Improve Your Negotiation Skills By Discovering The One Issue That Separates The Novice From The Professional Negotiator In The Negotiation Game

There is 1 central idea, one key concept that is very important to comprehend.

If you have this right, you will be compensated with profitable, gratifying and long lasting business relationships in which price is not the only factor. If you fail to get this right, you will struggle with sub optimal business relationships and you will most likely end up haggling about price in probably all of your negotiations.

The key element is comprehending the interests of the other side in your negotiations; this is an important element taught in negotiation training.

Most of us have a good understanding of our own objectives, needs and desires. When we negotiate with others, we typically begin with attempting 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 anyone that is reasonable. The problem with this stance is that it completely ignores the objectives, needs and desires of our counterparts.

What will it achieve trying to persuade another person to do something that they don't trust would be in alignment with their objectives, viewpoints and wishes?

You will never convince someone to agree with you by disagreeing with them, quite the contrary will happen. Because you tell someone that they are wrong and you are the one that is right, you will compel 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 very important for them to defend their stance because their personal credibility is at risk.

It is rare to achieve consensus with anyone after you have told them that they are wrong, you have also managed to paint yourself into a corner. If it was important 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 embrace the argument of the other side.

If you want to reach consensus the easy way rather than have your negotiations escalate into a positional argument, here's what I suggest that you should do:

Start by asking some questions, the best of which you can ask will be questions designed to expose the interests behind the positions that the other side 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 possibly the best question to ask at the beginning of a negotiation. Follow this question by asking your counterpart to expand on and to prioritise the reasons offered in response to your questions. This will give you a prioritised list of their most important interests.

Sample Interests:
- Individual: Security, Acknowledgment and Control
- Organisation: Profit, Risk Avoidance and Strategic Fit (Some key factors you would have learned in purchasing training)

Once you have an understanding of your counterparts' key interests it is a good idea to share your own interests. Once all the parties to the negotiation have disclosed their interests it will be much easier to recognise the areas of common ground and then it is useful to present your case in the context of how it would serve their interests. This way, you will not have to persuade the other side that your stance is correct; you will only have to show that your suggested course of action would satisfy their interests.

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