Negotiations Skills Training

With over twenty-five years of proven industry experience, the Negotiations Training Institute of America is the recognized leader in negotiations training, consulting and performance coaching. Through public open enrollment seminars and private on-session training sessions, we have helped leading corporations, non-profit organizations and governmental agencies improve their ability to negotiate betteroutcomes for their constituencies. First-time negotiators as well as those with the greatest competitive drive and amount of first-hand experience and negotiations wisdom can benefit from our time-tested workshops. Whether focusing on negotiating a contract with a vendor or jumping in to the often-stressful car buying process to deal with a dealership, our courses provide useful skills, proven techniques and various classroom role plays to help you become more aware of negotiations that you must face on a daily basis.

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Negotiations Training: Improve the Skills of your Negotiators and Improve your Bottom Line

If your company is like most today, you are looking at the bottom line searching for ways to improve results. The negotiating skills of your employees control revenues, and have a direct and significant impact on financial performance.

Employees are negotiating, regularly, with customers and suppliers to buy and sell goods and services. In fact, most every relationship a company has must be negotiated or re-negotiated at some point. Most employees entrusted to handle this process have never been trained how to negotiate. Most learned by watching others, while not knowing if the observed techniques were good or bad. The ability of your employees to effectively negotiate with your customers and suppliers goes directly to your bottom line in terms of revenues and expenses. Ineffective negotiators have a significant impact on your company’s image, and your ability to do business.

Consider the following questions while evaluating your negotiator’s effectiveness:
1. Do my employees follow a formal negotiation preparation process that helps them prepare for "win-win" outcomes?
2. Are my employees clear on the desired outcomes of a particular negotiation?
3. Do they know when it is OK to walk away from a deal, and is this supported within your company? Do your negotiators fear potential loss of relationships and stay in the negotiation past the "walk away point"?
4. Are your employees always clear on why they are negotiating? More clearly stated do they know the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement? The BATNA is defined as what you would have done, had no negotiation taken place. Have they ever negotiated deals WORSE than the BATNA?
5. Are the results from negotiations reviewed for effectiveness and shared within the organization?

Let’s take these one at a time:
1. Do my employees follow a formal negotiation preparation process that helps them prepare for "win-win" outcomes?
Do they prepare a "game plan" including:
Identifying your interests, defined as WHY a particular outcome is desired. The position, the item with which we are most familiar in negotiations, is defined as what you want (cost, benefits, services).
Identifying the other side’s interests. WHY do they want that?
What outcomes are acceptable to us (identify three...the outcome you want the most, the one which is satisfactory, and the one that is the least you will accept)?
What can I trade? What is low value to me, and high value to the other side that can be traded?
What options that can be used to move the negotiation toward joint problem solving? "What if we did this...?" What if we tried to do it this way...?"
What is my BATNA? Is my BATNA BETTER than the least acceptable outcome?

2. Are my employees clear on the desired outcome of a particular negotiation?
Many negotiators make the mistake of going for one desired outcome. As a result, this changes the frame from an interest (WHY we want something) to a position (WHAT we want). Having three or more acceptable outcomes allows the frame of the negotiation to stay on interests, or joint problem solving.
Each outcome can also have options. Expanding the pie to include things that can help move the negotiation to joint problem solving also needs to be considered prior to the meeting. "What if we did this....?"

3. Do your employees know when it is OK to walk away from a deal, and is this supported within your company? Do your negotiators fear losing the relationship and stay in the negotiation past the "walk away point"?
In many cases, the culture of the organization is such that negotiators fear coming back without a deal. Worse, they have a goal they want or need to hit and if they can negotiate something better than that, the result is rewarded. The problem with this approach is that it sets up the process to be oriented toward "win-lose" positional bargaining. This can create significant levels of customer turnover. Having to find new customers is very expensive.
Planning out the process helps the negotiator see the potential outcomes, the options available, and the items available for trade. This provides the negotiator with the flexibility to know where they stand. Skilled negotiators know how to gracefully back out while leaving the relationship intact.
Unplanned and unmonitored negotiations can result in unacceptable outcomes and trading without reciprocity. They can also result in outcomes that are worse than the best alternative.

4. Are your employees clear on why they are negotiating? Do they know their BATNA?
The BATNA is simply defined as what you could have done had no negotiation taken place. The question that should be answered is, "What can or will we do if we cannot come to an agreement?"
The purpose of negotiations is to see if you can get interests met via an agreement with another party, versus this best alternative.
Planning allows your negotiators to clearly identify the outcomes and the alternatives. Many times, negotiators, without identifying these outcomes and alternatives come to agreements worse than the best alternative.

5. Are the results from negotiations reviewed for effectiveness?
Not only is it important to review results to provide feedback to the negotiator, but anything learned from the negotiation should be shared with everyone.
Match the negotiated results to the previously identified outcomes. Track performance of these outcomes to the performance of the transaction. This will provide a direct line from planning, to the negotiation, to the financial performance of the deal to ensure that the assumptions used to formulate the plan were accurate.

The ability of your employees entrusted to negotiate the buying and selling of goods and services controls your ability to produce profitable results. Highly effective negotiators are able to develop closer relationships with customers and suppliers. They make the process of negotiating mutually beneficial, which makes the relationship more rewarding for both parties.
The employees, who negotiate on behalf of your organization, ARE your organization. Their level of skill has a direct impact on customer retention, in that individuals with poor skills could, in the mind of the customer indicate a lack of care and attention in other areas. One of the most expensive activities any company undertakes is finding new customers. And a new customer is subjected to the same level of skill as the one that was lost.

Ineffective negotiating skills cost companies revenue in poorly negotiated deals. They also are expensive in that customers get "turned off" by the poor technique and go elsewhere, causing companies to have to seek out new clients. Spread across the entire organization, this adds up, quickly.
Negotiating skills are generally assumed to exist in those entrusted to perform on behalf of the organization. In fact, many mistakenly refer to them as "sales skills." Taking inventory of negotiating skills and working to improve them will improve the result with each negotiated transaction. This improves revenue. Retaining customers by using "win-win" joint problem solving negotiating skills will reduce expenses. You will develop, from your existing customers, stronger relationships and more business.
Improve the skills of your negotiators to improve your bottom line.

Source: David A.Wachtel Link

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