Posts Tagged ‘agreement’

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Sales Negotiators Need To Learn Their History Lesson

Friday, November 4th, 2011
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Taking notes is an important part of learning from a negotiation

Taking notes is an important part of learning from a negotiation

When you sit down at the negotiating table with the other side, what’s running through your mind? Are you wondering what they are thinking? Are you wondering what negotiating techniques they will use? If you have studied your history lesson, then you’ll already know the answers to these questions.

History Is Always Repeated In Negotiations

There really is no excuse for not knowing the negotiation styles practiced by the other side before you sit down at the negotiating table. Everybody has a history and with a little digging, you can learn a great deal.

The easiest case is if the other side has done business with your firm in the past. There should be a history of the negotiations that they have done with you: what they bought, what they paid, who they negotiated with in the past, and any problems or issues that came up during those negotiations.

History comes along with both sides of the table: their side and yours. You arrive with a resume that consists of your practicing principled negotiation with other companies. This can be incredibly powerful as a set of current references to support you during this negotiation. You can always refer to the deals that you’ve negotiated in the past to show that you’ve negotiated successful deals in the past that benefited both sides of the table.

You Can Only Pass Your History Test If You Take Good Notes

The key to maximizing the value of each negotiation that you are involved in is to realize that you are really setting the stage for your next negotiation with this party. That means that you’re going to have to take good notes.

History does repeat itself and nowhere else is this clearer than during the negotiation process. If you’ve taken good notes the last time that you were involved in negotiations with this company, then you’ll be able to anticipate each move during the negotiation.

In order to prepare for the next time that you meet the other side of the table, you need to spend time after the current negotiation wraps up documenting what happed during the negotiation. You can think of this as being a sort of negotiation definition — it will tell you how the next time will go. You should document such things as what kind of demands the other side made as well as how they went about making concessions.

What All Of This Means For You

There is no excuse for going into your next negotiation without having a good understanding of who you are going to be up against. There should be enough of a past history of negotiations that the other side has been involved in to allow you to build a good understanding of their negotiating style.

The burden of creating a history of the other side also falls on your shoulders. After you complete a negotiation with them, you have to write down good notes about how the process went. These notes are both for you and for any other negotiator that has to go up against them in the future.

There is the saying that “knowledge is power”. Nowhere is this more true than in negotiations. The nice thing is that with some history collection efforts on your part, you can gather the knowledge that you’ll need in order to more quickly reach a successful deal!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: How much time do you think that you should invest in researching the other side of the table’s negotiating history?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Negotiator Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

A quick question for you: are you afraid to fail? Would you be willing to take on responsibility for a negotiation that might not be a success? I’m willing to bet that a lot of us would say “no” – our company’s negotiators who are perfect are rewarded while negotiators who fail are kicked to the curb. However, I’m going to tell you that you’re wrong – get ready to fail if you want to succeed.

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Every Negotiator Needs A Set Of Guiding Principles

Friday, October 28th, 2011
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Guiding principles show you which direction to go in during a negotiation

Guiding principles show you which direction to go in during a negotiation

Negotiations can go on for a long time. When you start a negotiation, you probably have a pretty good idea of where you want to get to. The big question is does the other side of the table share this goal with you? Will they be able to remember this goal throughout the entire negotiation? Hmm, sounds rather iffy to me. Perhaps what you need are a set of guiding principles…

What Are Guiding Principles In Negotiating?

So just exactly what are guiding principles when we are talking about the world of negotiating? Guiding principles are different from negotiation styles and negotiating techniques – they are high level agreements that you are able to reach with the other side that frame the rest of your discussions. These are an important part of any principled negotiation.

A negotiation definition requires that your negotiations focus on the details of the deal that is to be done: who gets how much, when things get shipped, where they get delivered to, terms of credit, etc. At a much higher level, these details assume that both you and the other side of the table have come to an agreement on the big issues.

These issues center on things like how much profit is it fair for the other side to make on the deal? How soon after the deal is signed should the other party expect to see its money? What should be done if the product or service does not live up to expectations? These are big issues that both sides need to come to an agreement on at the start of the negotiations.

How Do You Use Guiding Principles In Negotiating?

Having taken the time to discuss a set of guiding principles at the start of your next negotiation, what does all of this buy you? What it does is to buy you some insurance that the time that you invest in the negotiations won’t be wasted.

