What Makes a Successful Business Negotiator?

Posted on June 5, 2022 by dayat

GETTING TO YES…

Two people are engaged in a negotiation – one achieves his/her objective(s) and is pleased, whilst the other walks away disappointed with the outcome.

How often have you felt dissatisfied with an agreement that you have reached? Have you ever entered into an agreement only to feel remorse soon after sealing the deal?

SUCCESS VS FAILURE

What then distinguishes success vs failure in business negotiations? Do we ascribe our business negotiation success to the characteristics & personality traits that we were born with, or are there conscious developmental actions that we can take to improve our negotiated outcomes? Many of us find ourselves in positions where we have to negotiate professionally on a daily basis. Most of us recognise the importance of preparation to achieve success in almost anything we do.

It is therefore quite interesting to note that the majority of business negotiators do not spend adequate time preparing for negotiations. It is a well established fact that professional sports people spend significantly more time preparing for competition than they spend in competition. Should it be any different for business negotiators?

THE EVIDENCE

Research conducted by The Negotiation Academy has found that from a group of 430 business negotiators surveyed, the average time spent in preparation as a ratio against time spent in actual negotiations amounts to an average of 35%. In other words, business negotiators only spend approximately 1/3 as much time preparing for negotiation as they actually spend in negotiation.

Let us add some perspective to this startling statistic. If you were a professional sports person, this would mean that you spent only 1/3 as much time training & preparing as you do competing. Small wonder then that so many people are disappointed with their negotiated outcomes. It follows that the number 1 contributor to successful business negotiation outcomes is the quality of our preparation for the negotiation.

The Top 5 Components of Preparation:

1. Understand Yourself

Before we even begin to understand and apply best- and leading practice negotiation, it is imperative that we first invest in understanding ourselves. Any professional sports person will tell you that the cornerstone of improvement is gaining an understanding of your own strengths & weaknesses. The idea is to optimise your strengths and find ways to minimise the impact of weaknesses. In negotiation, it is important that we make use of personal profiling tools, such as the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument, to highlight our areas of preference within the context of negotiations. This is like the golfer being videotaped with a view to having his or her swing analysed. It enables us to have a reference point from which to plot our skills development.

2. Vision

What is the vision or ultimate goal behind the negotiation? Is your negotiation really about price or is it about the value that can be derived/added? What are the main motivating factors behind your counterparty’s position in the negotiation? What common ground, if any, exists between your vision and your counterparty’s vision? It is important to understand the drivers or silent motivations behind the positions of all parties to the negotiation. It is only by asking questions that we will uncover the real motivations behind these positions assumed by our counterparties.

3. Value

What are the key deal objectives being pursued in this negotiation? What are the facts and figures supporting the negotiation environment? What alternatives does each party have, if any? Once again we should try to identify, prioritise & weigh the objectives of all parties to the negotiation. Once this has been achieved, we are in a position to highlight those objectives that are shared and at the same time, we can prepare ourselves to deal with those objectives that are likely to cause conflict.

4. Process

Have you spent time thinking about an agenda for your upcoming negotiation? Will you note all the concessions that you will give & receive? Will you ensure that the negotiation is minuted? Do you have tools/templates at your disposal to support the effectiveness and efficiency of the negotiation cycle in its entirety? It is important to ensure that you are well organised for your upcoming negotiation. Write down the key questions that you need to ask during the negotiation, lest you get sidetracked and forget to extract critical information.

5. Relationship

Never forget that we all negotiate with people. It is easy to forget that we deal with individuals who have goals & aspirations not unlike our own goals & aspirations. It is not always just about the facts & figures. The research is clear that people are more likely to deal with those whom they trust & like, than those with whom they have no rapport or share no similarities with. Try to focus on those elements that you share with your negotiation counterparties, and do not forget to focus on the human elements – all of which constitute the Climate of the negotiation.

The clear answer to what makes a successful business negotiator is…..preparation, preparation, preparation.

EMAIL ME WITH YOUR QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK

Employee development is a critical part of building a business. You need to ensure that you are offering both skills development opportunities and training. On the job training is one of the best ways to do this. Whether you do this by outsourcing the training function or by utilizing one of the many training software options available, it's important to get started today.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off

Feature of Business Negotiation

Posted on May 5, 2022 by dayat

1 Introduction

With the development of economic globalization, especially after the accession to WTO, China’s international trade becomes more and more frequent. Any business can not be separated from the negotiations. So business negotiation plays a very important role.

1.1 Concept of business negotiation

Business negotiation is an activity that buyers and sellers take in order to facilitate trading, or to resolve disputes and achieve their own economic interests. Production and development of Business negotiation is under the conditions of the commodity economy, and it has become essential to modern social and economic life. It can be said that there is no commercial negotiations, will not be able to carry out economic activities. (Bazerman, 2006)

1.2 Feature of business negotiation

Business negotiation is a science. It is an art that use of multi-disciplinary knowledge in the business. Operators use it to carry out commercial activities, and compared with other business activities, it has the following features.

a. Breadth and uncertainties of negotiating

Negotiations are the cross-regional, cross-border. For example the purchase and sale of goods, in theory, could be sold to any one of us. As a seller, he has a broad range of commodity sales; as a buyer, he procures goods throughout the Commodity States, even in the world. In addition, in order to make the transaction more favorable, they have extensive contacts with trading partners. However, whether the seller or the buyer, each transaction is done with a specific transaction object. The specific transaction object is uncertain in the absence of competition.

b. Co-operation and exclusion of the negotiating parties

In the purchase and sale negotiations, the seller wants to try to set prices higher, and the buyer would like to try hard to hold down prices; the supply side hopes delivery is as long as possible and the buyer requires to take delivery of the goods as soon as possible.

These reflect exclusionary acts on both sides in the negotiations. Without this exclusion, there is no need for negotiations. Conversely, if only this exclusion, there is no consultation and cooperation, and negotiations will not continue.

In the negotiations, both parties get meet from the other side, the two sides are thinking each other’s requirements and strategy as the starting point, so the negotiation is cooperative. The purpose of the negotiations is to reach an agreement, not to defeat the other side. In the negotiations, the two sides should continue to adjust their own actions and attitudes, to make the necessary concessions, but also understand each other’s requirements, so that negotiations can be successful, and finally both sides reach a quite satisfactory agreement.

c. Random and variability of negotiations

With economic operation in the intense competition and rapidly changing market, as an important component of economic activity, the commercial negotiation, its progress and change are closely related with the main way of thinking and behavior of negotiator. Thus, it changes faster and richer in economic activity, that it is more difficult to predict. And as a result of negotiating structure, environment and strategy, the negotiation will show a variety of changes in the form.

In negotiations, the greater the random, the more variables, controllability becomes smaller, which brings a greater challenge for the negotiating parties, and puts forward higher requirements for the negotiators.

d. Fairness and inequality of the negotiations

The international business negotiations are affected by the supply-demand relations, also affected by price fluctuations. In the specific outcome of the negotiations, the two sides’ meet in the demand for the issue of gains and losses are different. In other words, the outcome of the negotiations is always inequable. There are two main factors: First, the strength of their respective owners; Second, their negotiation skills that the negotiating parties obtained.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off