Why an Industry Editor Decided Negotiation Was the Story Worth Telling

‍A look at Susanne Sclafane's September 2025 Carrier Management piece, and why the industry's most overlooked skill is finally getting the spotlight it deserves.

In Sharpening the Industry's Most Overlooked Skill, published by Carrier Management on September 26, 2025, Susanne Sclafane offers something rare in industry journalism: an editor's behind-the-scenes account of how a research finding turned into one of the most consequential editorial series of the year.

The piece introduces "Negotiation Reclaimed," a multi-part series guest-edited by Taylor Smith of Suite 200 Solutions. But more importantly, it answers a question most claims executives haven't paused to ask: why is the industry losing ground on negotiation, and what would it take to fix that?

A finding that changed the conversation

The catalyst for the entire series was a single paragraph buried in Suite 200 Solutions' June 2025 report, Industry Snapshot: Negotiating Claims In the Age of AI-Enabled Plaintiff Advocacy. The argument: nuclear verdicts, social inflation, and third-party litigation funding may dominate the headlines, but the real battlefield for indemnity outcomes is closer to home and more under defense control. It's how litigated claims are negotiated.

Smith framed it directly in his report:

"It is in how the narrative is framed, how case valuation is anchored, and in how one side persuades the other to accept their story, their valuation, and the risks of not reaching a negotiated settlement."

That single insight reframed a problem that the industry had been treating as external. It turned the conversation inward.

The data point that stopped the editor

Sclafane's piece highlights the survey finding that crystallized everything. Across 56 senior claims and litigation professionals:

• Defense counsel now convey settlement offers more frequently than claims professionals. Both average and median scores for the percentage of negotiation offers conveyed by claims professionals are below 50%.
• The proportion varies wildly by organization, from as low as 10% to as high as 90%.

In other words: in most carriers today, the person with the purse strings isn't the person doing the talking. And there's no industry consensus on whether that's even a problem.

That asymmetry, between authority and execution, is what Smith identifies as the structural weakness modern plaintiff attorneys are exploiting with AI-enabled demand packages.

What "Negotiation Reclaimed" set out to deliver

Smith committed to a five-part series designed to educate defense counsel and claims professionals on negotiation fundamentals and research-backed strategies. Each installment tackles a different layer of the problem:

1. Negotiation Is the Job (Ron Morrison, Great American). Reframing defense work in the AI era.
2. The Power of the First Offer (Ken Carter, Concert Group). The science of anchoring.
3. Rebuilding Negotiation Talent (Krista Glenn, Westfield Specialty). Why the skill is missing and how to fix it.
4. Negotiation by Design (Smith and Cayce Lynch). Why writing beats talking.
5. From Skill to System. Metrics, cultural shift, and the urgency to modernize.

Together, the series is a blueprint for how the defense industry can reclaim ownership of the negotiation table.

Where SigmaSight fits in

Sclafane's piece notes something most readers will recognize as significant: Taylor Smith also serves as Head of Industry Relationships for SigmaSight.AI, the AI-powered negotiation platform for the defense industry.

That alignment isn't coincidental. SigmaSight was built around the exact thesis the Negotiation Reclaimed series advances: defense teams need infrastructure that supports written, evidence-based, anchored negotiation at scale. Three products, one ecosystem:

• Analyzer. Gives claims professionals the venue intelligence and case context they need to lead negotiations rather than delegate them.
• Synthesizer. Generates the structured, persuasive offer packages the series argues are the defense's most underused tool.
• Negotiator. Operationalizes the disciplined, measurable negotiation posture the entire series calls for.

The industry is having the right conversation. SigmaSight is the platform built to act on it.

Read the full article on Carrier Management: Sharpening the Industry's Most Overlooked Skill

Ready to put the Negotiation Reclaimed thesis into practice? Request a demo of Negotiator.

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