10 Tips To Negotiating The Best Business Deals
The ability to negotiate successfully in today’s turbulent business climate can make the difference between success and failure. If you’re in business, you’re a negotiator. You have no choice. Business doesn’t happen unless two or more people enter into a transaction. Without transactions, business doesn’t happen, and every transaction involves a certain amount of negotiation. With this in mind, Here are 10 Tips for Successful Negotiating:
1. Do your research
Doing your homework is vital to successful negotiation. You can’t make accurate decisions without understanding the other side’s situation. The more information you have about the people with whom you are negotiating, the stronger you will be.
2. Always be optimist
Successful negotiators are optimists. If you expect more, you’ll get more. A proven strategy for achieving higher results is opening with an extreme position. Sellers should ask for more than they expect to receive, and buyers should offer less than they are prepared to pay. People who aim higher do better.
3. Consider how their needs will be met
Successful negotiators always look at the situation from the other side’s perspective. Everyone looks at the world differently, so you are way ahead of the game if you can figure out their perception of the deal. Instead of trying to win the negotiation, seek to understand the other negotiator and show them ways to feel satisfied.
4. Know whats in it for you
In every negotiation, someone is in a stronger position and someone is in a weaker position. Where are you? In any negotiation, the side that needs the deal more is the side that gives up the most — precisely because they need the deal and can’t afford to have the other side walk away from the table.
5. Understand your goals and theirs
Make a list of what you want from the negotiation, and why. This exercise will help you determine what would cause you to walk away, so that you build your strategy within acceptable terms. Equally if not more crucial is to “understand what’s important to the other side,
6. Keep your cool
One of the biggest mistakes a less powerful person can do in a negotiation is get reactive or take the other person’s negative tone personally. If the other side makes a threat, and you retaliate with a threat, “you’re done.” Keep your side of the discussion focused on results, and resist the temptation to confuse yourself with the issue at hand, even if the negotiations involve assigning value to you or your product.
7. Stay flexible
The best negotiators have prepared enough that they understand the “whole terrain rather than a single path through the woods,” says Weiss. That means you won’t be limited to a single strategy of gives and gets, but multiple maneuvers as the negotiation progresses. If the other party makes a demand, ask them to explain their rationale.
8. Get straight to the point
Successful negotiators are assertive and challenge everything – they know that everything is negotiable. Being assertive means asking for what you want and refusing to take NO for an answer. Practice expressing your feelings without anxiety or anger. Let people know what you want in a non-threatening way. Practice ‘I’ statements.
9. Be patient
Being patient is very difficult for most of us, we want to get it over with. Whoever is more flexible about time has the advantage. Your patience can be devastating to the other negotiator if they are in a hurry because they start to believe that you are not under pressure to conclude the deal. So what do they do? They offer concessions as a means of providing you with an incentive to say YES.
10. Always be willing to walk away
“Always be willing to walk away.” Please note that we are not advising you to walk away, but if you don’t even consider the option of walking away, you may be inclined to cave in to the other side’s demands simply to make a deal. If you are not desperate – if you recognize that you have other options – the other negotiator will sense your inner strength.
