7 Tips to Improve Your Negotiation Skills and Humanize Your Meetings

In short:

• In business, negotiation skills no longer include the ability to win verbal duels in the boardroom. Today’s negotiation experts recommend using authenticity and compassion in your approach.
• Winning negotiation tactics include establishing personal relationships with the other party and showing you understand their needs.
• Resist the urge to pitch yourself or take a stance you’re not willing to change during negotiations, and prepare well so you’ll be in a strong mental and emotional position.

Negotiation skills are an unspoken expectation in today’s business world, regardless of your place in the executive hierarchy.

Whether it’s exercised during a client proposal, a product pitch or internal team mediation, effective negotiation strengthens relationships and allows for an exchange of lasting value between parties.

But the days of playing hardball in the boardroom are over. When it comes to modern negotiation, business leaders need to consider the nuances of today’s hypersocial, more sensitive business culture. There are no tactical scripts to follow, no proven strategies and no winners or losers. The goal is simply to approach the bargaining table with good intentions and a genuine interest in connecting with the other party.

Careful, wise negotiation benefits all parties and makes for balanced, positive interactions. These skills go far beyond wordsmithing your product or service–they include your approach, appearance and state of mind.

Here are seven tips to improve your negotiation skills so you can get what you want while making your customers and colleagues happy, too.

1. Negotiate as your real self, not your business self.

Bring your authentic self to the bargaining table. Individuality, honesty and professional integrity are the new calling card. Cochran advises clients to list their strengths and weaknesses as a way of creating a sense of self-awareness prior to a negotiation.

2. Build trust by showing that you understand needs.

Build trust with the other party before negotiating. Trust is the most important quality in any transactional relationship.

You should always be looking for ways to serve the other party. Focusing on what is most important to both sides allows for the relationship and communication to continue and for a better solution to be discovered and agreed to.

3. Drop the pitch.

Once the negotiation is underway, resist the urge to sell yourself or your product, and hark back to being human.

Again, “Be yourself–a real human being with needs, wants and candor about what those are." Dropping the pitch disarms people, and they respond more positively to what you’re proposing.

4. Prepare, but don’t assume a solution.

Preparation and research are paramount in modern business negotiations. This starts with the obvious: Learn details about the company you’re approaching, who you’re talking to and what they do. It often also includes brainstorming customized solutions before entering a negotiation.

5. Allow preparedness to pump you up.

Preparedness can serve the additional purpose of putting you in a stronger mental and emotional bargaining position. Anyone can sense when they’re in the presence of a negotiator who is certain and authoritative. Thus, a persuasive negotiator must radiate self-assuredness.

Find ways to combat the negative emotions that often remove negotiators from a helpful headspace, like fear of rejection or low self-value.

6. Take care of yourself.

Emulating confidence–and thus coming one step closer to closing the deal–requires more than just getting into the right mental state before a meeting. It involves how you present yourself physically, the warmth of your smile, the tone of your voice and your facial expressions while you’re both speaking and listening. These qualities deliver subconscious clues to the other party about your trustworthiness.

Mastering this area doesn’t require going to any great lengths, but rather simply taking care of yourself.

7. Practice active listening (without your phone).

The definition of active listening varies within marketing and sales circles, but in counseling and conflict resolution, it means devoting your full concentration to another party. That means avoiding your phone or any other devices during a meeting or call.

Active listening also involves waiting until the other party is finished saying their piece before mentally drafting yours.