If one doesn't know how to do something well, fear often takes over our rational minds. That's why so many people fear negotiating.
You often here words from the negotiating fearful, such as: "I don't like confrontation", "I don't like to .... be taken advantage of or take advantage of others", "I don't know how to ask from those who are superior to me (in business/society)."
Karras
Never fear to negotiate, no matter how great the differences are. It is impossible for both parties to recognize where and how an agreement can be made without undertaking the process of negotiating. The final outcome only becomes apparent after extended discussions.
That said, the real secret to successful negotiating is to know when to walk away from the deal without feeling anger. Just let it go.
That might be easy for me because I have never "held a grudge" in my life. Its just not in my personality to hold bad feelings towards others. I learned when I was very young that we hurt ourselves more by being angry at someone than we hurt them with our anger.
However, I never go into any kind of negotiation without understanding my walk away position. When I walk away, I then apply my skills and resources to making another deal. I don't look back and wonder.
I have had the opportunity to formally learn about negotiating and to try my hand against some masters on the international and national stage.
I once ran a negotiation for a client about a leased building. The owner of the building was 86 years old and we were taking a ten year lease. He (the owner) was worried that our proposal to install a new roof on his building (at our expense). He was worried that we would put a cheap roof on his building and it would come home to haunt him when our lease was up in ten years. I learned something about taking a long term approach from this master.
When I was much younger I took over an international negotiation between two major corporations, my employer was a U.S. based international company and the client was a Japan based international company.
My charge, "if we walk away from this we will get sued by the client and our stock will drop significantly on the NYSEX."
There was plenty of cultural nuance and a lot of lawyers swarming around the Japanese firm. In this case our only walk away position: If the contract choked us into bankruptcy we would let the client sue us and stall the inevitable." There was enough bad juju and hard feelings to go around for both sides.
My skill was to remain upbeat and positive and stay awake during the 24 hour marathon negotiating sessions. In the end we discovered that the client's walk away position was more liberal to us than ours. They did not want us to go out of business, they just wanted a superior product at a discount price. We never got close to our walk away position. We were able to satisfy our client,. Future negotiations, for follow on options, went smoothly.
On another occasion, while working in South America, our local bank purloined $50K from the joint-venture account of our local partner and my employer. The bank claimed our partner owed them the money. My position was that it was the joint-ventures money not his. In this case, my walk away was to cash-in a $350K international letter of credit sitting in a bank in New York City. My statement to the bank president as I walked out the door at 5:00 pm, was that "I would catch the 8:00 pm flight to Miami and be in NY at bank opening in the morning and he could keep the $50K as I would cash the $350K irrevocable "international letter of credit" on his bank. The one we had in a safe deposit box in New York". Before I returned to my office, the local bank had couriers sending cash to cover my checks and they had replenished the $50K into the joint venture account.
In the final analysis know when to walk away without guilt. You have the right to make deals favorable to yourself or your employer. That doesn't mean the deal won't be favorable to both parties, its your job to make it right for you.
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