One of the key aspects of a negotiation is that both parties leave feeling that they got what they wanted. The hardest aspect of the negotiation is to actually achieve that as there is always a fine line that needs to be found early. How do you find it early? You start the negotiation early.

I’m not saying make phone calls and send emails to get into the head of whoever it is you’ll be meeting with but instead it’s to start the process of understanding what their strategy could potentially be. Once this has been understood you can start to align your negotiation to match with the other member of the conversation.

Always Plan

Some sales people and business people do like to think themselves as master negotiators, they can roll up to a meeting, make their demands and leave with everything they wanted and then some.

Very few of us are like this.

Instead you need to focus on doing research on a whole host of information to better understand the potential for negotiation tactics and ideas.

-          Management team

-          Company direction

-          Financials

-          Recent News

All of these aspects can and will play a vital part in the actual negotiation and the more you understand the more you can understand where, how and why the negotiation takes the route it may take.

The idea of planning is that you can construct the ideal negotiation with a counter to follow, the most important part of doing this is that you can then align your offer with the company, individual or management’s needs. All sales are completed once you’ve understood perfectly the customer’s needs, pain points and have aligned a solution – this is the foundations of a successful negotiation.

Always having a plan A and B gives you the chance you consider your options in every negotiation, having a template that is permanently stored within your memory means when a meeting gets tricky you can fall back quickly onto this “template”.

Plan A and B is also a good way to practice getting ready for the meeting in advance, because you have to understand more you’ll need to spend more time seeing if you’ve missed anything. A Plan a and B 5 minutes before the meeting rarely works in fact it probably wrecks every negotiation tactic out there.

Fear Has No Room

People like to storm out of rooms, smack the table or throw things around during the negotiation process; this isn’t a Hollywood movie so it shouldn’t even cross your mind. The trouble with fear is that we naturally experience it when rejection seems inevitable, let’s face it leaving a negotiation without matching your terms is always going to feel like rejection.

If you’ve initiated the negotiation/meeting then you need to focus in on a win-win strategy that won’t encroach on the line of “defeat”. Again this refers to the idea that if you’ve done your research and planned early you’ll understand the company and the individuals direction helping you align and create the perfect negotiation that means no one has to leave feeling a sense of remorse.

The main point of this whole article is that you need to be prepared early, if you do that then you eliminate the fear that sets upon you pre-negotiation and it gives you the best opportunities to create a win-win situation. Few can master the strategy and a lot of the times they’ll leave with either a feeling of remorse or with a bad reputation of pushing and “wounding” the other party. First things first the person opposite you should never leave with buyer’s remorse or anything closely associated with the feeling, it’s incredibly bad for business.