7 Steps to a Negotiation Road Map: How to Prepare Your Next Negotiation Strategy

By Henk Botha

Besides having a business with outstanding products or services, you must negotiate top deals. This book shows you how to plan for your next negotiation strategy to add top value to your transactions. Avoid paying too much, settling too low, or conceding too quickly! Dr Henk Botha invented the E.m.p.o.w.e.r. (tm) technology that reveals the insider secrets and tactics use by the world's best negotiators.

In this read-as-you-need book, you will discover how to -
- choose the appropriate negotiation style for a negotiation
- when to toughen and when to soften your style
- three proven techniques to toughen your style, without becoming argumentative or hostile
- package an opening proposal for maximum impact and credibility
- use a tool to get more for less - instantly!
- increase your flexibility and widen your options
- add value to any transaction, such as salary negotiation
- Leverage - how to get it, use it, keep it!
- uncover hidden leverage by comparing the your and the other party's priorities
- pull your bargaining levers to drive a hard bargain without driving away the other person.
- 7 ways to shield your sensitive information
- use questions to see what the other party really thins.
- how to rehearse your negotiation plan and mentally prepare for the negotiation

The read-what-you-need book gives many true-to-life examples, checklists, and questions to guide you in developing your negotiation strategy. You can repeatedly refer to it before and even during negotiations to give you new ideas and options.

Dr Henk Botha is an international negotiation expert and speaker with more than 40 years' experience in business negotiations, sales and purchasing negotiations and collective bargaining. Tens of thousands of businesspersons from many countries rated his negotiation seminars as excellent and down to earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Henk Botha
• Release date: Apr 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301850938

Henk Botha

Advocate of the High Court of South Africa, international negotiation trainer and speaker, author and Master Human Resources Practitioner with the South African Board for People Practices. Awards and honours include the degrees FIAC, Bachelor of Law, LLB, MHRP and Ph.D. More than 40 years' experience in business negotiation and collective bargaining.

Book preview

7 STEPS TO A NEGOTIATION ROAD MAP

How to Plan Your Next Negotiation Strategy

by Henk Botha Ph.D

Negotiator, Advocate, Speaker, Consultant, Author

Copyright 2013 Henk Botha

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

Henk Botha owns the following trademarks mentioned in this book:

VIP Negotiation Tool (TM), Everyone Wins (TM), VAT: Value Added Transactions (TM), WAP (TM) (Walk-Away Position) and Skills Shaping Seminars (TM)

Limits of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty

This publication aims to provide accurate and authoritative information on negotiation. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The author and publisher shall not be liable for misuse of this material. The author is specifically not giving legal advice. If you require professional advice or other expert assistance, please seek the services of a competent professional person.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook carries a license for your personal enjoyment only. You may not resell or give it away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or purchased it for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

What Will This Book Do for You?

Chapter 1: What is Negotiation?

Chapter 2: What Is Your Style?

Chapter 3: The E.M.P.O.W.E.R (TM) Negotiation System

Chapter 4: E: Establish the negotiable issues

Chapter 5: M: Magnify the issues

Chapter 6: P: Prioritize the Issues

Chapter 7: O.: Originate your proposals and maximum concessions

Chapter 8: W.: Write down the facts supporting your proposals

Chapter 9: The second E.: Evaluate the Leverage

Chapter 10: R: Rehearse Your Plan

Where Must You Go from Here?

About the Author

Seminars by Henk Botha

What Will This Book Do for You?

Schools do not teach negotiation skills. Many of us consequently do not know how to negotiate. Often, we gain negotiation skills through unsystematic experimentation, all by ourselves.

Ordinarily, we repeat the tactics that worked for us and avoid those that backfired. Still, we do not expand our negotiating experiences by learning new techniques and tactics. We commonly use certain tactics repeatedly, blunting our alertness to negotiating situations. Then, our experience of negotiation becomes dull and uninteresting.

Your careful reading of this book will give you new angles, new techniques, and new insights. You will find exciting ways to put value into the deals you make.

The key to negotiation success is proper planning, the negotiating way! You will probably say, Henk, I do plan properly but I still don't get the deals I want!

Yes, you may be spending a lot of time preparing for negotiations, but without thinking like a negotiator. This is where this book will help you: to start thinking the negotiating way. In addition, you might not have direction in your negotiations, causing the other person to string you along.

In this book, you will learn the seven steps to a negotiation road map. Just as a motorist in a foreign area uses a road map to get from point A to point B, you need a road map to get from No to Yes, from Disagreement to Agreement, or from Conflict to Compromise.

You will learn the seven-step E.M.P.O.W.E.R. (TM) system. Each letter in this acronym stands for an action that you must take. Once you have taken these seven steps, you can confidently negotiate anything.

Chapter 1: What is Negotiation?

