Negotiation Skills Training

Here's one we made earlier. Great negotiation works for the long term by developing solutions that work for all parties.

In June of this year one of our training experts Jacqui Dove visited VocaLink to help them learn the skills of great negotiation. This involves the fundamentals of clarifying what you want/need and employing the best tools and approaches available to negotiate a mutually beneficial end result. VocaLink is the Company that operates the LINK cash machine (ATM) network, connecting over 59,000 cash machines in the UK.

What did we do?

The challenge was to equip the team at VocaLink with the skills needed to negotiate with confidence and mastery. It’s not just about winning the battle, it’s also about keeping the peace, and relationship building once the deal is struck. Being able to work well together after you have achieved your desired result is extremely important.

We tweaked our Negotiation Skills Training programme for Link adding some specific tools and techniques just for them.

How did we do it?

What’s negotiation all about?

We kick-started the session by inviting participants to think about what negotiations are all about. When does a negotiation start and when does it end? What’s at stake for you, your team and the organisation you work for?

Setting personal intention

As with all our workshops, we invited participants to think about their 'intention' and what it is they really want to get out of the time. By encouraging personal engagement we could deliver individual benefit with participants taking responsibility for their learning.

Great and lousy negotiators

We then thought about both great and lousy negotiators and the skills, qualities and behaviours they show and how they differ. Participants rated their skills as negotiators on a scale of 1 - 10 and highlighted the areas for improvement.

Positive negotiating behaviours

Next we examined MY agenda, YOUR agenda and OUR agenda and the different positive negotiating behaviours that should be in evidence at these 3 stages of the negotiation process. The importance of 'time-out' and having a short break from negotiations and/or breaking off from the negotiation until another time was stressed.

What should I do when?

Having examined the PUSH and PULL techniques participants wrote down examples of when these behaviours had proved useful and when they had proved to be destructive or ineffective. In addition we thought about 'What’s up for grabs?' listing 'our' interests and needs as part of the negotiation and 'their' interests and needs, looking at areas of common ground and the best outcome for both parties.

The negotiators preparation check list

Preparation is key to a successful negotiation. Our positive checklist of options, advantages and disadvantages is designed to keep negotiations on track and to ensure that you are completely prepared when discussions begin.

Coinage

Coinage is about finding out what the others party’s needs are and then making concessions and trade off’s that would positively influence the negotiation process. The question to ask is "What can I offer the other party (that they would value) - that would cost me little or nothing at all?"

Identifying stakeholders, building rapport and moving from disagreement to agreement

Highlighting all the stakeholders on both sides is crucial and building rapport with these stakeholders is important to success. We examined how participants can become more proficient at building rapport when it’s not naturally forthcoming.

Most people argue about the detail, so we examined ways in which participants can move from disagreement to agreement by establishing common ground and moving on.

The negotiation process

Finally we shared our essential negotiation process which covers the beginning, middle and the end of the negotiation, examining first impressions and establishing climate, needs, bidding, bargaining and what needs to happen once the deal is struck.

Buddies

With all our workshops we encourage attendees to partner with a 'buddy' who they arrange to meet 4 weeks after the workshop. Setting up this simple support structure with a pre arranged meeting time to ask questions and swap experiences promotes action and helps to embed the learning. Check out our typical training programme format.