"Negotiation is an art, which few people naturally master."
On a day-to-day basis, everyone negotiates constantly and many times we do them without even realizing what we are really doing or if we feel comfortable in the agreement we reached or also many times we feel disappointed by the other party, and this It is due to the fact that there are a series of decisive factors that influence in a direct way when the negotiation takes place. Each of the techniques that will be seen throughout the reading provide a greater breadth of the panorama, making the agreements more beneficial for oneself and for each of the parties involved.
We must first understand what is negotiation? And I define it as follows:
Act in which two or more people with a certain degree of power share common and conflicting interests, which meet to propose and discuss proposals with the aim of reaching a common agreement.
It is important to mention that there is only negotiation when you are interested in reaching an agreement.
Once the above is understood, we must know that there are a series of phases to follow to start the negotiation and that this is carried out in a formal way.
- Emergence of interest and / or mutual conflict Search for a place where negotiations will take place Discussion of common interests Discussion of conflicting points Pre-meeting of the final agreement Signing of the final agreement Implementation of the agreement
Positions, needs and desires within a negotiation
As we know, in a negotiation we all have a need, a desire and we also play a role within it that gives us power.
The needs within a negotiation can often lead us to make decisions which cannot be very beneficial for oneself since they are those which we inevitably want to obtain or even seek regardless of the cost. That is why before we must ask ourselves, what impact would it have if we do not reach an agreement? If our answer is "serious or very serious" we are faced with a situation of need.
It is important to analyze what type of need we are facing, be it economic, personal, psychological or strategic according to the agreement we want to reach, at what cost and if we are willing to accept or give in.
The desire can be interpreted as the interest of a person to get something from another.
In negotiation this can be influenced in two ways; for or against and it also depends a lot on the way that we demonstrate or not our desire to obtain something from the other person since it gives us the opportunity to take advantage of us or to be taken advantage of.
The power is one of the features that you have a negotiator to some degree, because if you are in favor sometimes this gives us an advantage and if not then there would be some negotiation, simply and to the best is like giving an order to the other person without the latter being able to do something to prevent it.
How the capable negotiator does it
One of the aspects that must be considered is the setting of the limits since sometimes the negotiations only exist proposals such as A and B, but an effective negotiator thinks about negotiating with points A, B, C, D and E and this na It gives the opening to which our counterparty can consider B according to the narrow possibilities that are typically found while, if we offer more agreements, we can say that what can be lost in B we recover it in D and E.
Another and no less important is the planning of them since sometimes the sequence is not always to present "A" and then analyze "B" since many times it is not possible for the negotiations to unfold gradually and the counterpart may catch us by surprise, with the counter offers that you present to us. Effective negotiators have an ideal way in which they are flexible in the face of any counter offer, trying to anticipate these movements, thus ensuring that the negotiable issues are independent and not linked by a sequence.
Face-to-face behavior
The face-to-face behaviors in the negotiations allow us to understand our counterpart more, which is why we must take into account several factors in order to obtain an advantage in the negotiation.
- Listen actively; This allows us to obtain more information about the interests and needs they seek. Paraphrase; Doing this allows us to reason and understand more what the other person wants to convey to us. It is necessary to know the interests of the other person that is why we must ask them. Ask about data and things, also asking about their opinions and expectations will give us interesting and rich information.