By taking the time to establish some guiding principles with the other side, you’ve established a beachhead from which both sides can make progress. There’s another advantage of doing this.

Negotiations can be long, drawn-out affairs and it can be easy to lose your way in the middle of one. For that matter, the other side can get lost also. When you have both agreed on a set of guiding principles, this provides you with a place to come back to when you get lost or the negotiations get bogged down. The guiding principles provide you with a milestone – a point where you and the other side actually did agree on something.

By having this kind of “basecamp” to come back to, the negotiations need never get off track. Sure, they may get bogged down in disagreements over details, but both sides will always have a place that they can come back to in order to get the negotiating process restarted.

What All Of This Means For You

Getting from the beginning to the end of a negotiating session is a lot harder than it may seem. All too often we can lose our way during the negotiation process and the other side of the table can get lost with us. This makes reaching a negotiated deal that much harder to do.

Establishing a set of guiding principles at the start of the negotiations is a great way to clearly communicate to the other side what it’s going to take to reach a deal. The guiding principles will provide both sides with a base that you can come back to later on in the negotiations if either side gets lost.

It will take some time to establish a set of guiding principles at the start of the negotiation. This investment of time will yield significant results by helping to keep both sides of the table on track. Do it right and you’ll be able to reach a deal that works for everyone involved.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that you should write down the guiding principles so that both sides can remember them?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Negotiator Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you sit down at the negotiating table with the other side, what’s running through your mind? Are you wondering what they are thinking? Are you wondering what negotiating techniques they will use? If you have studied your history lesson, then you’ll already know the answers to these questions.

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Video: Succeed By Bringing The Ghost Whisperer To The Negotiation

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

Dr. Jim Anderson explains why it can be so difficult to reach an agreement during a negotiation — there are ghosts in the room!

Dr. Anderson shows that the other side of the table has to make sure that many parties have their needs met by any agreement that is reached. He shows you how to make sure that you can “see” all of the ghosts in the room…

If you want to get more negotiating secrets, subscribe to the free The Accidental Negotiator newsletter here: http://goo.gl/Yqf70

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Sales Negotiators Want To Know: Is Longer Really Better?

Friday, March 25th, 2011
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Long Negotiating Sessions Can Yield Fantastic Results (Sometimes)

Long Negotiating Sessions Can Yield Fantastic Results (Sometimes)

The goal of every sales negotiation is to reach a deal that is agreeable to both sides. The question is just how much time should you take in order to get there? The classic question that all sales negotiators are always trying to answer is if it is better to negotiate in short sessions with long breaks or in long sessions with short breaks?

The Power Of Long Negotiating Sessions

Not all sales negotiating sessions are created equal. If you had to, you could probably divide them up into two main buckets: those that get done quickly, and those that take much longer.

Life is full of many distractions. When we are working on a deal that has a lot of different moving parts, we tend to work on it for a bit, get distracted and do other things, and then return, try to remember where things were, and then start to work on it again.

Although this technique does work, and in fact it is a necessary way of handling many of the longer negotiating tasks that seem to come our way, it is not the right solution for the really big negotiations.

These are the deals where there has been a lot of posturing done by both sides prior to the start of negotiations. The working-on-a-deal-for-a-little-bit-every-so-often approach won’t work in this case. Instead, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and sit down with the other side of the table and see if it’s going to be possible to hash out a deal – no matter how long it takes.

The magic of long negotiating sessions is that the parties that are participating in it change as the session wears on. The gruff, impersonal exteriors that everyone displays to each other at the start of the session gradually start to crumble as the hours drag on. The human side of every participant starts to come out and it’s this side of the participants that will allow a deal to be reached.

Ultimately sales negotiations allow people to reach deals. When you put these people together for a long, focused period of time what happens is that more often than not they find a way to work together in order to make a deal happen.

The Dangers Of Long Negotiating Sessions

Although a long negotiating session can be a very powerful tool in getting two sides of deal to come together, it is not without it’s own set of risks. There is never any guarantee that the two sides are going to be able to reach a deal and a long negotiating session may just drive this point home!

Additionally, if both sides truly dislike each other before the negotiations start, then forcing them to be together for an extended period of time isn’t going to improve their opinion of each other. In fact, it’s probably going to confirm that they really don’t have a lot in common.

