Everyone negotiates. Even deciding not to negotiate is a positioning statement from a negotiator. In our Vistage meetings this month I invited Bob Gibson, a professional negotiator, to teach our CEO members about negotiation strategy, tactics, and perceptions.
We learned about the 7 P’s of negotiation:
– Perception
– Position
– Power
– Planning
– Practice
– Performance
– Persistence
Some of my personal takeaways from the training on negotiations included the following. Every negotiation involves people. All people are human. As people, emotion and other drivers impact the negotiation process. Examples of drivers that impact an individual’s position in negotiation include, but are not limited to the following; a person’s…
– drive to be right
– drive for fairness
– drive for making a difference
– drive for safety
– drive for avoiding making a mistake
– drive for avoiding work effort
– drive for power or control
– drive for being liked
– drive for looking good
– drive for respect or acceptance
– drive for greed or affluence
– drive for fame
and many other drivers.
Often times, in a negotiation, the drivers of the players involved are the key to the outcome of the negotiation. A win-win typically involves understanding other’s drivers, and meeting them in a way that makes both achieve what they want.
In preparation for my Vistage Group Meetings this week, I prepared some quotes on negotiation that included the following:
“If you can persuade your customer to tattoo your name on their chest,
they probably will not ever switch brands.”
Attributed to a Harvard Business School Professor
“If you have a reputation for always making all the money there is in a deal,
you won’t make many deals.” – J. Paul Getty, on quoting his father
“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
John F. Kennedy
“A negotiator should observe everything. You must be part Sherlock Holmes, part Sigmund Freud.” – Victor Kiam
“Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.” – Sir David Frost
“Anger can be an effective negotiating tool,
but only as a calculated act, never as a reaction.” – Mark McCormack
“It’s a well-known proposition that you know who’s going to win a negotiation; it’s he who pauses the longest.” – Robert Court
“Everything is negotiable.
Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.” – Carrie Fisher
“You have to persuade yourself that you absolutely don’t care what happens. If you don’t care, you’ve won. I absolutely promise you, in every serious negotiation, the man or woman who doesn’t care is going to win.”
Felix Dennis
“For me, relationship is very important. I can lose money,
but I cannot lose a relationship. The test is, at the end of a conversation or a negotiation, both must smile.” – Sunil Mittal
“The greatest sale I ever made in my life was the day I finally bought what I was doing – the day I saw the big picture, the day I had a the great concept, the great passion – yes, when I truly began believing in what I was doing.” – Cavett Robert
