Business Makeover: Fair is Fair

Welcome to TrueNorth Business Consulting’s presentation of a Business Makeover. Each month will feature an idea that can help your business. True North focuses on helping businesses, especially health and wellness practitioners maintain and grow their business using the areas of business law, marketing, insurance and project management.

How can you tell if something is fair? In a negotiation, object criteria is something outside of the negotiations that lets the parties know the options or offers are fair. An example is when buying a house the seller does not make up a number. It is based on a market analysis, comparing the houses to other that have sold in the neighborhood, along with the assessed value. When the buyer goes to make an offer, the buyer can say that what they are offering is fair based on the same analysis. The market value is not set by the two parties, the buyer and the seller; it has been set by an outside, third party. The market analysis is the objective criteria.

Having an objective criterion can help strengthen the options you have put forward in a negotiation. Some other examples of objective criteria are:

1. A third party professional
2. Quotes from other manufacturers or service providers

The following are not objective criterion, because they are not impartial:

1. Friends
2. Someone in a higher position than you (or other party) at the company

It is important to have objective criteria—it can make a difference in a good deal or a bad deal. Remember, would you want to pay too much for a house? That would happen if you did not have the market analysis.

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