My Implications and Learned Lessons in Business Negotiation

My Implications and Learned Lessons in Business Negotiation

Being a salesperson like me, I must admit that it is a tough marketplace out there and strong negotiating skills are fundamental to achieving and more importantly sustaining career and business success, particularly within a competitive sales and marketing environment. Those of us who want to achieve better results, both at work and in our private lives, need to develop effective negotiating skills. It is worth to bear in mind that if the technique used is too aggressive or even too soft, revenue and profit will be lost. This all even made greater sense to me after taking the Negotiation Course. Not only did I learn the negotiation theories and related methodologies, but also I was able to practise the negotiation exercises where I observed the negotiation process and made it in a more systematic manner. Moreover, I was able to relate many different concepts that I have learnt from the class with my own work experience.

This paper is likely to be my Negotiation summary of what I have learnt from the class. To be more specific, I will discuss about four main subject areas in which I am most interested namely 1) Essences of Negotiation which sum up general ideas of Negotiation and later will focus on Distributive and Integrative Negotiations, and “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher & William Ury, 2) Negotiation Self-Assessment in relation with other human traits and behaviours reflected in negotiations and which affect negotiations’ outcome , 3) Cultural Influences in Negotiation with respect to Hofestede’s Cultural Dimensions , and lastly 4) Two Articles on Contingency Contracts and Negotiation as Part of Corporate Capability articles respectively.

In all negotiation situations, there are two or more parties, individuals, groups or organizations who have a conflict of needs and desires , and the parties must search for a way to resolve the conflict. Negotiation takes place out side the system to invent their own solutions. The parties prefer to negotiate and search for agreement rather than to fight openly, have one side dominate and the other capitulate, permanently break off contact, or take their dispute to a higher authority to resolve it.

Parties negotiate because they think they can get a better deal by negotiating than by simply accepting what the other side will voluntarily give them or let them have. When negotiating, a give and take is expected. To reach an agreement, both sides will modify their opening statement to find a middle ground; they compromise.

Successful negotiation involves the management of tangibles (the price or the terms of agreement). The tangibles seem to be true especially for sale persons as it is a major issue in their daily business transactions. Also the resolution of intangibles:the underlying psychological motivations that may directly or indirectly influence the parties during a negotiation i.e. the need to “win” or avoid losing, the need to look “good” to those you’re representing, the need to appear “fair” or “honorable” or to protect one’s reputation, and the need to defend an important principle or precedent in a negotiation. These intangible factors are interrelated in various sales negotiations i.e. getting a market share in a fierce competition, being the most favored supplier to your key accounts, or pushing the new product into the market etc. They have an enormous influence on negotiation processes and outcomes, so it is crucial