The best alternative to a negotiated agreement — or BATNA — was introduced in the 1981 book Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project and has since become a cornerstone of negotiation training in corporate, trade, and real estate environments.
BATNA is the most common source of power in a negotiation and the most overlooked by inexperienced or undereducated negotiators. This is exactly where you can gain a significant advantage.
In simple terms, BATNA is your backup plan — your walk-away power.
Heading into a negotiation without a solid understanding of your BATNA and at least a general sense of the other side’s BATNA is like driving blind.
Here are two quick examples:
- A buyer is making an offer on a property located next door to her sister. The only reason she is moving is to be close to her sister. How strong is her BATNA?
- A different buyer is an investor looking for a condo in a particular building he believes is good value. There are sixteen units for sale, and the average days on market is sixty-four. How strong is his BATNA?
The answer to number one is weak. If she is not successful, she will not meet her goal of living next door to her sister because the only other neighbour is not selling.
The answer to number two is strong. If he is not successful, he can simply walk away and offer on another unit in the same building. He can even wait. He has options. He can easily walk away.
Understand your client’s BATNA
Your BATNA is your power. Failing to understand it and communicate it can lead clients toward poor decisions. If you overestimate it, they may reject an offer they later regret. If you underestimate it, they may leave money on the table.
Some clients openly share their situation; others hold back or inflate their position to seem stronger. When a seller says they’re “not in a hurry” or “can always rent the property,” these are BATNA statements. Your job is to get to the truth, which requires building trust, a core negotiation skill.
Building a strong BATNA for your client
When a client has legitimate alternatives, their negotiating position improves immediately. Think of a seller with more than one offer, or a buyer who has identified two other acceptable properties. These situations create space for better judgment and better outcomes. Helping clients understand their BATNA and working with them to build stronger alternatives not only strengthens their position but also demonstrates your depth of skill as a professional negotiator.
Communicating BATNA with clients
Explaining BATNA builds trust and strengthens your professional position. Even when you cannot improve a client’s BATNA because they want one specific home, at least you have clarity and can proceed with eyes open.
Discussing BATNA with sellers also helps them understand why pricing strategy is so important. If they overprice, they dramatically reduce the odds of attracting more than one buyer, which weakens their BATNA and their negotiating position.
The other side’s BATNA
Understanding the other side’s BATNA is equally important, though more difficult. Strong negotiators have the skills to uncover useful information. Your conversations with the cooperating agent matter — while they cannot disclose confidential information, you can often read between the lines, check public information online, or speak with neighbours.
Communicating your BATNA
What you share with the other side matters. In a slower market, saying nothing can reduce your chances of a successful deal. Oversharing, however, can harm your client.
I once offered on an investment property through my agent, making it clear my price was firm and I wasn’t emotionally attached. The listing agent — someone I had trained — and her seller signed back at a higher price, apparently believing I would negotiate up. I walked away and purchased a different property within days. A week later, they came back with a seller’s offer at my original number, but by then I had already closed on the alternative. They misread my BATNA as weak when it was strong. The failure to properly communicate BATNA cost everyone a deal.
Here is the rule of thumb: if you have a strong BATNA, you can share some details because it signals power and benefits your client, and only do so with your client’s approval; if you have a weak BATNA, you should not share information because it weakens your position.
The skills required here are: know your BATNA and plan your negotiation accordingly; develop the communication skills to avoid answering a question while maintaining a collaborative relationship.
In closing
Understanding, building, and communicating BATNA is a core negotiation skill that strengthens your client’s position, improves outcomes, and reinforces your role as a trusted and competent professional.
Suze Cumming is the founder of The Nature of Real Estate and one of Canada’s leading educators in real estate negotiation. For more than a two decades, she has helped over 7,000 real estate professionals strengthen their negotiation skills through the Accredited Real Estate Negotiator (AREN) and Professional Real Estate Negotiator (PREN) programs, as well as coaching many of Canada’s top agents and teams.
Her work focuses on helping REALTORS® develop Negotiation Intelligence: the practical skills of preparation, communication, critical thinking, trust-building and strategic decision-making that lead to better outcomes for clients. As artificial intelligence reshapes the profession, Suze’s current work explores how AI can enhance professional judgment without replacing the human skills at the heart of successful negotiation. You can learn more about her learning ecosystem here.
A passionate sailor and international yacht racer, Suze believes that excellence, whether on the water or at the negotiating table, comes from continual learning, thoughtful preparation and the ability to adapt as conditions change.
