NEGOTIATION - Royal Discipline

NEGOTIATION - Royal Discipline

It is dangerous to believe that after 10, 20, or 30 years of professional career, you are able to utilize the peak of your talent. So wrong!

It is important to work on improvements permanently. Improving your digitalization literacy, learning about AI, sharpening the skills with your CRM or ERP, presentation skills – any of those will give you an advantage against those, who believe in their own perfection.


Why I picked Negotiation Arts?

?Negotiation – it is not a soft-skill matter! Negotiation Arts is a genuine discipline and is being a subject of educational schemes in the many prestigious universities round the world already. Why? Negotiation is a skill-set that is undoubtedly the top class of communication. And as we know – high level of communication, respectively relationship building is essential for successful business schemes.

Therefore, as a genuine business person, I see reaching the excellence in negotiations (communication and relationship building) is paramount.

?"Weaker or stronger position does not exist. Your negotiation position is as strong as you frame it"

You might argue with me that after decades of experience, I should already know, how to negotiate, I should know how to make the customer happy, I should know how to start and flourish relationship.

But does the following sound familiar to you?

“Have you seen this? We smashed the customer completely – he had no other chance than accepting all our conditions”

– are you sure this was a good move? Did you really contribute to the relationship with the customer? I guarantee you that the customer will pay you back the same card as soon as the situation will allow him, and you will have only a very little chance to recover from that.

?

“Have you seen this? He asked us for several new amendments to the contract and I managed to deny all of them without losing the business”

– are you sure this was a good move? You polished your ego, you showed your stone face and your strong position. But be sure that this will only lead into the situation that the counterparty will look for another partner to work with. Just a matter of time.

?

“Have you seen this? Poor boy – once threating him with our lawyers, he just accepted all our conditions”

– are you sure this was a good move? Looking into the situation with the view of today, it might appear totally different in the view of 1 year perspective.

?

As you might have realized – negotiation is nothing else than conflict-solving. There is no reason to negotiate, if there is no conflict. But once the conflict appears, it has the potential to damage or even destroy our relationships.

Negotiation is nothing else than finding the right path to solve the conflict in a way, that all parties involved in the conflict are happy with the result. But only one party is the true winner – the one which is the best prepared and best trained to lead the conflict-solving process. And to be complete with the definition: Excellent negotiator will achieve the good result. They will take the value. All the rest will be left with good feeling, but not necessarily good results (they just don′t recognize it).

?"Your own EGO is the killer of success. Very expensive one!"

Strategy is the Basics

Skilled negotiator is turning the relationship and communication into a totally different dimension. Skilled negotiator is able to see the conflicting situations from a different perspective and is able to link the future with a certain strategy.

Why should I give in? And what will be the long-term effect?

Is there a reason to negotiate? Shall I rather avoid the conflict, and if so, what is going to be the consequence?

Shall I bring the customer under pressure and apply the competitive strategy? What do I get out of this?

What is the value of collaboration, and how do I reach a healthy, balanced relationship based on reciprocity?

Is the compromise a solution, and how to define compromise?

Each of those strategies has its sense in certain situations. It can happen that there will be reason for any of those, but in the real life, the major set-up shall be a collaborative relationship.

?

Collaborative relationship doesn′t come from the heaven

Actually, it is a subject of a very intense and detailed relationship building. It is a result of empathic attitude.

Empathy is a very important key, and success factor.

Indicating that I understand the point of view of the counterparty gives a very positive signal. (attention - understanding the counterparty is not the same as agreeing with the counterparty!)

Empathic listening - sounds easy, but frankly speaking – have you tried this? Have you tried to measure the time you talk, and the time your partner talks in a real situation? You might be surprised, how difficult discipline it is.

I am frequently in a situation that I want to practice the tactical listening/empathy, but the counterparty is talking so much that I do not even have a chance to say anything. This brings me to a very comfortable situation, as I know everything from the opposite party, but once the discussion will be over, I know everything, the counterparty knows nothing. Guess – who of us has a better position, and who can work with better information?


Set the team – it is essential

CEO, CSO, CTO, CFO, CXXXXO – who are those people?

They are all kinds of heroes in our eyes. Some of them are like a KingKong, some are Tarzans, some of them Geronimo.

