Mastering Executive Negotiating Techniques and Strategies Course

This training course will provide you with a set of tools to handle the most demanding negotiation like a master. By working on a carefully chosen array of cases, you will learn how to enhance your analytical skills and build your intuition, both of which are prerequisites for successful negotiations. The course will also show you how to use these tools to make the most out of situations you may face, whether in your professional or personal life.

Course Methodology

The course uses a mix of interactive techniques, such as brief presentations by the consultant and the participants, role plays (rehearsed and impromptu), playback of videotaped performances and individual and group feedback.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Prepare and manage effective negotiations
• Employ the concessions management process with minimum loss while preserving good relationships with the counter party
• Assess their own negotiating strengths and weaknesses and those of the other side
• Use a range of negotiating tactics and master the rule of halves
• Devise long-lasting and mutually profitable agreements on a timely basis
• Prepare and manage team negotiation

Target Audience.

Marketing and sales professionals, corporate executives, advertising managers, business development managers, sales personnel, and others who are involved in commercial and negotiation activities at all levels of the organization.

Target Competencies

• Handling rejections
• Flexibility and gaining commitment
• Initiative
• Intuitive decision making
• Leading others
• Active listening
• Persuasion
• Problem solving

Course Outline

What negotiation is really all about?

• The many faces of a negotiation
• Some negotiation philosophies
• Historical retrospectives on negotiation
• The reasons behind the urge for being a good negotiator as a business entrepreneur
• Persuasion versus negotiation
• The stages of persuasion
• Braham's negotiation tips

Setting the stage and the face-to-face negotiation

• Establishing good rapport with the other party
• Understanding your own personal strengths and weaknesses
• Characteristics of a good negotiator
• The five stages of the negotiation process
• Barriers to effective negotiation
• The probe negotiation technique
• How to develop negotiation skills
• Getting ready to negotiate
• Best /Worst Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA and WATNA)
• Identifying your conflict negotiation style
• The uses of negotiation styles

Sales and commercial negotiation at work

• Selling versus negotiating
• The buyer’s decision process
• The spin questioning strategy (uncovering needs)
• Influencing the customer’s choice
• Understanding how people make choices
• Influencing decision criteria
• The concept of 'hard' and 'soft' differentiators
• Addressing and overcoming the customer’s final fears
• Strategies for the resolution of concerns

The critical rules of negotiation

• Different levels of negotiation rules
• The importance of preparing 'the envelope of negotiation'
• How to prepare 'the envelope of negotiation'
• Mastering the 'rule of halves' during the negotiation process
• Negotiating reflexes, you need to develop

Concession management

• Setting a concession making timeline
• Defining and sorting negotiable issues and creating alternatives
• Developing contingencies
• Measuring your negotiation relative outcome using a grade point average
• The most common negotiating mistakes

Team negotiation and negotiation tactics

• Team leadership
• Choosing your negotiating team
• Advanced negotiation tactics