5 Tips For a Successful Negotiation

Whether it's money, time commitments or more specific buying and selling, being skilled in negotiations can be crucial to your success. In this fast-paced technological environment, these key tips will help you gain proven, real world negotiation skills to help you create a WIN/WIN outcome to your negotiations helping you achieve your goals.

1. Do your homework. This is what detectives do. Gather as much pertinent information prior to your negotiation. What are their needs? What pressures do they feel? What options do they have? 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. People who consistently leave money on the table probably fail to do their homework.

2. Don't be in a hurry. Being patient is very difficult. We want to get it over with. Anyone who has negotiated in Asia, South America, or the Middle East will tell you that people in those cultures look at time differently than we do in North America and Europe. They know that if you rush, you are more likely to make mistakes and leave money on the table. 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.

3. Try listening. I am amazed by all the people I meet who can't stop talking. Negotiators are detectives. They ask probing questions and then shut up. The other negotiator will tell you everything you need to know – all you have to do is listen.

Many conflicts can be resolved easily if we learn how to listen. The catch is that listening is the forgotten art. We are so busy making sure that people hear what we have to say that we forget to listen.

You can become an effective listener by allowing the other person to do most of the talking. Follow the 70/30 Rule – listen 70 percent of the time, and talk only 30 percent of the time. Encourage the other negotiator to talk by asking lots of open-ended questions – questions that can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no."

4. Always be willing to walk away. In other words, never negotiate without options. If you depend too much on the positive outcome of a negotiation, you lose your ability to say NO. When you say to yourself, "I will walk if I can't conclude a deal that is satisfactory," the other side can tell that you mean business. Your resolve will force them to make concessions.

Clients often ask me, "Ed, if you could give me one piece of advice about negotiating, what would it be?" My answer, without hesitation, is: "Always be willing to walk away." Please note that I am 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.

5. Don't take the issues or the other person's behavior personally. All too often negotiations fail because one or both of the parties get sidetracked by personal issues unrelated to the deal at hand. Successful negotiators focus on solving the problem, which is: How can we conclude an agreement that respects the needs of both parties? Obsessing over the other negotiator's personality, or over issues that are not directly pertinent to making a deal, can sabotage a negotiation. If someone is rude or difficult to deal with, try to understand their behavior and don't take it personally.

Start using these steps and over time you will build experience in negotiations. If you have experience in negotiations you could probably come up with an entirely different five steps to start negotiating because it is an art, an art that needs fine tuning over time.

To view the original article, visit the Lone Wolf blog.