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Negotiating From Battle To Co-operation
Do you enjoy baffling your opposite number with facts, figures and "uncontrolled" emotional outbursts? If you plan on building up a long-term relationship with your business partner you should give up tactics like these. There are four ways of introducing a more accommodating negotiating practice as taught on a good management course as follows:Separate person from situation
Negotiations can rapidly change from discussions about technical points to conflict between personalities. If the person responsible is annoyed by the question during negotiation then none of the logical arguments in the world will progress the situation. If you insult someone’s ego, their sense of being right or their values, then their negotiating position is more likely to harden.
If you criticise someone, blame them or reject their ideas and suggestions, they will feel attacked and hit back at the same level. Throughout the full negotiation, try to consider questions in a productive way in order to maintain an affirmative relationship with the other person. If you do not keep the discussions on a technical basis or are unable to make questions mutual, progress may be hindered by human emotions and fears. You would therefore need to change the way you negotiate. Here are some examples taken from a management course:
| From formulations like | To a problem solving oriented approach? |
| You are 5 weeks behind schedule | How can we make up the timing of the project? |
| You have exceeded your budget | Is is possible we made a mistake with the budget planning? |
| Your prices are too high | we can no longer compete at this price |
| Your results are not within the plan | How can we keep to this year’s plan? |
Negotiate about interests rather than positions
When negotiating, your partner states their position in order to satisfy their particular basic requirements. A purchaser will demand a particular price because they need to maintain profitability standard. An employee demands a particular salary because they consider it to be the proper value in return for their performance. As soon as you know the interests that lie behind the concrete demands you can often find other ways of solving problems without inevitably having to give in.
The supplier could react to the request for lower prices with the suggestion of building a team jointly with the purchaser in order to improve the production of components and thereby reduce the costs. In order to increase turnover for both sides the supplier could alternatively, offer a series of joint promotions to encourage sales.
The manager may not be in a position to offer more money to an employee due to company policy or budget limitations. Alternatively they could offer more recognition more responsibility, or other benefits. These alternatives gratify the employee’s need to feel valued.
Put together a choice of options
If you succeed in making the problem at issue into a problem for both sides then you can bind your counterpart into the problem solving process. A controversial situation can be turned into a co-operative one as soon as you look for different solutions with your partner. Instead of thinking about how much they can get out of you, your business partner will now consider which of the several options is the best. The joint search for and evaluation of solutions enables both sides to work together without either one of them feeling they have given up their previous position.
Use criteria that can be checked
A fourth way of managing to get from battle to co-operation lies in the use of objective criteria for comparison: If your business partner demands a certain price, find out how they arrived at this price, or show them by your calculations that this price makes your product impossible to sell.
If someone makes a general offer like, “We will improve our performance”, ask him or her to explain the criteria by which it can be recognised that what has been promised has been delivered. It is important not to generalise but to be precise. The more exact you are the more likely the discussion process will be considered ‘fair’. You can further develop your knowledge and skills of dealing with others and negotiating by attending a good negotiation or management course.
