Complete Guide to Video Negotiation: Enhancing Business Communication and Reaching Consensus

As you saw in trays and andes negotiation, they used indirect ways to come to an agreement. This might be a good time to review some of the principles of win-win negotiations. First, remember that the other side is not your enemy, and your negotiation is not a fight. It's a way to reach agreement. To keep the interaction friendly, it's helpful to start positive and to stay positive. Respond to hostile, aggressive, or negative comments with positive ones. That's a completely unreasonable deadline. It's ridiculous. Don't argue or copy the negative tone. Here are some possible positive responses. What if you delivered just half by that deadline? We could receive the rest later. Could that work? Don't reply to negative comments with more negative comments.

It's also helpful to emphasize common grounds or similar goals that both parties have. We can show how this proposal or a counter-proposal will solve a problem for someone. We can show how this proposal will benefit both parties. For example, imagine a publishing company and an education group are negotiating about textbooks. I know that we're both interested in children's education. We know your teachers are busy. This program is designed to save your teachers a lot of time. If you could offer a discounted price, it would be good for both of us. We could place a bigger order and students would all get new books this year.

Avoid any language that is offensive or rude. That includes threats or personal comments. This kind of language is always unprofessional. Likewise, don't show negative emotions even if you're feeling very upset. Avoid showing anger, irritation, impatience, or boredom. Or in fact, any kind of behavior that isn't positive. When you see these kinds of negative emotions at a meeting, it's a good time to take a break. Meet in a different place and even bring in some different people to try to establish a better relationship.

To be sure there is no misunderstanding, it's important to take the time to clarify any confusion. As agreements are reached, the main points should be summarized. The final stage of a negotiation is the agreement. We can say, reach an agreement. The words that might end the negotiation is when they both agree and one person says, great, we have a deal. In this stage, it's important that everyone understands what the agreement is. The points of the agreement should be reviewed. Finally, discuss what will happen next. Is there another meeting scheduled? Who will write up the agreement? It should be clear what the next steps will be and who will do them.

There are many suggested strategies for how to negotiate. For example, you might have heard not to mention the price first. Or to double your asking price so you can lower it in negotiations. Maybe you've heard about using silence as a strategy. Let's look at one way that our plans or strategies can backfire or fail. Let's listen to my colleague, Daphne, whom you all already know from courses one and two. Here, let's have her tell her story. Wendy, I have to tell you something really funny. I've been reading about the negotiating and thinking about it in the course that you're doing. I remembered something from a long time ago that was so funny. I have to tell you. I have to negotiate sometimes when I am working with a publisher because I'm a writer and the writers get a certain percentage of the sale of the books.

When I first started doing this, I really knew nothing about negotiating. I thought, I'm going to take a course. I spent a whole Saturday taking one of these courses on negotiating skills. Yeah, it was really interesting. Then finally, my opportunity comes and I'm on the phone with this editor. He's in New York. I start negotiating and I remember that one really important thing they said was use silence. They said, don't. If you put up a suggestion, like I said, no, I said 14%. If you don't hear much, then don't immediately say, I mean, okay, 12. Just use silence. Try to be really quiet. I did that. I made a suggestion and then I weighed it and then I was expecting him to come back. He didn't. All of a sudden, I realized, oh my gosh, he took that same course. He was using silence too. Before we were with all this dead air, complete silence. It was just really funny. We ended up working it out, but I couldn't help thinking of that when I was looking through the course. It was funny. That's a great story. Yeah.