Negotiations 1.01: Part 1:Empathy

Empathy: Be Prepared to Understand

by Robert Pappas in Business Development, Closing the Sale, Communication Behaviors, Communication Skills, Objection Handling, Performance, Sales, Sales Behavior, Training

I want to start with the fact you are all skilled negotiators if you know it or not. I’ll even venture some of you are experts. Some of you have an extensive educational background and have some formal learning about negotiation. Others have learned negotiation, through trial and error, or maybe have kids (we’ll circle back to that later) but maybe never hear of things like log rolling or BATNA, but instinctively employ the first concept we are going to discuss here. Understanding and considering the other side. (Empathy)

Let’s start with; this is not a theory’s webinar, seminar, class, blog…

This blog is meant as a brief introduction, or reintroduction to the application of negotiation in your everyday life (work or otherwise). I’ve spent a lifetime attempting to perfect my approach (it’s not perfect), and I still have to go back at times and refresh my basics, because I believe in the ingredients lies a perfect recipe. Trite but a pretty good analogy.

In Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William Ury give us what is widely agreed to as being the building block and basic principles of negotiations.

The blog you’re scanning is not an exercise in negotiating theory. All I am going to attempt to accomplish, and you judge if I succeed or not, is to take the components and apply them to a story, in hopes of helping you put into practice real (and sales) life negotiation skills.

I have on my website a pre-call checklist. I call it a negotiations checklist, but really what it is, is preparation to creatively think through the upcoming call, to assist in understanding drivers and desires, and prepare you for potential situations that in your mind are the most likely to occur. My contention has always been that negotiations are about information and the power position. By creating an environment of understanding, and possessing as much information as possible, you can create negotiations that are beneficial to both parties and still accomplish the pre-determined intention you set up for the call. A proverbial “Win-Win.”

I don’t consider negotiation a business skill.

Let me explain further.

Negotiation skills are a life skill that, as you continue to hone, will improve every facet of your life, business included. Woven into negotiation skills are communication skills, a topic for another blog and training.  What you’ll see in this blog is a process to seek information to support preconceived notions, and a deeper understanding of the customer’s drivers, empowering you with the ability to create solutions, and accomplish objectives that benefit both yourself and the party with whom you’re negotiating.

A Story . . .

Husband (Salesman)

It was a mere suggestion he thought to himself after suggesting that maybe this year they wouldn’t visit her parents on their vacation. He was offering a suggestion that he thought would benefit her and the family.

Spouse (Potential Client)

She’d been thinking a lot about the vacation recently. And as a matter of fact, she’d been looking into things that they might do away from her parents. But at that moment when he suggested not seeing her family, the only response that she could think of was “Why don’t you like my parents? The suggestion instantly became a personal affront, to her a sense of being disrespected, and definitely not considered.

She couldn’t even think of what possibly he could’ve meant, other than a negative about her parents. She couldn’t think of any of the options that she had already researched. And probably most importantly there wasn’t going to be any further conversation that was going to end in any positive outcome.

Believe it or not, I just covered the four principles that were set out by her, as negative events that derail negotiations. Experts would drag out explanations, but sometimes stories are better and even more to the point, this was a domestic setting. How would this play out in a business setting? Think about some opening suggestion that you may have made or have considered making to a client that would put them in the same position.

Salesman (Husband) I have a solution that my company provides, that is extraordinary and can cut cost out of your environment, automating processes and reducing the amount of labor needed to do certain tasks. It’s the next best thing since sliced bread.

Potential Client (Spouse)

The only thing that the client hears is you’re going to reduce the number of headcount they manage. Maybe the company will take away his or her my internal power to drive their success, and you’re going to create an external, controlling interests that will oversee their department. And finally, IT will manage all the hardware, software, labor and anything else that might be a part of your solution.Empathy: An essential tool you must develop.

The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also, the capacity for this. Merriam-Webster

What these stories have in common is the lack of real forethought on the “empathy front.” The negotiations break down because we fail to do what even the least sophisticated negotiator does. Try to figure out what the other person wants.

In Closing

I’d like to say; I’m a great negotiator, at times maybe. And on occasion, I think I do an excellent job of reaching into a negotiating endeavor extraordinarily prepared, empathetic to both my client and their company and with the mindset that only by providing to those with who I am negotiating the tools to accept my negotiations, can I win.

At home, with your kids, with your boss and company, and most importantly to this environment, business, you have to know and be prepared. It would be hard for me to understand and the empathetic to the needs wants and desires of the nuclear physicist running a laboratory and a research team without doing extensive research and personal background on what they do and who I’m meeting. The ability to project my caring and concern and empathy is based on my ability to know, have information and anticipate needs and wants.

You want to be a great negotiator, actually believe the old cliché,

“Walk a mile in their shoes.”

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

                 – Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Founder of SalesLinkage.com, Trainer, Facilitator, Public Speaker, Coach and Mentor, Robert Can Be Reached at (562) 547-9048 or [email protected]