One of the most useful concepts from my MBA is the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It simply means knowing what you will do if this deal doesn’t happen. That sounds obvious, but in horse sales, negotiations often run on emotion, pride, and whatever number someone heard at the last show. For a seller, knowing your best alternative turns a tense back-and-forth into a clear business decision.
Imagine a seller with a nine-year-old jumper listed for sale, and a buyer who makes an offer below asking after the vetting turns up a minor finding. The seller’s alternative is to keep marketing the horse, but that choice is not free. Every additional month means more carrying costs, and the next interested buyer may not appear before the circuit ends. Once the seller puts a real number on that alternative, deciding whether to accept, counter, or walk away becomes much easier.
A smart seller also thinks about the buyer’s alternatives, a step that Harvard’s Program on Negotiation considers essential to shaping a negotiation strategy. Does the buyer have other horses on their shortlist, or have they already spent weeks on trials and vettings that came up empty? Is their show season about to start without a horse ready to go? Is it the last season before they age out of the juniors? A seller who understands the buyer’s position can tell whether a low offer firm or simply an opening move.
Where sporthorse sales most often go wrong is that the seller hasn’t done this math. Some hold out for a number the market won’t support, while others accept the first lowball offer because they never calculated what waiting would really cost. Pricing is only one of the common mistakes sellers make, but it is often the most expensive. A framework like the best alternative to a negotiated agreement doesn’t take the horsemanship out of a sale, but it does take the guesswork out of the negotiation.
If you’ve sold a horse, have you ever turned down an offer and later wished you hadn’t, or been glad you declined? Tell me about it in the comments, and follow along for more on the business side of selling sporthorses.
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