In order to prevent a long negotiating session from either yielding nothing or, even worse, blowing up on you, there are three conditions that must be met prior to starting one of these sessions:

  1. Both Sides Want A Deal: if even before a negotiating session starts, both sides are inclined to strike a deal, then a long negotiating session might be just what you need. Sitting negotiators down around a table and removing the outside influences that can distract people from reaching a deal can work wonders.

  2. No New Information: when a point in time has been reached where there is no new information to be discovered about what is to be negotiated, then a long negotiating session may be in order. When both sides have started to repeat themselves when talking about the potential deal, this is the time to finally sit down and see if a deal can be reached.

  3. Respect Exists: ultimately this is the most important condition that must be in place before serious negotiations can start. Both sides must respect each other and feel that the other side truly wants to reach a deal. If this condition is in place, then you are already half-way towards reaching a deal even before the negotiations start.

What All Of This Means For You

There is an almost magical quality to very long sales negotiating sessions. Under the right circumstances, two parties can enter the negotiations and then emerge at the other side with an agreement that nobody thought would be possible.

In order for this to happen there are several conditions that must be met before the negotiations start. These include a predisposition on both sides to reach an agreement, the lack of new information regarding the deal to be struck, and respect on both sides for each other.

There are no guarantees that a deal will be reached as a result of any sales negotiation. However, sales negotiators who ensure that the correct preconditions are met can use the very long negotiation format to improve their odds of successfully reaching a deal with the other side.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What are the key signs that a very long negotiation is not going to result in a successful deal and should be stopped?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

All too often when we see negotiators in the movies, they are portrayed as slick, fast talking folks who always seem to effortlessly get their way. The first thing that we need to realize that this is the movies and so it in no way represents real life. The second thing that we need to realize is that when we see negotiators portrayed this way, we’re being taught the wrong lesson. For you see, in negotiations, speed kills…

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5 Questions To Find Out If Someone Is A Good Negotiator

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Image Credit Sure, Mr. Spock Was A Good Negotiator, But Are You?

Sure, Mr. Spock Was A Good Negotiator, But Are You?

When you hold up a mirror and look into it, what do you see? Do you see a good negotiator? How could you tell if you were looking at one? This is one of those timeless questions that we are always asking ourselves: am I a good negotiator? Well good news, I’ve got the 5 questions that you need to answer in order to resolve this issue once and for all!

The #1 Characteristic Of A Good Negotiator

Before we dive in and try to ask the questions that need to be asked, let’s start off with an answer. The question that we’ll be answering, of course, is what is the most important skill that a negotiator needs to have?

Lots of people will come up with a wide variety of answers to this question, but in my mind there is really only one answer that rings true: you’ve got to be a good networker. What this means is that you’ve got to be able to get in contact with the people on your team who’s views you’ll be bringing to the table. If you know what they want, then you’ll be an effective negotiator.

The 5 Questions Every Negotiator Needs To Answer

Ok, you’ve waited long enough. Here are the five questions that you need to ask yourself in order to find out if you are a good negotiator:

  1. Plays Well With Others: Do you have the ability to put issues aside and sit down to work with the other side of the table and search for ideas that will allow both of you to reach an agreement?
  2. Just Like Mr. Spock: Do you believe that others would say that you have a logical way of thinking? If you don’t, then there is no way that the other side of the table is going to be able to understand how to create a solution that will appeal to you.
  3. Detail Orientated: Do you take the time to prepare for a negotiation and worry about all of the little details?
  4. Plays With Fire: Can you deal with the disagreement and the confrontation that is a part of every successful negotiation?
  5. Shades of Gray: Can you live with lack of detail during much of the negotiation? Ambiguity is a key part of a negotiation: things don’t become clear until the end of the discussions.

What All Of This Means For You

We all want to get better at this skill that we call negotiating. In order to become better, we need to first realize where we need to develop our skills.

These five questions should serve as a great starting point to help you determine where you need some work. Make sure that you answer them honestly — you won’t know where you need to focus your study and training until you have these answers.

Do you think that it is necessary to have a good relationship with EVERYONE on your team in order to be an effective negotiator?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

In order to be a world-class sales negotiator, you have to master literally 100′s of different skills from learning how to mange your negotiating power, how to prepare for a negotiation, etc. On top of all that, there are five areas that most sales negotiators overlook and yet, they may be the most important negotiating skills that you need to be working on…

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