Negotiation Training

Our public Negotiation seminars and in house Negotiations workshops are enlightening, educational, measurable and fun. Negotiation training courses can be scheduled at your offices or through our open enrollment classes. We do offer negotiation skills training seminars to the general public.

Contact us today to discuss your specific Negotiation training needs or to sign up for one of our public negotiations workshops. 

Participants in the Win- Win Negotiations class will learn to:

• Develop an effective plan and strategy for any negotiation
  
• Know when and when not to negotiate
  
• Negotiate face-to-face, on the phone, and through e-mail
  
• Learn to become a more persuasive negotiator
  
• Develop a common negotiating language with the other parties
  
• Use negotiation techniques that pull information from the other parties
  
• Read client and employee behaviors styles to maximize closure
  
• Recognize interests and issues and avoid unnecessary positions
  
• Neutralize manipulative negotiation tactics
  
• Minimize negotiation conflicts and deadlocks both internally and externally
  
• Coordinate negotiations within client organization
  
• Meet business objectives by focusing on planning rather than on tactics

Role playing in negotiation training or in preparation for a negotiation can help you in many different ways:

1. It will help you eliminate many surprises
2. It will help you further develop your skills
3. It will help you achieve better outcomes
4. It will help you better understand yourself, and how you may be perceived by the other party
5. It will help you develop a comfort level with the issues at hand
6. It will help you better understand other peoples' body language signals
7. It will help you better understand the signals you may be sending to other people via your verbiage and your own body language
8. It will provide the opportunity to critique your skills as well as your negotiating positions

Role playing in negotiation training is like rehearsing for a show. The person who has the lead at the negotiating table should sit with a few people and outline their position on each major negotiating point. The other people should offer counterproposals that might be anticipated from the other side. As these negotiation training practice sessions proceed, positions and responses need to be critiqued constructively by the group so that the lead negotiator develops a comfort level with the positions and the alternatives. I used to try to get people that had been involved in similar situations, including a lawyer or two, to participate in the negotiation training role playing exercises.

Even before you do the negotiation training role playing, do your homework. Outline the key topics for negotiation training. For each topic, outline your negotiating position as well as what you believe to be the other party's position. At this juncture, you should set up a meeting with all of the affected business disciplines in your organization to get a good read on their reactions and responses to the various topics and positions. In addition to better preparing yourself, this approach will help you develop a unified stance on your side of the "deal," and it will help preclude "second guessing" at the conclusion of the negotiations.

By reviewing each topic in this manner in negotiation training, you also should be able to uncover any sensitive areas that may not have been obvious to you. Further, you may uncover some "deal breakers" for the other people on your side of the "deal." Finally, the group may provide you with some new negotiating strategies and/or alternative positions to further assist you in reaching a satisfactory agreement.

Once again, there always are situations that do not follow past experience. Negotiating is an art rather than a science, and the process continually gets refined throughout the deal making process. As each negotiation is unique to a specific deal, as well as to the people at the negotiating table, the key to success is to remain flexible. Above all, you have to be creative in your approach to resolving what may appear to be insurmountable obstacles.

Lesson learned: Role playing in negotiation training better prepares you for negotiating in many ways. It is like rehearsing for a show. The more you do, the more opportunity you will have to explore potential obstacles and alternative solutions, which ultimately will lead to a better outcome for both parties.

More Negotiations Training Tips