Four Negotiation Tactics That Any Business Can Employ

Whether it’s asking your boss to assign you a two-day off or establishing a B2B trade, it is never easy to negotiate as one does not know the intentions of the person sitting on the other side of the table. Knowing how to negotiate is a skill that one develops from knowledge and information about both the trader and the traded. Every business needs negotiation tactics that can help direct their actions in the right direction to achieve the desired results. So, we are going over the 4 best negotiation tips to help you win your business deal. 

Let’s take a look.

1.     Ask open-ended questions

To know your counterpart’s threshold, you must ask them open-ended questions. Allow them to speak more so that you can understand what they want. 

Let’s say that you are sitting on the table for a factory equipment deal. You can ask questions like:

• How about we buy 12 instead of 10 pieces of factory equipment  from you, will you offer any discounts then?
• Will you provide after-sales support if need be?

Such questions will give you an idea about how much extra your counterpart is willing to offer. 

2.     Figure out their vulnerabilities

Your counterpart will try to get the better end of the deal. To counter that, you must know where their pain points are. Think like your counterpart, what they do or don’t want. Robust analysis of your counterpart will help you know more about their capabilities and pain points. So, if they try to take advantage of your vulnerabilities, you know where to hit. 

3.     Give them a number

Another strategy is called the bogey strategy. In this tactic, you give a budget to the counterpart, which is a touch lower than your actual budget. You tell them that you cannot afford anything above a certain price. Coming back to the ship example, you tell your counterpart that you can only afford to spend $1million for the ship, of which your actual budget is $1.5 million. Through this tactic, negotiation slightly bends in your favor. Even if your counterpart wants to negotiate further, they can only ask you to increase your budget a bit. In other words, you may end up buying the ship for approximately $1.1 million. 

4.     Always have your deadlines in place.

Deadlines force people to take action. However, in negotiations, deadlines are often not honored because of the lack of mutual consent between the two parties. But that does not mean that talks should go on endlessly. You must set your deadlines as your time and effort are precious. If the deal is eating up a lot of your time, try changing the mediator, manager, or the deal itself. At last, if it still does not work out then, it might be time to call it quite. 

Final Thoughts on Negotiation

Negotiations are a part of daily business life. They can happen internally between an employee and their boss or externally between the two businesses. To be a perfect negotiator, you must know what you and your counterpart expect from the deal. Ask them open-ended questions to figure out what they want from your business and how far they are willing to go for the deal. Also, it would help if you spent ample time researching their vulnerabilities. Use the bogey technique to play safe and keep your deadlines intact. You must know the last date until which you are willing to negotiate. By using these techniques, you will always have the upper hand.