5 Ways To Become Better At Negotiating
You Do Not Have to Be Ruthless
Women have ideas about negotiation that have been largely created by the movies. I had them too. Negotiators (read: salesmen) were con artists taking advantage of the innocent (Tin Men - aluminum siding salesmen); Glengarry Glen Ross (selling swampland in Florida to "marks") The Boiler Room (junk bonds); nearly every episode of Entourage (Hollywood agentry); and, most recently, The Wolf of Wall Street (res ipsa).
These are portraits of ruthless, often sociopathic, men on the make, working the short or the long con. Money is the goal. People are the means. The play is ruthless. And women don't like that. A lot of men don't like that either, but six months after negotiation training, 98% of the men and only 40% of the women are using the strategies and tactics they were taught.
Why?
Because, the women reported, the approaches taught to them required them to be inauthentic, manipulative, and, conniving. For a three to five percent raise, they'd rather skip it and feel good about the woman in the mirror in the morning.
It's Better to Be Good
The good news, confirmed by the Harvard Program on Negotiation, is that it's better to be "good" (helpful, caring, interested, authentic, warm) than it is to be "bad" when what you're doing is having a conversation leading to agreement.
Here's what you have to do.
Know your value and stick to it.
Start 3 to 5 moves above your goal because you need room to make the concessions your bargaining partner will inevitably ask you to make and, as a bonus, people are happier when you make several concessions than if you accept what they thought they wanted in the first place (think: buyer's remorse).
You need to be capable of walking away from the negotiation table, that is, you must know and be willing to concede to a no-deal option.
You need to know what to do in the face of hard-ball competitive bargaining tactics.
You need to learn the grammar of the negotiations in which you’re already engaged on a daily basis.
What negotiations are those?
The one where you ask for the best associate in the firm to be assigned to your trial team; the one where you ask for a bigger office; the one where you stand your ground on the necessity of paying the speakers your business brings in to teach your women how to negotiate; and, yes, the one I’m currently failing at – the negotiation with your husband over control of the thermostat (at exactly what time do we get to turn off the air conditioning and open and %$#^% windows?).
Those negotiations!
Ruthless is old school.
New school is knowing your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, standing your ground, seeking common interests, trading across differing issues (low cost to you/high value to your bargaining partner); and, pitching your proposals as satisfying your negotiation partners’ needs, desires, goals, preferences, and, priorities.
These are the strategies and tactics that have been proven, over and over again, to create better negotiated resolutions for all parties. It’s called interest-based, mutual benefit, principled, problem-solving or value-creating negotiation.
It’s what we women do naturally.
If we’re not doing it for our own benefit, we’re, frankly, just being schmucks. And the one thing I know about business and professional women in this - we went to school to learn our trade or rose up in the ranks without the need of fancy degrees so we'd never ever be victimized like our mothers or grand-mothers or great-grandmothers once were.
Go out and get them, Ladies. The world is your oyster and you deserve what you can negotiate.