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Hello Reader 👋

If you think negotiating is only for salespeople, you couldn't be more wrong.

Every job has its part of negotiations and FP&A has a lot.

Budgets. Forecasts. Business Cases. Assumptions.

You'll have to deal with people wanting more (or less, depending on what) and try to stay on your grounds.

But it's not so easy not to take it personally so you have to know what to do.

This is what we're going to tackle today 👇

So take a coffee, sit down and read FP&A Stories just like 22k other readers

This week in FP&A Stories

🤝 Negotiation in Finance: Getting Win-Win Outcomes

It's not like you're going to go "Donald Trump" style and negotiate boldly to obtain millions (billions) from the counterpart.

But in many ways, when you work in FP&A, you'll have to negotiate with people.

Especially in budgets/forecast times, numbers alone will not do the job. No matter how hard you explain the assumptions, some guts will come into the discussion to give less (or get more).

How do you move beyond a back-and-forth “numbers game” and reach an outcome that both sides can live with?

Here’s how I’ve seen it work in real life.

1️⃣ Know Their Priorities

You might be thinking, “They want more budget, management wants less.” (if we talk about costs)

But that’s too simplistic.

Often, the other side cares about time, resources, or strategic impact more than just a number.

📌 Example: Headcounts vs total costs is a good example. Many times, people are just concerned about the work getting done and that their teams don't suffer.

In budgets/forecasts discussions, I've often had people just wanting the same number of FTEs as today.

But the issue comes when you have a long duration absence and that you have to replace with consultants.

More costs for the same number of people aren't great for a balanced budget so we had to prioritize the activities to only hire a fractional consultant.

What to do:

• Ask questions to uncover their real concerns
• Don’t assume it’s all about money. Sometimes it’s about security, timing, or reputation

2️⃣ Prepare Multiple Options

If you go into a negotiation with just one solution, you box yourself in.

Having a “Plan B” or “Plan C” shows flexibility and keeps the conversation from stalling.

📌 Example: In a B2B environment, at a high-pressure time, we had to choose the commercial targets. Churn was a real risk but we couldn't just say we counted on most customers leaving.

So what we did was come up with different scenarios, showing the impacts of the top 20 customers.

In that case, seeing the potential reorganisation impacts of "churning" these in the budget, eventually, a middle scenario was chosen by taking a buffer on the less important customers.

What to do:

• Outline at least two scenarios that could work
• Let them pick which scenario suits their needs best

3️⃣ Trade, Don’t Concede

Win-win should bring something to all sides. So you must swap value.

It's great to want bigger marketing budgets (or promo budgets) but it should go along with bigger acquisition targets.

In French, we say "you can't have the butter, the butter money and the creamer", meaning you can't have it both ways.

📌 Example: Here it's pretty simple. A marketing manager wanted to increase their budget for next year to face potential disruption. Although there were rumours, we didn't have a clear sign of churn. In addition to that, she also wanted her targets to decrease vs current year.

Let's say it was one or the other but she couldn't have both.

What to do:

• Identify the relations between the drivers and make it clear that impacts in one lead to impacts in the the other

4️⃣ Keep Emotions in Check (Yours and Theirs)

It's not an easy one. I've been there too when it comes down to money. They start to heat up. You too.

And then, it's less about the work and it becomes a fight about who's going to win.

📌 Example: I've been guilty of it, more than once. It happens when you take your work as yours and especially when you think that data makes you right.

In a sense, I couldn't handle people using their "guts" to decide which assumptions were right or wrong.

So you start to argue, they do that on their side too.

If only I knew that it's not about you but just about a perception that's different than yours.

What to do:

• If tempers rise, pause. Take a breath, restate the objective, and move forward
• Remember you’re on the same team, even if you have different views

5️⃣ Confirm the Agreement in Plain Language

A handshake is nice, but misunderstandings happen when people leave the room.

I'm pretty sure you had that too.

Take ownership of summarizing the deal in a simple, clear way so nobody’s confused about the next steps.

📌 Example: I hate writing minutes. But I had to force myself when I saw that, after meetings, most people came back on what was agreed when they were in different setups (with their boss for example).

When you don't have something set in stone, that's the big (and frequent) risk.

What to do:

• End every negotiation with a short recap of what was decided
• Make it action-oriented (who does what by when)
• Send it by e-mail afterwards

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If you want to go beyond reporting and start influencing, these will help.

That's a wrap for this week

See you next week!​