Negotiation is the process by which persons, each with some power, try to settle differences or conflicts in a mutually beneficial way. You negotiate when you want something and another person wants something. It is a method of trying to get what you want or need from others.

It is not a situation of having to cave in. Nor is it an effort to reduce the other person to submission. It is not using fireworks to get what you want; nor is it point scoring. Simply put, negotiation is asking for your fair share. It is asking for more.

Negotiation is co-petition

Co-opetition means that negotiation is a cooperative and competitive decision-making method. It is a cooperative process; parties must want to arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement. If they lack such a desire, they will simply not negotiate. Simultaneously, it is a competitive process; parties will try to get the best result for themselves. If there was no competition, why negotiate at all? You would simply give away.

Always try to maintain a good balance between the cooperative and competitive elements of negotiation. If you cooperate too much, your counterpart might take advantage of you. By emphasizing the competitive element to much, you might end with deadlocks, lost deals and opportunities, court cases or strikes.

Choosing the right negotiating style is very important. In the next chapter, you will learn how to strike the right balance between the competitive and cooperative negotiating styles.

Power fuels negotiation

The power element in a negotiation is critical. When you have little power, your ability to negotiate suffers. When you have lots of power, it might tempt you to dominate the other person.

What is power? It is your ability to control a situation by influencing other persons' decisions by limiting their options.

Power is a stunning phenomenon, because at least 50 percent of it is in your head. It is a perception. If you think you have power, you probably have. If you think that the other person has more power than you do, you probably are in a weak position.

Somehow, we often think that the other person has more power than we do. Yet, consider that the other person might think that you have more power. Remember, there are always two heads: yours and the other person's head.

How you and the other person perceive power will influence your decisions. It will affect whether you will negotiate at all.

For instance, if there were many buyers, a salesperson would probably not want to negotiate with you over price. She would probably present you with a take-it-or-leave-it solution. On the other hand, if business were slow, she would probably be keen to negotiate the price.

Here is another example: if you cannot achieve business goals all by yourself, the situation forces you to negotiate with your employees or with their labor union. You need workers who are willing to work. This reduces your power and increases theirs. If they are not willing to work on your terms, negotiate with them over the terms and conditions.

If you want to sell your house, you need a buyer who is willing to pay your price. If you get a buyer who wants to buy your house, but not at your price, negotiate over price, terms and conditions.

Further, the way in which you and your counterpart regard power will affect the timing of your negotiations. You might wish to delay negotiations until your power has increased or until the other person's power has diminished.

If you want to buy some real estate at a coastal resort, it might pay you to delay the negotiations until after the holiday season. During the season, when there are many prospects, the seller will probably see his or her position as strong. The seller would like to negotiate while there are many prospects around.

For you, it might be wise to resist the temptation to start the negotiations. Otherwise, you might be bidding against the seller and other prospective buyers. It might be wise to wait until the holidaymakers are all gone before you start your negotiations.

Your sense of power will influence the tactics you are likely to use.

If you see your position as hopeless, you are unlikely to use heavy negotiating tactics. You are more likely to appeal to the other person's sense of reasonableness, compassion, and emotion. If your counterpart believes that he possesses all the power, he will probably be immune to your sweet-talk.

If you have power, you have leverage

What is a lever? It is a bar resting on a pivot and one uses it to move a heavy or firmly fixed object. If the pivot is right in the middle of the bar, a weight of a hundred kilograms on the side will lift an object weighing a hundred kilograms on the other side. However, if the pivot moves toward one end of the lever so that the lever has a long and a short arm, the lever becomes effective.

An object weighing a hundred kilograms that pushes down the lever's long arm lets the short arm lift an object weighing thousands of kilograms. The longer the lever's one arm is the greater weight the short arm can lift. Therefore, a lever is the maximization of power to achieve more or better results.

In negotiations, a lever is a means of exerting pressure. For instance, business competition pushes down prices. Shops and service providers become less immune to pricing pressure. The lever's pivot shifts so that the consumer has the long arm of the lever.

As competition heats up, the consumer's side of the lever becomes longer. Businesses scramble to offset the consumer's leverage. They try to move back the pivot toward the middle of the lever.

Tough Negotiators use levers to make their counterparts move from firmly fixed proposed solutions. They use it to move them closer to a more realistic solution. When negotiating, decide if and how you will use your leverage to get better deals.

In chapter 7, you will explore this power or leverage phenomenon in detail. For now, just realize that you can improve your negotiating results if you are aware of your power or leverage. You do not necessarily have to use it to make better deals. If you realize that you do have the option of using it, you can already use that knowledge to get better deals.

You negotiate more often than you think

Each time you deal with someone whose views, needs or desires differ from yours, you are in a negotiation. Whenever you ask someone, or someone asks you, to do something, you will be in a negotiation. Always, when you ask someone to give you something, you are negotiating. Every time