Working a new project is a challenge on its own but when you go to the negotiation table you get out and show your colors. The table can be intimidating because no matter how good you may know your project, a wily negotiator on the other side can turn it into shreds in a minute. Or he puts you in a tight spot making you either accept a rotten agreement or walk away.

I have decades of negotiation experience in sectors as different as tourism, IT services, and Oil & Gas. I hold a Masters degree from a reputable law school not with the aim of becoming a lawyer but rather in order to be a more efficient negotiator. Some of my clients have used me as one-man-hit-team to unclog negotiations that were hopelessly stuck in a rut.

Its always wise to avoid that situation altogether. Its very expensive to get stuck in negotiation and it also harms your companies or your teams reputation. Ideally, I come in long before the negotiation starts, and we hammer out a strategy together, assign roles, prepare decision-making matrices, contingency plans, establish a commercial strategy and the BATNA, and make sure that everyone is on board abut the objective to be reached.

Bad negotiators don’t know themselves. They don’t know what their company can do and what’s a deadly trap. One mans death trap is another mans boring routine. Don’t get trapped in templates and trite standards. LNG is not a standardized business and your particularity might be your USP – you might not see it that way yet.