Negotiation Tricks, Tips, and Hints That Will Help You to Prepare Better, Negotiate With Confidence, and Win More Negotiations
Tips 1-10
- 1. The most useful and most taught negotiation tool is ‘If you…, then I…‘ which you can use for making effective proposals.
- 2. Most people prepare for a negotiation by starting with Powerpoint, but instead start with the Squaredance negotiation preparation tool.
- 3. Use ‘conditioning’ to manage your opponent’s expectations, like a builder when you ask for a quote, sucks his teeth.
- 4. Make sure that you have gives and takes listed ready for your negotiation because they are like the oil that keeps the negotiating running.
- 5. Most amateur negotiators are not ambitious when it comes to negotiating. So be ambitious and reach higher by asking for more.
- 6. Of the 4 stages of negotiation; Prepare, Explore, Propose and Summarise, the first two stages are the most missed.
- 7. Learn a few negotiation tools from our toolbox of 50 negotiation tactics, rather than using many badly.
- 8. Using the word ‘fair’ in your negotiation is a good reminder that fairness is an important principle for everyone to abide by.
- 9. If your opponent has their hands behind their head when you are speaking, they want to speak, so invite them to.
- 10. Escalating your negotiations to your boss shows weakness, & a lack of credibility, and should be used sparingly.
Tips 11-20
- 11. Everyone understands the difference between closed questions and open questions, yet very few ask open questions.
- 12. Never give away ‘free fish’. These are things that the other party have got for free. Instead get something in return.
- 13. Be careful of giving away your position in a negotiation with the ‘small words’ like ‘about’, ‘around’, and ‘near’.
- 14. Use specific margins, like 34.92%, rather than 35% because the former looks more calculated, and the latter looks more ‘made-up’.
- 15. Summarise, summarise, & summarise is a great negotiation trick – do it often so that both parties know where the negotiation is up to.
- 16. If you are negotiating using the written word; email, WhatsApp, text, then use it to get a face-to-face meeting because you will achieve much more.
- 17. Don’t try to think on your feet because you can’t and instead find strategies to buy time, like ‘Please could you repeat that’.
- 18. Remember to sweat in training so that you don’t bleed in battle. By having role plays with your colleagues for important negotiations.
- 19. Take an A4 pad with you and summarise your negotiation each time on a clean page so that you don’t get lost in your own scribbles.
- 20. Concede slowly using the salami technique by giving away a piece at a time. Ensuring that you get a piece back each time.
Tips 21-27
- 21. Haggling is not negotiating and knowing the difference will help you to become a better negotiator.
- 22. Avoid escalating your negotiation by asking your boss to sign-off what you are allowed to go down to before you begin.
- 23. Value what you concede in their teams because sometimes you may value something small that they value highly.
- 24. If your opponent is pulling at their ear as you speak, stop. As they are not liking what they are hearing.
- 25. Adjourning in a negotiation for a few minutes can really help you to gather your thoughts and identify a new approach.
- 26. Have a stock of 5 far reaching questions that you can ask to unlock what they want. Such as ‘What are your top 3 challenges at the moment?’.
- 27. Know their motivations, which might be their targets at work, or a want to be promoted, or a need for profile.
Please use as many of these 27 negotiation tricks to help you to become a better negotiator. Also, for even more useful content on negotiations, check out our ultimate guide on negotiation skills.
