I had an idea to do a little series of posts about things I've learned and applied to my personal and professional life. I'll keep these posts quite short but hope someone reads something they can fit into their own life of they can use to good effect.
This is the third and last post about effective negotiation techniques I've learned and used for many years. If you would like to, you can see the first "negotiation" post here which introduced the first two and see the second "negotiation" post for the second set of negotiation tools.
Negotiation - That's right - (not you're right) - and the negative call out
Negotiating with others can be summed us as building trust the biggest factor in the negotiation; without trust it's incredibly difficult to negotiate effectively and then other methods are required, torture for one. So, building trust it very important in professional and personal negotiations.
Get them to say, "that's right":
It's far more powerful (and important) that they say that instead of you're right. So, a good negotiator will expertly summarise the situation, thoughts, issues or problem back to the person(s) being negotiated with to show how deeply and effectively they have understood those things. The result of that summary needs to gain a, "that's right," comment at the end. You don't want them to say you're right because you're trying to confirm that you have their situation summarised perfectly, not your own.
You: As I understand it, you've felt unsupported and alone in the process of solving the___and working on the solution to___which has left you feeling undervalued, under pressure and floundering.
I've said things like this and as I summarise I can see the person's facial expressions and general body language relax immediately - this indicates they feel heard and understood and that we're building trust.
Call out the negatives early
This is going to be specific to particular situations and negotiations but is incredibly powerful. It's about diffusing the situation early on and before they do, calling out objections, calling out all the negatives whether they are project or product related or even about you yourself. The benefit is diffusing objections prior to them having the chance to blow up or get out of shape over them; it takes the wind out of their sails so to speak.
You: It's probable you believe I'm being unfair, too harsh and demanding on your time and just plain difficult. You probably think I'm being argumentative and disrespectful also.
You get the idea, you've called out the negatives that person is or might be thinking right at the outset leaving them no ammunition to fire at you meaning they're less likely, or unable, to simply explode. It means the negotiations can proceed a little more smoothly. This is difficult sometimes because we don't generally like throwing light on negatives about ourselves but the thing to remember is you're trying to seek a win, or a win-win, result and it doesn't much matter how that is achieved.
I've got a few more to share down the track but wonder what your thoughts are on these ones.
Have you used them or do you recall these techniques being used on you? If so and you want to comment please go ahead in the comments below.
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That's not easy to get the other say 'that's right' because it comes more natural say 'you' as you are talking to him, can be tricky
Say all the points he could use is a nice one, like this he will be speechless with nothing more to add, leaving you room to add your points, I've never tought about this one
These tactics and others have always worked well for me and have helped deliver good results.
It's not like you gotta negotiate with terrorists or suicide attempters? 😄
My work negotiations have fairly serious implications for those involved, but I shoot terrorists rather than negotiate with them; they deserve it.
Oh on that I'm with you
This was a helpful addition to your series. I have some things I need to roll out in the near future here and I am not sure how the stakeholders are going to take it, so relying on some of these techniques might be helpful.
Yep, they're pretty handy in cases like you mention...help to get people on board. Good luck.
Thank you!
Getting the other person to say ‘that's true’ instead of ‘you're right’ makes that person talk about the situation or the specific topic... whereas in the second case, they might agree without really thinking about it... could that be?
This is a very interesting point, and depending on how we guide it, we will get that positive result. A change in words changes the result. Very good to apply.
In the second case, it is like getting ahead of the other person, and they will no longer be so negative because we affirm it first; they will think that we think the same way. Thank you for these tips!
You may use them or not, I guess it depends on the situations you find yourself in and whether serious negotiations are required.
It's good to know and learn. I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to use these techniques. Thank you.
My wife is a master negotiator, so I definitely had these used on me more than once :)
Lol...yeah aren't they all. I guess we don't mind so much, depends on what's being negotiated.
WEN BOOK?
I think this sounds like something Robert Greene would say but even better.
I think getting people to please you by saying “you’re right” is easier. But throwing out all the objectives and drawbacks make them understand not just the situation but get drawn towards the person. Sounds like a law of power.
I think yours is even better because it’s not even you being generous. It’s you just saying the facts because whatsoever way they think of it, they see that there is no angle just the truth.
I’d check the previous techniques!
Yeah, these are not necessarily used together, there's a right and wrong time, but the techniques I've mentioned in this, and the other, posts are quite powerful if used in the right situations and deployed correctly along with other things like voice modulation and tone and body language.
Great techniques but I think they’d word depending on the environment you find yourself and how the people think.
These techniques might hardly work from where I’m from.
I usually just smile or laugh to deescalate the matter and admit they’re right, (when it has to do products) but I need them to understand me and why I can only get it for that amount (using no particular words, just whatever comes to mind), but maintaining the same mild or playful approach.
When I’m having a bad day though, I really don’t care. lol
Fair enough.
Building trust🤔 Hmmm.
So the best thing to spend our energy to achieve when negotiating with people is to build trust
And other things.