Negotiating has become a part of our daily life, it is an especially important skill to the people in business, sales and marketing. Many people have a misconception about negotiating, which is either “all or nothing.” However, with a strong negotiating skill and right frame of mind, a win-win situation for both parties can be attained.
Here are some of our best tips to become a natural negotiator and win every little negotiation in life:
Don’t be afraid to walk away
The very first thing before you start engaging in any negotiation is to know your value. You should make a decison at which point would you have to walk away from the negotiation because it’s no makes sense.
If you don’t draw a firm line of control before you invest your time and energy into a negotiation, you’re at risk of eventually losing track of what’s good for your business and will end up making bad choices that might hurt your own interest.
Learn to remain silent
Sometimes the best thing you can do when negotiating over phone or face to face is to remain quiet. See if the other person gives you a ridiculous bad offer and then waits for your response. Just keep your mouth shut and let them drown in awkward silence and finally offer something resonable.
Say the four magic words
Ever been in a sales conversation that’s been going nowhere for a long time? A negotiation that’s been stuck forever? There’s a magic four-word-sentence that might resolve these situations and help you get a real negotiation going. Just say the words: “Help me out here.”
Aggressive, submissive and assertive negotiation styles
When we think of negotiators, we often picture Wolf of Wall-street personalities – people who can bulldoze and outwit the other person and ruthlessly manipulate to get as much as they can. These aren’t the best models to have in mind when negotiating – and neither is the opposite, the over-eagerly accommodating “soft” negotiator. What you want instead is to negotiate from a place of benevolent strength – like a good parent.
Don’t ever negotiate alone
Whether you are the best deal maker in your company or not, negotiating consumes your valuable time and energy. The longer you’ve been engaged in a negotiation, the more emotionally invested you become into making a deal happen – no matter the real worth of the deal. Nobody is immune against this – it’s just a human bias hardwired within us. Which is why you should put a simple system to protect you from it: always negotiate in pairs
Just flip the question back on them
While negotiating sometimes the other party will ask something that you either can’t or don’t want to answer without drawing out further information from them. Do you know the best thing to do in such a scenario? Just flip the question back onto them.
Turning questions back on the other party can be a great way to discover creative opportunities of creating value for the other party, without necessary giving it up yourself.
How to negotiate with someone who keeps requesting more and more
Every now and then you negotiate with a person that will just not stop making demands. They have a never-ending list of requests that they want to be fulfilled before they’re ready to reach an agreement. If you simply negotiate each point and give in to their requests one after the other, it’ll never stop and you’ll end up with a heavily off-balance deal – and the other party might still be pilling on more requests on you!