7 Tips for Successful Negotiations

There are millions of articles and books written about negotiations. And you would think you’ve read it all. But personally I am a strong advocate of the statement that with every new negotiation you learn something new because each time you are doing it with different people, who behave differently, especially if the cultural aspect is present.

I want to share with you some lessons from my experience – techniques that helped me over and over again.

1.Everyone will tell you, that before negotiations you should learn as much as possible about the party you are going to negotiate with and if you think you know all the answers still ask a lot of questions. All true. One trick, though, I often ask a question to which I definitely know the answer and the latter should be a lengthy one. The question might be along the lines: “tell me a little bit about your background” or “how did you come up with this project”. I use the time of the answer to not so much listen to the content but to monitor the non-verbal signals, especially if there are more than 1 negotiatior from the other party. When you are always looking at the speaker you are missing so much of what is going on in the room. But when you don’t need to follow the content of the answer you can follow the “unspoken signals”, which can tell you when the other party is bored, frustrated, anxious, in a hurry, etc. This is very important information you need to have. It can make a difference of you being in charge or them.

2.Find out who exactly you are going to deal with, their personal likes and dislikes. You can totally change the game with one nice gesture of, say, taking your visiting party to a sports event they would love to see. Build the “sweet person” image. It would be so much difficult for the other party to pressure or to be harsh with “a sweet person” in any way during the negotiations. Their moral standards would never let them do it unless there are total morons.

3.Clearly distinguish between yourself, a person, and your company. The company has rules and procedures they are impersonal and sometimes hard on people. You, on the on the other hand, can and must show empathy, compassion and understanding. Always make sure that the other party understands, that you care about their position and you can totally relate to it, you can be in their shoes. Well, it’s just your company cannot. Very often the other party will not make the same concession for company XYZ they will make for John or Helen from company XYZ.

4.This point very much relates to #2: if you are going to have several rounds of negotiation, remember, the negotiations still go on in between the rounds! Build your image then too: write a holiday card (if there is a holiday break) or a short up-date or just wonder if the other party needs anything else and offer your help. Anything nice and unexpected you do between the rounds will add points to your scorecard.

5.TAKE TIME. I wrote it in capital letters because time is power in negotiations. If you have it and the other party doesn’t they are most likely to accept nearly any terms and conditions depending on how hard you push. Use silence during negotiations (people hate pauses and the other party is likely to start talking and giving out more information than they really want to). Take a break, discuss the issue with your colleagues. Even take a break till next round if the need be. There is nothing worth than the pressure of solving the issue there and then. If you only had time new information could pop up, new circumstances could emerge. And try never let your bosses (which is easier said than done) to force you into time-pressured negotiations. Nothing good will come out of it. Postpone the meeting if you can, really, under ANY excuse. You must have time on YOUR side in order to succeed.

6.My favorite technique during negotiations is a “cliff hanger”. Imagine you are standing with your friend 5 feet away from the edge of a very high cliff and he is feeling really uncomfortable. Bring him 3 feet closer to the edge and he would beg you go back to 5 feet and in the end 5 feet would not sound so scary after all. The same in negotiations: show the other party the reality of paying 100,000 USD in the future and they would happily accept your proposed fee of 50,000 USD, which was so incredible for them just a second earlier.

7.Finally, if you are to get involved in negotiations with people from other cultures/countries, I beg you to read at least 1 book, not just an article, about negotiations rules and procedures in this culture. I used to bring foreigners to negotiate with Russians and each time it was close to a disaster. It was not enough that they had me, a Russian, in the team: someone could accidentally drop a line and ruin everything we’ve built in the preceding 2 hours! Trust me, there is never “too much” information, especially if you are culturally challenged.

I hope at least 1 of these tips will stay with you and will make your next negotiations if not a complete success but at least 1 step closer to a desired outcome.

Article Source: http://www.mycontentbuilder.com

About the author: EMAdvice = Emerging Markets Advice (www.emadvice.com) provides consulting services in the field of international marketing, sales and busiess development. We are your Navigator in the uncharted territory!

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