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 better outcomes 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

Negotiating with Friends:
The Importance of Relationships

You have one hundred dollars in your pocket when two friends approach you. The first friend is an old college chum that you've known for nearly twenty years. The two of you go way back. The second friend is a new neighbor who moved into your subdivision a little over a month ago. Both have asked to borrow the one hundred dollars. To whom would you loan the money? Armed with this basic information, the answer is simple. Given that only one person could borrow the money, you would loan it to your old college friend. After all, having known this person for nearly twenty years, you would know if they will be good about repaying the loan.

Negotiations are no different. While this illustration is simplistic ,it paints a very important illustrations that relationships are very important when negotiating with others. When negotiating with someone who you do not know, you essentially walk to the negotiating table with a whole list of "blanks". These blanks have yet to be filled in be in because you don't have any experience dealing with this specific individual. Given enough time, you will get the opportunity to fill in the blanks but, until then, you have to deal with a considerable amount of trial and error.

There are three reasons why relationships are important in a negotiation:

* Trust - When you negotiate with someone you know, you have already had the opportunity to build a level of trust. The other person isn't a "stranger" to you. You know whether they will be bluffing during a negotiation or shooting you straight.

* History - Having known someone for an extended period of time, you will have an understanding of what makes them tick. You will know how they make decisions, what is of greatest concern to them, what they have at stake, in which way the involved others and more. History provides you that critical information that enables you to just about predict how discussions will proceed.

* Vested Interest - With relationships come a vested interested in the outcome of a negotiation. Those who have long-term relationships don't want to see a partnership or a customer/vendor relationship fall apart over one bad meeting. By negotiating with someone you know, you can rest assured that their concern is similar to yours - negotiating the best deal while preserving the long-term health of the relationship.

This being said, we recommend that you always try to negotiate with those whom you have a relationship. Granted, this may be difficult to control. In some situations, negotiations are a one-time deal and you don't get to pick the other party. However, there are cases when you can control the timing and the personnel involved in a meeting. Depending on your experience with a company, you may be able to request a specific person to be included as a spokesman for the other side. If a negotiation is not urgent, there may be ways to delay a meeting while working on building a negotiation. Having a trusted individual on the other side will be more likely to help you achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.

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