Effective Negotiation skills
Negotiations or debates are unavoidable parts of our lives, sometimes many of our plans depend on winning a debate or a negotiation yet we may find ourselves losing ground. The following negotiation tips will make the chance of wining any debate became much bigger:
- lack of information: one of the most popular reasons for losing a ground in a negotiation is lack of information, for example if you were trying to convince someone that a certain car is better than all others, how could you possibly convince him without knowing how was it manufactured, its maximum speed ,its advantages and disadvantages? When you know about something you feel super confident while telling about it, on the other hand lack of information about the issue could make you feel less confident and so you this will be reflected into your way of talking and the negotiation will not end to your side.
- back your words by documents : given the same example of the car, what do you the think the effect of your words will be if you have a sheet that contains a table that compares between maximum speeds of all well known cars with your car at the top of the table with the highest speed? Getting amazed is the least that the other person could do, documents provide very strong evidence to what you are saying even if their sources were not known, they just make the other person feel that you know more than him, after all it’s a game of proofing who knows more, and once someone convinces the other that he knows more, the negotiation is over.
- using body language for feedback: the body language meant here is not the simple eye contact and straight posture that all body language documents talks about, but what is meant here are the well known body language gestures that gives indication of whether the person is agreeing or disagreeing with you. Body language states that reveal this information are, state of positive evaluation , state of negative evaluation, state of interest and honesty. In case you don’t know the in depth details of how to use those gestures, make sure you check the body language section
- using body language to hide your emotions: body language have two uses, to read people’s state of feeling and to manipulate your own state of feelings that appear to the viewer, by properly learning about body language you will be able to reveal want you want to reveal out of your emotions and not what you actually feel. So its not about what do you feel within a negotiation, its about what the other person notices
- color psychology : do you know that you can affect the impression someone builds about you just by changing the color of your clothes? Colors can affect other people, its recommended that you wear blue in a negotiation, blue will make the other person think that you are trustworthy and loyal (off course this will happen unconsciously
- face reading : everyone have got his own method of getting convinced, for example the stubborn can never get convinced by repetition, he will just resist more, on the other side the logical thinker will never get convinced by emotions he needs logic, using face reading you can determine the type of person that you are dealing with and so you can know how are you going to convince him
- machine gun technique : this technique is called the machine gun technique because you are going to fire many different unrelated points together in a fast manner so that the other person wont be able to think of a reply to them all at the short time available, and even if he was able to answer one or two, still part of his conscious mind will be busy trying to find a solution, and since he is now not using all of his conscious mind, he will easily loose the negotiation.
- flexibility: if for some reason you found a strong resistance for a certain point that you have said, don’t waste your time at this point, just jump to another one, simply because if the other person was well informed about this point or if his belief system contradicts with this point you will never be able to convince him, don’t waste your time and don’t fight a battle that has low chances of victory, jump to another point that he knows little about
- replying back with another question: in case you are asked a question that you don’t want to answer you can reply back with another question, like “why do you want to know that?” or “will it matter much if you knew this?”, in some negotiations this may not be an option but at least it will work in many other ones
- focusing on the other person’s need:one big mistake many people do in negotiations is trying to convince someone of something from their own point of view, for example if your major need was safety while the other person cared more about luxury, trying to convince him to buy a Volvo because its safe will not get the same result as trying to show him that the Volvo could be a luxurious care too. focus on his needs, belief system and values and not yours, as for you, you are already convinced , you want to convince him