In order to be successful in a negotiation, you need to be persuasive
Image Credit: Karyn Christner
The trick to being successful in a negotiation is finding some way to get the other side to do what you want them to do for you. Although this is easy to say, it turns out that it’s actually quite difficult to do. We never want to go in to a negotiation blind and that’s why it’s so important that you take the time at the start of the negotiation to make an attempt to gauge both the expectations and the mood of the other side of the table. What you are going to want to do is to find a way to use the persuasive power prescription (PPP).
Get Rid Of Defensiveness
One of the things that really should be obvious to us when we are starting a negotiation is that the other side is going to have their defenses up. They are going to believe that we’ll be coming at them with all of our negotiation styles and negotiating techniques and they need to be ready to do battle with us. What we need to do is to find a way to get them to calm down. We want to come across as being both warm and friendly.
In order to make this happen, you need to always be careful and not come across as being confrontational. What you are going to want to do is to state your position on an issue using a soft tone of voice and perhaps even work in some hesitation. Additionally, no matter how much research you have done and how much you have learned about the other side, you need to be careful and not reveal it. If they start to feel that you know too much about them, then once again they will start to feel defensive.
Find Areas Where Both Sides Agree
In order to find a way to get the other side to agree to a deal with us, we are going to have to first find a way to raise their level of trust of us. The responsibility for making this happen falls on us. What we need to do is to take the time to find out how we can relate our ideas to the other side’s problems, interests, and concerns.
There is no one best way to go about doing this. Instead, we have a number of different methods that we can use in order to make this happen. First off, we need to attempt to appeal to their sense of reason and logic. This can be accomplished by using examples that will be familiar to them. Next we need to understand that like everyone else, the other side has basic human drives and if we can make our ideas appeal to these basic motivations then their trust in us will increase.
Bring New Proposals To The Table
In any negotiation, things will only move forward if you can introduce new ideas. However, new ideas are scary things and they may cause the other side to shut down or back away from what you are proposing. What this means for you is that how you go about introducing your new ideas has to be very carefully managed so as to not disrupt the negotiations.
When we introduce a new idea, we need to understand that the pushback that we may get from the other side is not necessarily because of the idea. Instead, it may be coming from how the new idea was first presented to them. This means that when we introduce a new idea, it is in our own best interest to announce to the other side that we realize that some adjustments may be required – this is not the final deal. If the idea that you are introducing is a radical new idea, then you need to take some time and slowly introduce parts of it – don’t just spring it one the other side all at once. You’ll always get pushback if you do this.
What All Of This Means For You
In order to get what you want out of your next principled negotiation, you are going to have to learn how to master the persuasive power prescription. This means that you need to understand that the other side is going to have to be convinced that the ideas that you are presenting to them are in their own best interest. This may take a considerable amount of effort on your part.
One of the reasons that it can be hard to reach an agreement with the other side during a negotiation is because they are being very defensive. You need to find ways to overcome this. Don’t be confrontational and don’t scare them by revealing how much you really know about them. Agreement on the big things will happen if you can get agreement on smaller items. We can make this happen if we can find ways to appeal to the other side’s sense of reason and logic. A negotiation will only move forward if new ideas are being brought to the table. This means that we need to very carefully introduce new ideas in a way that will not scare off or cause the other side to become defensive.
A negotiation can be a stressful place for both sides. If we want to be able to reach a deal with the other side, then we need to carefully use the power that we have to be persuasive. By being aware of what the other side is feeling and how they are viewing the ideas that have been presented during a negotiation, we can get them to warm to both us and our ideas. In your next negotiation, use the persuasive power prescription to get the deal that you want!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™
Question For You: If after you have presented a new idea, you detect a lot of pushback from the other side, what should your next step be?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
If we want to be successful in our next negotiation, then we are going to have to be able to view it as being a game. It’s only by being able to do this that we will bring to the table the flexibility to deal with all of the negotiation styles and negotiating techniques that is going to be required in order to go back and forth with the other side as we both work our way towards a deal that we can all live with. It turns out that negotiating has been around for a long time. In that time discoveries have been made about what works, and what does not work. There are three techniques that if we incorporate them into our next negotiation, we’ll be able to reach the deal that we want quicker.
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