Winning Negotiation Strategies That Seal the Deal

“Successful negotiation is not about getting to ‘yes’; it’s about mastering ‘no’ and understanding what the path to an agreement is,” author Christopher Voss once said. Given the fact that Voss spent years as an international hostage negotiator, the words are particularly insightful. SCORE, a nonprofit organization that partners with the U.S. Small Business Administration, recently surveyed a wide range of business professionals, seeking tips on the best ways to approach negotiating. The results offer an assortment of strategies anyone can use, whether negotiating a real estate deal or freeing a trusty translator in the Khyber Pass: Strive Towards a Win-Win Situation A win-at-all-cost mindset is great on the gridiron, but counterproductive in negotiations. The goal is not to prove you are right, but to advance to the middle ground where most deals are struck. Demonstrating excessive confidence can come across as arrogance and compel the other party to dig into their position. Speak with conviction, but also humility and good humor. Your goal is not a hollow victory, but a negotiated agreement in which everyone feels like a winner. Even better is when the other party not only is satisfied with the end result, but also believes that the solution was his or her idea. By contrast, if the other party ends up feeling shortchanged or misled, your one-time victory will be just that — the other party may never want to do business with you again. Position Yourself as a Solution Focus on the other party’s needs first, then offer solutions that are tailored to those needs. Leading with your strengths could result in wasted effort, if the particular benefits you want to bring to a deal are irrelevant to the opposite side. As one respondent told SCORE: “When we talk with potential customers about our predictive text software, we start by asking them what their use cases are and what kind of solution they are looking for. Once they describe their needs, we focus our demonstration on their use cases, making them excited about the opportunity to use our product.” Label Their Fears Christopher Voss advocates this concept in the popular book he co-authored, Never Split the Difference. It works like this: “Demonstrate to your counterpart that you see the nuances of their emotions. Proactively label their fears. Phrases like ‘It sounds like you are afraid of…’ ‘It looks like you’re concerned about…’ go a long way in disarming them. Also, list the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before they can.” Prioritize Empathy and Acknowledge the Other Party’s Needs Empathy is not weakness. When you make an effort to see a particular issue from another party’s perspective, you not only win respect, but you also give yourself a better understanding of the issues at hand and of the negotiating playing field. When you value other perspectives, it tends to come across in the way you communicate; and that is a very positive resource to draw upon in any negotiation. This is something entirely different from the old George Burns quip that, “Sincerity — if you can fake that, you've got it made.” Rather it’s genuine empathy that disarms defenses, wins hearts and seals deals.