Do You Make These Mistakes When Negotiating?

Let’s face it negotiating is part of our daily lives from trying to convince your boss to give you a pay raise, the landlord to give you a reasonable rent control and to convincing someone to be your girlfriend or wife. It’s all a matter of convincing or persuading. Though some of us are good at negotiating I can say there is also a lot who suck at it. But like any other skills, negotiating can be learn and hone to a polished degree through constant study and practice. Let’s first examine our negotiating boo boos and try to correct them.

-We talk more instead of listening more. Top negotiators get all the important information they must have from the other party. By listening more they position themselves to know their deadlines which a very crucial information in negotiating. If we talk more, then we are revealing way too much like our deadlines, or issues that are important to us that the other party may make comprising very hard for us. Once they know our deadlines, the one worst that can happen is that the other party might stall and wait for the deadline which makes us concede to a lot, just to take our pressures off. Play you cards close to your chest.

-We show that we are smart alecks. If we let the one we are negotiating with that we know everything, they will let their defenses up and compete with us. On the other hand if we act like we are not so informed, its human nature they feel sorry for us and even try to help us, which makes the deal run smoothly.

-We are shy or lack confidence to let the other party know what we want or expect. We should aim high and shoot for the stars, if we are unsuccessful then we just have to deal with the occasional "no" and that’s about it. But if we succeed, who knows we might make the world our oyster.

-We are impatient. If patience is not one of your virtues then I exhort you to cultivate it. Even if our negotiations do not come out the way we want it at first, we have to now that changes can happen, That’s a fact. It’s one of the laws of nature. Change. Topnotch negotiators will play on changing circumstances that will favor them. Big concessions occur in the last few hours regardless of how long the negotiation has taken.

Those are just few of the common mistakes we commit. But armed with these new knowledge and if we keep on practicing good negotiation techniques then we are on our way to having more benefits and ultimately more success.