BANTA & ZOPA

February 2, 2021

Banta

“BATNA” is an acronym which stands for ‘Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. It helps you in making a guess about your options if you are unsuccessful in agreeing on a deal.

During negotiation, you not only need to access your BANTA but also of your negotiation counterparts. If your counterpart doesn’t have options then your BANTA doesn’t hold too much significance and same goes for you.

Apart from establishing a BANTA, it is also advised to establish a Reservation Value, which is least favourable number on which you will agree.

Example: If you are in a condition where you already have a initial offer on a piece of hardware, say $1900, then such offer can act as BANTA as long as you are comfortable with it and willing to accept it. Then you might want to set a bit higher reservation value, let say $2000, for your other negotitions.

Zopa

"”ZOPA” stands for Zone of Possible Agreement. As the name suggests, it is range which both parties consider favourable as per their established BANTA.

Source

We generally are more interested in knowing our counterpart’s BANTA and reservation value. It is found out which some certainity during the negotition. But before the negotiation, we need to collect some open information like if you can get his/her bid for similar item, etc. Then using such information, we make our initial estimate.

Last updated: February 3, 2021