interest?

Decide whether each sentence expresses a POSITION or an INTEREST.

  1. 'We need this priced at €40k or we walk.'

  2. 'I need to show my board a win by end of quarter.'

  3. 'The delivery has to be before March 31st.'

  4. 'We don't want to lose the two senior engineers on this project.'

  5. 'We want a 12-month contract, not 24.'

  6. 'My CFO gave me a €50k budget and I want to look good.'

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Exercise 4

Exercise 4 — Debrief with past modals

Rewrite each blunt debrief line using a past modal to be more precise.

  1. 'They lied about the deadline.'
  2. 'We asked for too little.'
  3. 'She had another offer, obviously.'
  4. 'We should have walked.'
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Exercise 5

Exercise 5 — Three post-deal debriefs

You'll hear three reps debrief the same lost deal. Decide who to promote to lead the next big negotiation.

🎙️ Three post-deal debriefs — multi-voice

  1. Which speaker gets the promotion?
  2. Which speaker blames the client and learns nothing?
  3. Which speaker is warm but too vague to act on?
Show transcript

Gabi (Ravi):They lied to us. They said their budget was €280k and came back with €260k as a floor. They'd already decided to go with the competitor before our second meeting. Nothing we could have done.

Zeca (Marta):The €260k wasn't real in the sense of value — but real in the sense that their CFO had promised the board a number under €270k. So the €260k was theatre; the interest was the CFO not losing face. Where we went wrong: we should have asked for their budget cap in the discovery call, not tried to guess it in the offer. We couldn't have known they were also talking to the competitor, but we should have assumed they were. And — the big one — we treated this deal as our only option in Q4. It wasn't. We negotiated like we had no BATNA, so they smelled it.

Amara (Kwame):Yeah, tough one. Honestly, we probably could have done more, could have been sharper on a few things. It's on all of us. Client was tricky. We should probably do better next time. Yeah.

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Exercise 6

Exercise 6 — Write your post-deal debrief

Pick ONE negotiation from the last 6 months. Write the 4-sentence debrief (max 80 words). Sentence 1: POSITION vs INTEREST. Sentence 2: one 'must have' — near-certainty from evidence. Sentence 3: one 'should have' — the actionable change. Sentence 4: your BATNA at the time, honestly named — strong, weak or non-existent.

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