The Negotiation Guru

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” - James Joyce

Mistakes are common in any negotiation. Learning to identify mistakes and avoiding these mistakes in your future negotiation will dramatically improve the success of your negotiation. If something did not work out as intended in your negotiation, there are still many ways of managing your negotiation to make it a success.

Here are 10 mistakes which you should avoid in your negotiations:

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“How do you know you have failed in a negotiation? When the person sitting opposite you is celebrating.” - Jens Thang

Being successful in negotiations often requires much strategic thinking and planning ahead. Negotiation is a process which requires all parties involved to reach a consensus in situations where there may be potential conflict and disagreement.

The 10 commandments of negotiations here apply to every negotiator, deal maker, mediator, lawyer or simply anyone who’s trying to negotiate something. To be real successful in negotiations, you need to invest and reinvest time to prepare ahead and adopt skills to help you improvise on the spot.

Here are the 10 commandments of negotiations:

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We all make mistakes. After all, we are still humans. The problem lies in not making mistakes but handling mistakes during negotiation.

The more mistakes you make, the more patient you have to be. The more you try to rush to cover a mistake, the more mistakes you make. Trying too hard to fix something will only make things worse.

Like all other professions, negotiators should try to take on as many perspectives as possible when handling a mistake during negotiation. Our perception is usually skewed by nature. Try to see a mistake from different angles will open up our horizon. In order to be more objective, we have to compare different scenarios

Ask for some advice. People make the same mistakes. The mistake you make is probably not new. Someone must have committed the same mistake before. Look around you. Check if there is anyone who has been through the same situation as you do. Ask them what did they do. How did they handle the situation? More often than not, they will share valuable insights of their lessons.

Sometimes we need to ask different people for different perspectives. Listen to what each person has to say regarding your mistake. He or she can be the one sitting beside you at the negotiation table. Their opinions will provide a clearer view of your mistake. This is to ensure that you have a complete picture of the scenario.

These are some questions to help you understand your own mistake:

1) What led to the big mistakes?

2) Were there small mistakes that resulted in the big mistake?

3) Did you have any false assumptions on certain things before negotiating?

4) How would you have approached differently?

5) How can you avoid such situations in the future?

6) How long did you take to figure that you made a mistake?

7) Was your mistake obvious?

8) Are there are other people around you who saw the mistake? What are their views?

Remember: It’s not about not making mistakes, it’s about not handling mistakes properly.

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Jens Thang
Negotiation Skills for Everyone

Email: jens@thenegotiationguru.com

Having an agenda ready before you step into the negotiation room is essential. You need to know what you hope to achieve after the negotiation. I have negotiated with sales people who absolutely have no idea what they want to achieve from the deal. Sitting on the other side of the table, I felt that the party is either not interested in the deal or totally insincere. Either way, this is not a good thing for a relationship-based deal.

To go into negotiation with an agenda, you need to prepare beforehand. You have to consider your objectives, needs, wants, bargaining points and walk-away value (BATNA). This require due diligence on your part but it always pay off. You will save both parties a lot of time if you know what you want. No one likes to have a long dreary negotiation.

Do not enter the negotiation hall without knowing what you want.

As I was driving this morning, I discovered something about human psychology. Or rather, I was under the effects of human psychology. I was driving and decided that I should take the right lane as it had faster traffic. As I drove on the right lane for 5 mins, it became really slow. Cars were moving very slowly, and the cars on the left lane were zooming past me. Subconsciously I was telling myself, “The right lane will be faster, I am pretty sure about that”. I stuck to my original decision for a good whole 10mins.

Suddenly, I realized that I was not making a rational choice. I should have switched to the left. So why didn’t I do that?I had invested too much into right lane. To prove that I was right, I stuck to my own decision despite it was not a rational thing to do. This is common to investors who invest in the stock market. They always sell the stocks that are earning and keep the stocks that are losing money. And this is because they want to prove that their initial judgment is right.In negotiation, we often get too committed to a deal. We invest our time and effort into preparing a deal and negotiating it. As time passes, we grew more committed to closing the deal. People say yes to a bad deal because they have invested too much and feel that they will lose more if they have no deal.Avoid getting hooked into such a situation. Always have a bottom-line and never compromise on your goals. Sometimes, no deal is better and a bad deal.