Improve Your Negotiation Skills By Discovering The One Element That Divides The Novice From The Professional Negotiator During A Negotiation Deal

There is 1 central idea, one key factor that is critical 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 element. If you don't have this right, you will battle with sub optimal relationships and you will likely end up haggling about price in probably all of your negotiations.

The one thing that matters most is comprehending the interests of your counterpart in your negotiations; this is an important element taught in negotiation training.

Generally we have a good awareness of our own objectives, needs and desires. When we negotiate with others, we typically begin with trying to persuade 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 approach is that it completely ignores the objectives, needs and desires of our counterparts.

What good is it trying to persuade someone to do anything that they don't believe would be in line with their objectives, viewpoints and desires?

You will not under any circumstances convince anybody to agree with you by arguing with them, quite the contrary will happen. Because you tell someone that they are wrong and you are the one that is correct, you will compel them to defend their position rather than listen to yours. 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 agreement with anyone after you have told them that they are incorrect, you have also managed to paint yourself into a corner. If it was important for you to reach consensus and you loose the argument, then you will have to compromise your own integrity by departing from your 'correct' stance to embrace 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 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 reveal the interest or motivators that support your counterpart's positions.

Here's a great question you can ask and at the same time endorsing your negotiation skills: Why are you negotiating with me / my organisation?

This is very probably the best question to ask at the start of a negotiation. Follow this question by asking your counterpart to expand on and to prioritise the reasons offered in response to your questions. Then you will have a prioritised list of their key interests.

Sample Interests:
- Individual: Security, Acknowledgment 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 identify 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 your counterpart that your argument is correct; you will only have to demonstrate that your suggested course of action would satisfy their interests.