🤝🏾 How to Negotiate Better?

Today, we are discussing how to negotiate better. This could be to negotiate better rates from your client or employer, better deals, better wages, a better job package, better anything really. A useful skill to hone for any situation.

Often, when we go into a negotiation, we usually have a negative mindset from the outset: we are often stressed or anxious about the conversation, we are worried about how things might pan out and may not go in our favour and so on.

The truth is, I have felt the same way in many situations, e.g. negotiating with parents or friends etc. Personally, I used to think of negotiations as almost a ‘conflict’ of opinions in a way.

In reality, there are only four possible outcomes in a negotiation:

1. Win-Win

2. Win-Lose

3. Lose-Win

4. Lose-Lose

In an ideal scenario, the result of any negotiation should be ‘win-win’, but I have seen that we often think of it as a win-lose situation, and consequently, no one truly comes away as a winner. You may come away as a winner but may feel guilty that you are being unfair to the other person, whereas the loser may have been left with a sour taste.

So, how do you solve this and land a win-win situation?

Well, what’s helped me was my recent lectures at Imperial which identified negotiations as ‘managing relationships’. And this phrase probably rings true for nearly all our negotiations in life, whether business or personal. Yes, in some cases, you may have one-off negotiations where you are attempting to bargain for a price with a shopkeeper, but the majority of negotiations will be with people that you will speak to or meet again.

So, keeping this phrase in mind, when you walk into negotiations, have a long-term view of where you want your venture or relationship to go. This allows you to be more open to compromises and stops you from thinking of short-term goals. After all, business and life are infinite games. This change in mindset has definitely been empowering, personally. If you compromise a little today, it could mean you take two steps forward in the next discussion and so forth. Business, in particular, is all about people, and there is no better negotiation than when both parties walk away having felt like they won.

Saying this, I don’t mean that you devalue your work or yourself, but do keep in mind what the future may hold and play your cards accordingly. The negotiation does not necessarily need to circulate around price etc.

P.S. I have recently been told that the Chris Voss book (Never Split The Difference) is actually terrible for negotiations. Thoughts anyone?