Given some of the articles we’ve written recently about strong-willed leaders, you wouldn’t think there was much of a place for negotiation anymore. Yet negotiation skills are, if anything, more important than they have ever been.
The polarisation of views on so many different subjects means that leaders are in constant negotiation: not just in striking deals, but in winning the hearts and minds of customers and co-workers alike.
Learning how to be a good negotiator in business means developing your people skills, but it’s about more than how you talk and act. Influencing people isn’t just about improving the way you operate, but also about understanding how other people tick. By understanding why people say no to a product or a pitch, you can better guide your approach, and bring people around to your side.
Why negotiation is important
Negotiation is often framed quite literally as the ‘art of the deal’. This is certainly an important aspect of negotiation, and a good skill to have. But this kind of direct communication—literally sitting in front of someone and laying your cards on the table—is negotiation in its simplest and most distilled form. It’s far from easy, but it’s also only one expression of what is an invaluable skill in business.
Any time you need to win people over to your side or your point of view, you are engaging in a process of negotiation. This is true when you have an idea or a strategy to communicate to people inside your business, or a product or service you’re trying to sell outside of it. If negotiation is about winning someone over to your side and your point of view, then sales and management are both processes of negotiation.
This may not be the focus of every article or training course about negotiation, but all of these aspects of communication are explicitly related. The core communication skills you build for any one of these aspects of business directly relate to the others, and will help you to better perform your role in all manner of ways. Negotiation is the way that you can engineer the time, space, and goodwill you need to execute your ideas.
How to develop negotiation skills
As Sir David Frost once put it: “Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.” Sinister as it may sound, there’s a truth to this. While you don’t want to manipulate people, there are strategies you can employ to better communicate your point of view so that other people arrive at it organically. If you are convincing enough—and more pointedly, if you can tailor your message to your audience—you can win people over without having to compromise on your fundamental message or goals.
Before training, this starts with an openness to training! Good leadership means accepting that you always have something new to learn, and changing the way you communicate can be challenging. Having an open mindset is, perhaps counterintuitively, invaluable to improving your negotiation skills. As much as you will have a specific idea you want to transmit, you need to be open to the way other people think, and adapt your approach to suit different audiences.
For general negotiation skills, our Influence, Persuasion and Negotiation Skills course is an ideal choice. As well as improving your understanding of the psychology behind communication and how it works, the course also breaks down the decision-making process. Through practical examples, practice and demonstration, it can help you to better structure your arguments, and respond to any resistance in a way that keeps you on course and doesn’t derail negotiations.
Our Sales and Negotiation Skills course is also a great starting point for improving all of these skills. While designed for direct negotiations in a sales context, the skills it teaches are highly transferable. One important but easily overlooked aspect is when and how to say ‘no’. Negotiation in all areas of business requires you to cede some ground, and hone your pitch based on what people think and how they react.
If the reaction isn’t immediately positive, or the customer or client rejects what you’re offering, you need the confidence, agility, and wherewithal to change tack without abandoning your position, and turn a negative into a positive. Similarly, if you find yourself in a position where the compromise you need to make to win someone over is of questionable value, it’s important to develop the skills to identify this and reject it in favour of a more agreeable solution.
Becoming a better communicator
Negotiations involve all facets of communication, making any training that improves your communication toolkit a helpful one. Our Assertive Communication Skills course for instance helps to build confidence, allowing you to convey your ideas more effectively and be more assertive. Crucially, it also helps to develop better listening skills, allowing you to better connect with someone, rather than focussing on what you’re going to say next.
Our Effective Presentation Skills and High Impact Presentation Skills courses can also help to develop your charisma and confidence in negotiations. These are perfect for anyone looking for a more entry level course to develop your confidence and ability to deliver a prepared spiel or pitch, with the High Impact course focussing more on high-level presentations and similar situations, where you need to deliver under pressure and other constraints.
There are also more specific skills that can contribute to better negotiation. One course we’d recommend is Managing Challenging Conversations. While we would hope that any negotiation doesn’t turn out to be challenging, this course can be extremely helpful in how it allows you to consider your arguments and positioning, and build interpersonal skills that help to win people over, even if they aren’t immediately inclined to agree with you.
And finally…
Salesman Zig Ziglar probably nailed the fundamental truth of negotiation when he said: “Stop selling. Start helping.” As in any kind of sales, an effective negotiation starts with solving a problem for the person you’re negotiating with, and giving them something they need. Once they’re sure they need the thing you’re selling, you have a solid base on which to build favourable terms, and win them over to your side.
This will always depend on the quality of the product or idea you bring to the table, but it also depends on you. Through training, practice and self-reflection, you can better identify how to connect with people and hone your ability to do it—making you a good negotiator in business, and a great communicator in all aspects of life.
