5 Negotiating Skills You Need To Succeed
Being a good negotiator is an important skill, in both business and life. When you sharpen your negotiation skills, you can better work with others, articulate your perspective while honoring other people’s thoughts/feelings, and expertly handle conflict and confrontation.
However, not everyone is an expert negotiator—and if you’re not as strong in this area, don’t worry! Negotiation skills can be learned, practiced, and mastered.
Here are the top skills you can learn, develop, and continually work at to win at negotiating (almost) every time.
1. Know What You Want From The Beginning
Knowing exactly what you want to achieve before you even start a negotiation gives you a huge advantage over your opponent. While this can, of course, change as the conversation unfolds, it’s generally a good idea to have a strong and confident perspective.
It’s also important to remember that you don’t have to be ‘right’ to be a good negotiator. If you go in with confidence, you will find that your perspective is better articulated, which, in turn, helps you to ‘win’ in the argument. Even if you don’t ‘win,’ though, you can often reach a conclusion that you feel good about.
2. Offer Options
When you go into a conversation with someone (whether this is a partner, friend, employee, boss, etc.) it’s generally good practice to be armed with different options. Perhaps your initial ask won’t be granted, but if you have options, it can often lend to greater possibilities.
Having different options can also give the other person the impression that you are making concessions for things you hadn’t even planned to obtain from the beginning (which is a definite perk for you in the long-run)!
3. Regulate Your Emotions
It’s easy to let your emotions get to you when you’re negotiating. The most important thing is to strive to be level-headed and calm, even if the conversation gets escalated.
One way you can do that is by practicing some ‘calm-down’ tactics: slow breathing, counting in your head before responding, or pausing before you speak. This can help you to remove yourself from a ‘flight or flight’ mindset and speak with poise.
2. Practice Active Listening
Listen to the person you're talking to and understand their needs. This skill is learned through experience and practice. One way of practicing active listening is pausing for 2-3 seconds after the other person shares their argument.
This gives you time to process the information and prepare for a proper answer. You don’t want to think about the next thing you’re going to say while they are speaking; it makes it very obvious to the other person that you don’t really care about what they are saying (which you don’t want to do!).
3. Make Concessions in Exchange for Rewards
Be quick to help the other side out by accepting their requests in exchange for rewards. However, don’t accept everything at once, and only give away what isn't important to you.
Ideally, you’ll want to think about something that has value for you and even if it’s not your initial ask or first desire, perhaps consider accepting it in exchange for something mutually beneficial. Making reasonable concessions will give you a huge advantage throughout the negotiation process.
Here are some suggestions for language when you agree to the other person’s request(s):
“I understand that this is important to you…”
“I am ready to agree to your request to move forward in the negotiations…”
“In exchange, I would like…”
Another suggestion is to consider asking for more than you truly care about; this will create one of two outcomes: They will either accept your offer (and you’ll get more than what you wanted), or they will not accept and you’ll still have some leverage to use to negotiate down to what you really want.
4. Show Them the Benefits of Accepting Your Offer
When you offer a deal, it’s beneficial to share/show or explain the benefits, not only to create positive feelings about the agreement but to show that you are invested in the other person’s best interest, too.
Rather than appealing solely to feelings, use facts. Make it clear to them with a, b, and c that they will gain from your offer.
Be as clear, concise, and explicit as possible in your argument.
5. Consider Your ‘Walk Away Power’
This last tip is invaluable, especially if an argument is/appears to be going nowhere. A great negotiation tactic is your "walk away power,” which means your ability to give up some of your short-term ambitions to win in the long run.
Sometimes, it is necessary to put aside part of what you came for to aim for it next time. It’s better to have a loss that brings you closer to your goal than a victory that takes you further away from it.
Take a long-term view and know where you want to go. Every positive negotiation, even partial, brings you closer to where you want to be!
Article by Melie Crief
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