They all are heroes in what they do. But I tell you a secret – they are not heroes because they are the best negotiators.

In fact – they are the worst negotiators in the company. There are 2 main reasons for it.

1) they have the worst scope of information within your company.

Don′t you believe? Think – do you really say everything to your boss? I don′t think so. And do you believe that your boss is saying truly everything to his boss? Also not! At the end – the top management has the worst information of the real situation. Their information is in many cases fragmented, incomplete or even totally false. You can′t change it – you need to accept it.

2) The heroes in your company are super busy.

Effective negotiation requires a very detailed preparation. If I have an important negotiation meeting with my team, it can happen that we spend many, many hours of preparation for a 1-2 hours negotiation. The super-busy heroes in your company simply do not have the time to spend so much time with a negotiation, and if they appear in the meeting room, they tend to make mistakes and decide things based on their intuition or feelings rather than on the facts.

This means that establishing a team of negotiators, commander (silent-negotiator), decisionmaker and optionally an expert is the basics. Once the team is settled and trained, the company can achieve good results faster and more efficiently.

?

Train & Use the tactics

There are dozens of tactics used for an negotiation.

I am not going to list them here, as this could be described in a book.

The truth is that among all those tactics, it is very common to use 4-8 tactical schemes in a very professional way, rather than bouncing from one tactics to another, but none of them done properly.

Important – each negotiator needs to find his preferred tactics and train those in a way that those will be utilized in a natural way without even recognizing those.

Most of the tactics described in the FBI Negotiation scheme (but also other negotiation styles) have been very successful in various dangerous situations while negotiating with terrorists, kidnapers, and other kind of criminal individuals. However, those tactics can easily be adopted for a business communication and work very well even in the case of very difficult and complex business conflicts.


?"Silence is an atomic bomb of communication"

Negotiation is about structuring

I have already mentioned that preparation is 80% of the success. If you can′t define your targets, if you don′t spend the time with preparation, you can′t be the winner of the situation.

Negotiation is working in a very structured way:

  • Definition of the targets.
  • Definition of strategy and used tactics.
  • Definition of the requirements.
  • Definition of how to reach those requirements.
  • Definition of what comes after reaching the results for our requirements.
  • Definition of what happens, if we do not reach the requested results.

All the above and many others are subject of a detailed preparation. There is no space for improvisation, there is no space for surprises. No creativity allowed! Everything must be planned to the smallest detail - No “by-the-ways”!

"80% of your success is in preparation"

Negotiation is not only what we say...

Excellent negotiators are skilled in rhetoric. They know, how to use words, intonation. Excellent negotiators use their voice and speech as a sword. Negotiators have to make sure that the counterparty is paying attention and understanding well, what is being said.

For that reason, negotiation is covering several other sub-disciplines. Rhetoric is one of them. Body language reading, or moderating the emotions (in either direction) as a part of psychological game is another part of the role of negotiator.

Skilled negotiator is able to stir the emotions of the counterparty close to the heart-attack situation without losing the smile on the face. At the same time, skilled negotiator is able to calm the emotions back, so the counterparty is even thankful for you finding a solution for him. The art of negotiation covers a big piece of psychology content. And that is what makes it beautiful!

"Negotiation is not about what you say, but HOW you say, and WHEN you say..."

As you can see now, negotiation is a very complex discipline, which requires a wide range of abilities and skills. Those abilities and skills wouldn′t be much of importance on its own, but when covered all together into the negotiation schematics, it can create a true difference.

It is a way, how to reach your results faster and more efficiently AND strengthen relationships in parallel.

Stay tuned for more!

********************

?Avoid mistakes in business development?

?Avoid mistakes with PV investments?

?Negotiating with excellence?

?Let′s work on perfection?

?TOGETHER?

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Michal G.

Senior Sales Representative at Czech Republic Onamba s.r.o | L.I.O.N. | Taurus/Tiger | INFJ-A | Ambivert

1 年

Good article, Jan, thank you for it. And watch out for 6-fingers people, they are extremely difficult to negotiate with (even AI can′t handle them) ?? All the best!

Yanze Kontchou ? Coffee and Pharma

Ma?geschneiderter Premiumkaffee, ganz nach deinem Geschmack!

1 年

Good summary and advises! Thanks for sharing Jan? Mastny

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