Negotiation 101 - Part 4 - Try To Avoid Being Double Negotiated.
This has often happened to me, particularly when negotiating with a large company. Here's the 
scenario. You have been working for some time (days, weeks or longer) and the parties in the room have finally struck a deal. Your team has done some real soul searching and has stretched your position about as far as it will go. Even at that, you are relieved that a deal is imminent. Then, the other side says something like, "This has to be approved by [an executive, a committee, a computer or a Ouija board, etc.] in accordance with our corporate policies." They assure you that it is merely a formality and should be a perfunctory task. This is a little disconcerting because this had not been mentioned before, but you have few options because the deal can't be done without this approval.
So, they go off to get this perfunctory approval. This not unlike the car salesman going into the back room to discuss your offer with the perhaps fictional sales manager. Then, they come back with additional demands from the unseen executive, committee, computer or Ouija board and the word is that the deal will not be approved without such additional concessions. Often, the concessions requested are not huge, but probably more than you had planned to give. This is always very disappointing because you were already in the done deal mode and now you have to reengage. Also, what happens if the new demands take the deal outside of the realm of reasonableness (at least from your perspective)?
To avoid this, these are the questions you should ask at the beginning of the negotiation: (1) Are all the decision makers in the room here? and (2) Will this have to be approved by any other entity? Get a unequivocal answer. If the answer is that someone else has to approve or some of the issues are too large for the authority of the people in the room, you can proceed accordingly.
Even taking these steps may not prevent this from happening but if you have been promised that no additional approval is required and then it is, you can engage in some righteous indignation and sometimes that's enough.
