The Accidental Negotiator

Congratulations – you are a negotiator! This is an impressive accomplishment. However, now you are facing the question of what’s next?   

We would all like to become better negotiators and boost our  negotiation styles and negotiating techniques; however, often we find  ourselves unsure of how we can make this happen. The good news is that  being a negotiator means that you’ve mastered a large set of skills. In  order to become a better negotiator, you simply have to identify  additional key skills and master those also. 

Let’s take a look at what  you still have to learn. 

This business of negotiating is a tricky business indeed. No, we don’t  always want to show up at the negotiating table and use our negotiation  styles and negotiating techniques to lay all of our cards out in front  of the other side. However, there appears to be a fine line when it  comes to lying. 

Just exactly how far is too far? 

More  importantly for you as a negotiator, how should you handle it if when  you are negotiating with someone you start to realize that they are not  being truthful with you? 

Yes, yes – I’m sure that we’ve all at least heard of the book “Getting  To Yes” and with a little luck a number of us have actually read it. The  gist of the book is that you can use your negotiation styles and  negotiating techniques to negotiate better deals if you can find a way  to create a deal that benefits both parties. 

This “win-win” deal  is highly desirable, but at times it can appear to be very hard to  achieve. 

As negotiators, what we need are some tips for our next  negotiation that will show us how we can make win-win work for us. 

If ever there was a fundamental question in negotiation, it would  probably not be which negotiation styles or negotiating techniques to  use, but rather it would have to be the classic “should I make the first offer or wait for the other side to make the first offer”  question. 

For the longest time, the thinking went that we should sit  back and allow the other side to make the first offer. The reason for  this was so that we could learn valuable information based on what they  asked for. However, negotiating research has shown that the cost of  waiting for the other side to make an offer far outweighs the benefits  of us making the first offer. 

Looks like we’ve got some research to do… 

Let’s face it – negotiating is not an easy thing to do. There is all of  the preparation that goes into it, there is the effort of actually doing  it using all of our negotiation styles and negotiating techniques, and  then, with a little luck, there will be a deal that both sides will  agree to when it’s all over. 

Unfortunately it can be all too easy for us  to do one of the two things that we really should not do: reach a deal  with the other side when we really should not or walk away from a deal  that we should have agreed to. 

In order to prevent this from occurring  we need to take the time to prepare for each negotiation and, as a part  of doing this, take the time to analyze the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA)  for this negotiation. 

If this was a perfect world, then every time that you went into a  negotiation you would be facing someone who was doing this for the first  time. They would be unsure of themselves and they would end up making  all sorts of very basic mistakes. 

However, it’s not a perfect world and  more often than not you are going to find yourself sitting across the table from a skilled negotiator  who is wise to all of your negotiation styles and negotiating  techniques. 

When this happens, you are going to have to make sure that  you have the defensive negotiation strategies that you’ll need in order  to get the job done. 

So just exactly how does a negotiation end? Either both parties give up and walk away with no deal being reached, or you are somehow able to use your negotiation styles and negotiating techniques to find a way to close the deal.  

It’s this deal closing thing that can be so tricky to do sometimes. In  fact, we can find ourselves in situations where we have tried to wrap  things up, get the other side to agree to a deal, and we’ve failed. When  we find ourselves in this kind of a situation, what is a negotiator to do? Give up?

Welcome to the modern world that we are all living in! In the old days,  if you wanted to negotiate with someone you had to show up, sit down at  the negotiation table, and then proceed to use your negotiation styles  and negotiating techniques to have a lengthy discussion with them. 

In  our modern times, this is no longer necessary – we can now negotiate online.  However, as negotiators we need to understand that negotiating online  is very different from negotiating in person. There are different  challenges that we are gong to have to be prepared to deal with. 

Despite  the fact that we’ll be negotiating online, we are still going to be  looking for ways to create both value and rapport with the other side. 

 At lot of us go into a negotiation like we are getting ready to go to war.  We do our research, make sure that we know who we’re going to be going  up against, prepare our demands and then use our negotiation styles and  negotiating techniques to charge into battle. To us a negotiation is all about competition.  The more points that we can score, the better the chance that we’re  going to win this negotiation and the other side is going to lose.  However, maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong. Is it possible that the goal of any negotiation should be about creating value?