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Improve Your Negotiation Skills By Discovering The 1 Thing That Divides The Novice From The Professional Negotiator In The Negotiation Game
There is one central idea, one important concept that is critical to comprehend.
Get this right and you will be rewarded with profitable, enjoyable and long term business relationships in which price is not the only factor. If you don't have this right, you will battle with sub optimal relationships and you will most likely end up bartering about price in probably all of your negotiations.
The one thing that matters most is understanding the interests of your counterpart in your negotiations; this is an important element taught in negotiation training.
Generally we have a good understanding of our own objectives, needs and desires. When we negotiate with others, we usually begin with trying to convince them to see the world the way that we do. We think it makes sense to us, surely it must make sense to our counterparts. The problem with this stance is that it completely disregards the objectives, needs and desires of our counterparts.
What good is it trying to persuade someone to do something that they don't believe would be in alignment with their objectives, beliefs and wishes?
You will never convince someone to agree with you by arguing with them, quite the opposite will happen. Because you tell someone that they are wrong and you are the one that is right, you will force them to defend their stance rather than agreeing with you. Nobody likes to be told that they are wrong and if you tell someone that they are wrong it will become key for them to defend their stance because their personal integrity is on the line.
Not often will you achieve consensus with someone after you have told them that they are incorrect, you have also managed to paint yourself into a corner. If it was key for you to reach agreement and you loose the argument, then you will have to compromise your own credibility by departing from your 'correct' stance to accept the argument of the other side.
If you want to reach agreement the easy way rather than have your negotiations spiral into a positional argument, here's my suggestion:
Start by asking some questions, the best of which you can ask will be questions designed to expose the interests behind the positions that your counterparts have assumed in the negotiation. Open questions are the best kind of questions to show the interest or motivators that support your counterpart's positions.
Here's a great question you can ask and simultaneously endorsing your negotiation skills: Why are you negotiating with me / my organisation?
This is very probably the best question to ask at the beginning of a negotiation. Follow this question by asking the other side to elaborate on and to rank the reasons offered in response to your questions. Then you will have a prioritised list of their key interests.
Sample Interests:
- Individual: Security, Recognition and Control
- Organisation: Profit, Risk Avoidance and Strategic Fit (Some important elements you would have learned in purchasing training)
Once you have an awareness of your counterparts' key interests it is a good idea to share your own interests. Once all the parties to the negotiation have revealed their interests it will be much easier to recognise the areas of common ground and then it is useful to present your argument in the context of how it would meet their interests. This way, you will not have to convince the other side that your argument is correct; you will only have to show that your suggested course of action would meet their interests.
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