Negotiation is an awareness sport – the more you have, the more likely you’ll win.
In another post, we’ve looked at the 24 tactics that win negotiations. These strategies have been acquired over fifteen years of working with the world’s top negotiators and signing agreements with some of the most well recognised brands (Yahoo, LivePerson, Etihad Airways etc.).
And while tactics and techniques are super important negotiation tools in your belt, it’s important to understand the context so you know how these tactics fit into your broader negotiation.
This part of our sales mastery workshops came from two absolute master negotiators that I worked with some years ago, Kane Minkus and Jeffrey Slayter. We now train this framework all over the world and in our private business mastermind groups.
(Related: To learn more about Negotiation and Advanced Communication strategies, check out ‘The Million Dollar Sales Pitch’ masterclass. For business owners, consultants or sales professionals – this masterclass is a must for connecting with and engaging your audience in a whole new way. It’s also on sale for the next few days so get access now before life gets in the way ;))
8 Factors that Determine A Negotiation Outcome
Rapport: Rapport must be present in all negotiation and frames of influence. How quickly and deeply do you create a feeling of trustworthiness, safety and belonging? Do all parties believe that you are working towards fairness, or just to meet your own needs? Do you create ‘patterns of compliance’ and are all parties receptive to you? Do people typically find you reasonable or unreasonable to deal with?
(see also: “The Problem with Winning Friends and Influencing People”)
Push/Pull Negotiation Approach: Push/Pull refers to being agreeable versus being more resistant. The important strategy here is to be able to do both, and knowing when to apply push or pull. Are you able to change the tempo of the negotiation? Do you know when to make offers and when to make requests?
Aspiration Level: People with higher aspiration levels win higher awards. Negotiation experts start out by wanting more and end by getting more – often for all parties. One of the most consistent attributes of top negotiators is their extremely high self worth and willingness to price accordingly. Are you setting your initial goals highly enough? Are you valuing your own time / worth highly enough?
Tactics and Techniques: The tactics and techniques are the specific skills that will make you a better negotiator. In this article I’ll share the most effective 24 that I learned and that you can use right away.
Power and Leverage: Power and leverage refers to things like your position, your resources and your options. Obviously, the more options you have, the stronger your chance of winning the deal. However, skilled negotiators know that the person with more perceived options, is the the negotiator that will win. NOTE: The person that is having the experience that they have the most to lose has the least leverage. Power and leverage is 100% perception…
Concession Patterns: As we saw in ‘aspiration levels’ above, those with larger demands typically have better probability for success. Poor negotiators make the largest concessions in a negotiation. People who make small concessions during a negotiation typically fail less. Skilled negotiators make lower concessions as the deadline approaches. REMEMBER: The true art of negotiation is to concede elements of low value to you and high value to other parties, while sorting for elements of high value to you and low value to the other parties (where possible).
Time Limits: Time limits motivate parties to reach agreement and avoid ‘deadlocks’. Time limits should be used specifically to cause action more quickly. What are the time factors that you can build in to your negotiations? What are the calendar events coming up that can be used to speed up agreement (i.e. end of financial year, state and federal elections, relevant seasons).
Deadlock Navigation: Deadlock refers to those moments when parties in negotiation reach an impasse – a conflicting point they are both unwilling to move on. Skilled negotiators know that prevention is far easier than cure – but what do you do when you’re in it? Those that are able to move past a deadlock will usually succeed more in negotiating.
Being aware of all the factors will help you to identify the factors you’ll need to build up before designing your next big pitch, and also the factors that you’ve already got a big advantage in.
Do you have a big presentation or negotiation coming up?
Drop us line and tell us about it.
– DC
Don’t forget to check out the ‘Million Dollar Sales Pitch’ Video Masterclass and learn to design and deliver a perfectly structured pitch that creates instant positive response from your customers in any industry niche.)
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Discover Coaching Coaching Programs are tailored to each individual and align tactical, strategic and visionary leadership styles to reach both Professional and Personal milestones. DC is fully certified for the use of both proprietary (Neuro Linguistic Programming, TimeLine Therapy ®, Straight Line System) and authored custom programs (How to Boil an Egg, Million Dollar Sales Pitch, Mass Persuasion – Complete Sales Mastery, Coaches Collection).
David Cervelli is a certified NLP Master Practitioner and Coach with the ABNLP and ABH.
