Negotiation Skills Archives — NIMBLE FOUNDATION BLOG

How to accomplish a winning Negotiations?

We negotiate all the time. If you carefully analyze your speech from morning when you get up till the night when you go to bed, you will find that you have been negotiating through out the day – with your spouse, with your child, with your help, your neighbor; in fact whomsoever you talk to, you always try to do any of the following things:

You try to influence the person you are talking to;
When you answer any question, you want to impress and sound convincing;
If you are buying a car, you want that other family members should readily accept your choice – the brand, the color etc.
When there is a difference of opinion, secretly you want that everyone should accept your viewpoint, your preference.

But does it happen that way all the time?

No Way!

That is the reason you should learn and practice how to accomplish a winning negotiation. This is so because of various different considerations in all the situations. There are 8 elements of winning negotiations which you need to master. These are:

Element 1: When you are talking to colleagues you care for your position, and your relations with your colleagues. This means that you do not want to give in when your opinion differs, but at the same time you want to maintain cordial relations. Let us call it consideration of “Position and Relations.”
Element 2: Whenever there is a situation, that you have a claim on something which ‘other person’ is also claiming, you need to rely on the ‘AND Concept’ but not on ‘EITHER / OR Concept.’ When you work on ‘AND Concept’, your long term benefits far exceed the short term gains on the ‘EITHER/OR’ tussle.
Element 3: Whenever you have to chose from ‘Your Profit’, ‘Other Person’s Profit’ or ‘Relationship’, you should try to strike a balance with your discretion, application of mind and the demands of the situation.
Element 4: A very important message for a healthy, happy life is to ‘engage’ people with mutual benefits in view. Breaking the line of communication brings about only one result. What is that? Physical or emotional frustration or loss. Therefore, preference should always be given to useful engagement, but never to break communication.
Element 5: This message is critical. Many negotiations fail if you ignore this important insight. Whenever you are on a negotiating table for a hard bargain, set these two rules. I call them sacred rules. Which are these? No ‘hot words’, and No ‘personal attack.’ This should be agreed upon while starting any discussion on a hard bargain.
Element 6: Now, think of two circles partly overlapping each other. One circle represents your interest, while the other stands for the interest of the ‘other person’. Since these partly overlap, you will find a common ground. This should be the area to work on. Common grounds mean that both of you have some common interests. You need to focus on these common interests.
Element 7: Another important element of a successful negotiation is that you should never be obsessed with ‘winning outcome’, after all, negotiation is not an Olympic race where you must stand first and win gold. Instead, it should be seen as an opportunity, where you get a chance to resolve a pending problem that has been bothering you and developing a fresh relationship. So never, ever, have the winning obsession.
Element 8: Finally, an advice with which you should start. You must try to eliminate the worst fears of the ‘other person’ right in the beginning. This initiative will create a congenial environment where thoughts are exchanged peacefully and issues are discussed cordially. Every challenge of life can be met gracefully and resolutely. So why not derive a winning situation? Always!

Thanks for reading.

6 Snares of Business Negotiations

Whenever we go for an important negotiation, it is critical to be adequately cautious. In this regards there are 6 possible snares which we must take care of:

Never underestimate the opponent’s ability. We do not know how much armour the opponent has gathered before coming to negotiating table. Besides, he/she could have consulted highly proficient professionals and come prepared.

Preparing for what to speak is not enough. You must decide and practice how to speak, particularly maintaining your tone. More than that; prepare yourself to listen. Make a strategy to make the opponent talk. It is necessary to find out the real intent. Recognize the intent.

Not following the tried and tested principal, ‘first understand and then be understood’ must be avoided. So at the negotiating table the first thing we must do is to listen. Let the opponent put forth all the demands.

We must list out the demands of the opponent that we may concede. Being stubborn will only break the negotiation. It’s a loose/loose situation which needs to be negated. First talk of lesser concessions and offer the ace for which the opponent is most keen at the end.

Be prepared that the negotiation may not bring about the desired result. So never give more information than what is necessary.

In the instance of not coming to a conclusion create a space for the next meeting. Failure should never be considered as final. Then prepare for the next meeting at the agreed time with all that transpired carefully assimilated.

Thanks for reading.

Negotiation Skills

Hi, today I will talk to you about Negotiation Skills. What is negotiation? How does it work? What is the need? I will try to answer all these and other related questions in a simple manner.
Whenever two or more parties sit together to resolve certain issues concerning them, negotiation come into play. Discussion could be about resolving some dispute, concluding a sale or even influencing some people or a group to get some ideas accepted.
Now, let’s see the possibility of success of negotiation. Success depends primarily on three aspects. These are:

Issue should be negotiable. We can negotiate buying or selling a car, or a piece of land or house. But no negotiation is possible on for your example child, or for that matter any other object with which either party is emotionally attached.
Second factor is the willingness of the parties to accommodate and compromise. Extremely rigid attitude cannot bring about any success is negotiation.
Next, third factor for successful negotiation is that the parties must have some respect, some trust among them. This, acts like a bridge and negotiation can achieve some success. It can resolve some problems.

Having described the factors for success of negotiation, I should now talk about the basic ingredients. What are the requirements of negotiation? These are:

Knowledge of human behavior. Negotiating parties need to conversant with normal human behavior. How do they react to the conflicting views?
Secondly, the negotiators must prepare themselves for discussions. They must collect all the relevant information regarding the issues. Preparation is a must.
Third requirement and lastly is that negotiators must understand the role of assumptions. We all harbor certain due to experience of life and society. The negotiators must reflect to clearly understand these assumptions. Undoubtedly, they play an important role during negotiation.

Then, we come to the next aspect of negotiation.
The techniques which are:
Strategy or the plan & techniques

Strategy: the negotiating parties work out their strategy. It’s like an army general working out plan with his lieutenants. Each step is defined keeping in view the strategy of the opponents.
Tactics: the negotiators must be adept in devising required tactics. Tactics are maneuvers, which the negotiators adopt during discussions. This is particularly important as at time the strategy may not work. Tactics require the negotiators to be adept, alert and creative in modifying the steps on the spot when needed.

Thank you.