Negotiation Techniques: A Win-Win Strategy Is The Best Way for Your Side to Win

People make decisions based on their own interests. If follows that the key to successful negotiating is finding creative and effective ways of satisfying those interests; theirs, while meeting yours as well.

First, determine who on the other side will be involved and what they need. This is called "stakeholder interest identification." Second is to determine what can be done to get them what they need so you can get what you want. Third is to develop a plan concerning what to do if no agreement is reached.

Say you are going to enter into negotiations to acquire a business. People in your company from different departments, such as marketing, sales, finance, R&D, customer service, and manufacturing, will likely be able to provide different perspectives on the business you are thinking of acquiring, and how the acquisition will affect your business. Get these people together. When you go around the room, you are like to find very different points of view. The legal people will think one thing. The marketing people another. The financial people a third. Each views a situation from his or her unique perspective. So you not only factor in these diverse viewpoints, you see where they are aligned.

Then map out where you want to go. Ask such questions as, "What can we do to get them what they need?" Drawing upon the knowledge and creativity of the entire team, different ways of satisfying interests can be identified. For example, you may be trying to negotiate a contract for raw materials or parts and there's a price the supplier simply isn't going to go below. Even so, you might need a lower price, so the team would brainstorm options. You might decide to offer to them a longer-term contract, or an attractive benefit in some other area of the business, or part of the country. The objective is to meet their financial needs and still get what your company wants and needs out of the deal.

Brainstorm and evaluate the effects different actions will have on each stakeholder. Before you accept or reject a deal, it helps to understand how the proposal and the alternatives satisfy or harm everybody's critical interests. This way, when you go in, you know if you don't make things work, they are likely to take such and such an action. You have to ask yourself, can I live with that?

Consider packages of actions that might include things you don't like but could still make sense as part of an overall package that on balance is good for you. Eventually, once you have it all out on the table, you are in position to develop a proposal. Then you will be able to build trust with your negotiating counterparts by laying out and agreeing on their interests and your interests. You may be surprised how fast concurrence will be reached on these. Your counterparts will quickly and readily relate to their interests, including some they may not yet have focused on. It will become clear to them what they will have to give up if an agreement isn't reached, and this can be very powerful.

You may go through this process and find, when all is said and done, you don't have much of anything the other business wants. You are much better off knowing this sooner than later. Since you have no bargaining chips, you can quickly move on to something else and not waste your time or theirs. Armed with this knowledge, you won't end up doing a bad deal because you hate walking away from the table. It goes against some people's nature to give up easily. They figure some part of a deal is better than no deal at all. But experience shows it's possible to be terribly wrong about this. Face it, it's human nature for people not to walk away from something they think they want. They hang on too long, and take a lesser deal. Later, when reality sets in, they have regrets.

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