Have you ever felt intimidated when faced with the opportunity of negotiating with someone who is as seasoned as a pro salesperson when you are buying a house, cellular phone service, or buying a car?
The word negotiation in itself strikes fear in the minds of even the most outgoing person. But if you can master the art of negotiating, you will wind up as a winner in the negotiating game without actually having to leave money on the table.
Here are a few ways through which you can master the negotiating technique:
1) Ask Questions
Don’t shy away from asking a lot of questions and that too relatively because expert negotiators do so. By asking questions, you ensure that you are the one who is leading the conversation, not giving away too much information, allowing yourself some time to pause, and better understand your position.
So to shift the power dynamics in your favor, ensure that you ask the person you are negotiating with the right questions.
2) Try establishing a connection
If you can’t seem to trust a person, it will become very hard for you to negotiate with that person. Therefore, you need to establish a connection and build trust with your interlocutor so that you can negotiate.
One pro tip of building trust and establishing the connection is doing what you say you will do, even with minor things such as meeting or calling at an exact time. When someone feels connected with you, he/she will always rethink your favor before rejecting your offer.
3) Hear them before you start
One of the best strategies to successfully negotiate is listening carefully to what is being said by your interlocutor so that you can best counter it.
You won’t reach a logical deal by constantly talking and bullying the person you are negotiating with. If they feel that you are not hearing them they might shut down negotiations very quickly. When your interlocutor is done talking, you can make the expert move of replying with your bonus points.
4) Give your plus points
Provide concrete evidence of why you are suitable for this and why you deserve more than the median, by citing specific examples of your past performance as leverage.
If you know that you are cut above the rest, never settle at a baseline offer. Always articulate very clearly why your counterpart should accept your offer.
Also, one pro-tip here is to save your best point for the end because as they say, “the champion plays his knockout punch at the very end.”
5) Aim for high
At times, you might undersell yourself & throw in a bid just to seal the deal immediately. But by doing so, you are exposed to a prominent risk of being woefully underpaid and set a precedent, in case the same client returns to you for future work.
Your ideal price at the beginning should be high because you may have to come down slightly during the negotiations. Besides, you should also know in advance what you are happy settling with.
Having a clear-cut understanding of what will satisfy you monetarily will avoid any possibility of you blurting out a number only to find it as being unfavorable once you walk out the door.
6) Be objective and anticipatory
To take your negotiation to the next level, you should be able to anticipate how the entire session is going to play out.
Just as a good chess player can anticipate how the game will turn out in response to a given move, an expert negotiator can get a sense of how exactly their initial terms will unfold in real life.
7) Take your ego off the table
Remember you are negotiating for business purposes & not meeting your ends. This can be a very hard thing to say while negotiating for something personal such as your artwork or your business. But it’s critical to set your eyes on the end goal & not get offended during the negotiations.
If you have kept your ego aside, it becomes less likely that the negotiations are going to take a drastic turn by escalating & getting hostile.
8) Never go negotiating alone
You should never go for negotiating alone because when you go with someone you make your side stronger. If in any case, you become weak in the conversation, your partner can come up with better counters and lead the conversation.
In this way, you can make your team stronger and there are more chances that you will convince the other party to negotiate on your terms.
