Related to the form of the agreement is the question of whether negotiating a business deal is an inductive or a
deductive process. Does it start from an agreement on general principles and proceed to specific items, or does it begin
with an agreement on specifics, such as price, delivery date, and product quality, the sum total of which becomes the
contract? Different cultures tend to emphasize one approach over the other. Some observers believe that the French
prefer to begin with agreement on general principles, while Americans tend to seek agreement first on specifics. For
Americans, negotiating a deal is basically making a series of compromises and trade-offs on a long list of particulars. For
the French, the essence is to agree on basic principles that will guide and indeed determine the negotiation process
afterward. The agreed-upon general principles become the framework, the skeleton, upon which the contract is built.