Simple and complex negotiations have one thing in common, the barriers to negotiation.
These barriers are layers of resistance that we have to avoid or deal with in order to reach a win-win negotiation.
A barrier is an obstacle that we have to go through, as in races, we must think about what we can do, to remove the barriers that we will meet, or plan strategies to break down the barriers in the process.
The key is to brainstorm, to locate the type of barriers that we can expect in the negotiation process before entering it. Once identified, we must understand what type of barriers they are. There are personal, process, cultural or natural ones. As in mathematics, when we have a very complex problem, a good advice is to divide it into several segments and solve it step by step, without losing sight of the whole.
- Personal barriers have to do with the interrelationship between people negotiating, "the chemistry", difficult people and situations, skills and abilities of the parties, the number of people participating in the negotiation, among others. The barriers in the process must To do with the type of organization that we are negotiating, some more bureaucratic than others, family companies, or international corporations. Cultural barriers have to do with the cultural differences of the participants, (business culture, country, etc.). Natural barriers are inherent to the project in question or the matter under negotiation. For example, established prices, industry standards, among others.
For example, if we know that we are about to enter into a negotiation with an international corporate, the first barrier to entry is the way of doing business of this corporate and the differences with our company. Another barrier is that the corporate person with whom we are going to negotiate may be the most complicated and we must prepare ourselves to negotiate with someone difficult.
In addition to that all the policies of the international corporate are a natural barrier that we must take into account. As if this were not enough, there is the cultural barrier, since this corporate is of foreigners with whom we have never dealt.
This is just one example out of many that I am sure you have experienced. The intention of understanding the concept of negotiation barriers to identify them when you are entering a negotiation, segment the major problem into small problems and solve the problem in the most efficient way. Negotiation is a continuous problem solving between the parties.
- For personal barriers there are many tips in the literature on how to deal with difficult people, as well as the common tactics of hard and soft negotiators. For cultural barriers the golden rule is "to understand the other culture", its values and principles, as well as the factors that affect the negotiation culture without forming stereotypes. For process barriers, it is important to understand negotiation as a science and to study what are the phases of the process and what points are important in each phase. For natural barriers it is important to understand what are the factors that give power in the negotiation, as well as the standards, the time, the information, among others.
Example:
You are about to take your family to ice skating and from the start you have a limited budget and a large family.
If, when you arrive at the skating rink, you realize that you must pay $ 90 pesos per adult or child, and you arrive with a group of seven people, you have the following options.
- Natural Barrier: Entry price Cultural Barrier: You are in a foreign country Process Barrier: It really is simple, it is not a corporate one, but there are two "links", the employee and the supervisor Personal Barrier: There is no chemistry with the skating rink employee
The options you have are:
Dealing with the natural barrier:
1) Say nothing about the price to the public and pay the entry price
2) Ask if there is any type of discount by group or by age
If you choose option 2, the typical answer is "there are no group discounts" or "Yes, there is a discount for groups of more than twenty people"
If you insist and comment on this, what would be the discount for the group of twenty, and they will tell you 65 pesos. What follows is to say "Well we are not twenty but we are a large family, we come often, will there be a way to get the group discount?". I can assure you that the answer will be, let me check with the supervisor. And if you request it directly to the supervisor, I assure you that you will get the group discount (Process Barrier - the organization, the employee and the supervisor)
The moral of the story is if you don't question the negotiating process and don't try to break down the barriers, you won't make more profit and you miss out on the negotiating table. In this example I illustrate two barriers, natural and process. Perhaps if the person had been a difficult person, the challenge would have been greater and we would have another "personal" barrier.
This brief example shows us how these barriers can appear, in any type of negotiation; so let's learn to plan, analyze, synthesize the negotiation process into parts and barriers in order to increase our negotiating power.
Let us remember the great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle "Perfection is not an act, it is a habit." Let's find perfection in negotiation by following best practices.
