Using negotiation as tool for successful business outcomes

BY OLUFEMI ADEDAMOLA OYEDELE

Negotiation is the driver of life. Everything we do as our daily core is based on negotiation. When you go out in the morning and decide to call taxi instead of driving; when you wear voluminous dress to a party instead of simple shirt and trouser; when you join a social club in the community and buy drinks for friends regularly; when you invest in properties as a ritual; when you buy a car for your wife instead of hosting a birthday party for yourself; when you haggle on the price to be paid for a property you are interested in buying instead of paying the offer price and when you sit in the front of the car instead of sitting at the back or vice versa, or eat at a cosy restaurant instead of eating at home and when you buy more rice than meat, you are negotiating. Our life will be boring if we do not negotiate!

Negotiation is a strategic discussion and manoeuvring that resolves an issue in a way that both parties find acceptable. In a negotiation, each party tries to persuade the other to agree with his or her point of view. By negotiating, the parties involved try, at all cost, to avoid arguing and halting the dialogue, but agree to reach some forms of compromise. Not all negotiations involve discussions but good negotiators use PowerPoint more than talking elaborately. Few words can perform the trick. There are some negotiations that only involve actions and messages. For example, when a seller allows a buyer to leave his or her selling point with the aim of calling him or her back to come and pay the price he or she offered after haggling about price of a product or service.

Reading “In Business as in Life You Don’t Get What You Deserve You Get What You Negotiate”, a strategy book by Chester Louis Karrass, one is bound to be attracted to the effective ways of negotiating deals with one hundred percent chance of succeeding and how to successfully negotiate. Negotiation is a skill and it has become the skill of some professionals in all endeavours of life, though all good leaders and managers have negotiation skills to varying degrees. The more your negotiating skills as a business owner, the better your chance of succeeding. And if you do not have negotiation skills, it is better you get a professional negotiator. Dr. Chester Louis Karrass was negotiator for Hughes Corporation, Santa Monica, California, and was considered a leading expert in negotiation. Good negotiators do not take “no” for an answer.

A good negotiator must have skills in preparation and planning negotiating session; knowledge of the subject/matter being negotiated; sound analytical mind; ability to think clearly and rapidly under pressure and uncertainty; good spoken ability but not necessarily be an orator; listening skill; judgmental intelligence; integrity; empathy – ability to understand the position and feelings of others; and persuasive ability. To become a good negotiator, you must have adequate background information about the issue to be negotiated. A good negotiator always aims to have equity (fair deal) in his negotiation exercise and not to win every time. After all, winning is not what matters in negotiation but getting a ‘win-win’ situation for both parties.

Negotiation is getting the best of a situation and getting a better deal than expected. It requires rigorous planning (preparation) and manoeuvring through a situation. The best quality of a good negotiator is flexibility. A good negotiator knows when he is losing a deal by assessing the strongholds and weaknesses of the other party. This is having background knowledge about the other party who is involved in negotiation and his or her ‘desperation level’ to have or not to have the subject being negotiated. Desperation level is determined by the presence of an alternative or alternatives and how similar these alternatives are to the subject being negotiated.

“If you think a lot about winning, there is a good chance you spend your time worrying about losing, too.” As a negotiator you do not have to put it in mind that you are going to the negotiation table to win. All that must be at the back of your mind is that you want to have a better deal than the status quo. If the best comes to term, then you are lucky. In getting a better deal you may have to stoop. You may need to shift position and to appeal for consideration of your plight by the other party. We stoop to conquer and Shannon L. Alder says, “When you lose your ego, you win.” All strategies to have the best deal in a negotiation exercise are good strategies. The end justifies the means in every negotiation exercise.

Negotiation is a method by which people settle their differences amicably. It is a process by which compromise or agreement is reached while avoiding argument and dispute. There are four (4) types of negotiation:

Principled negotiation – Principled negotiation is a type of bargaining that uses parties’ principles and interests to reach an agreement;

Team negotiation – where parties go into conference table with equal number of negotiators or team members on both sides to negotiate and come out with a deal;

Multiparty negotiation – involving more than two parties having interest in a subject; and

Adversarial negotiation – in which a party is already at the losing end and only wants to shift position towards the goals or away from the loser’s position. This is also called ‘plea bargaining’.

In business, negotiation skills are important in both informal day-to-day interactions and formal business transactions such as negotiating conditions of sale, lease, production match, service delivery, and other legal contracts. Good negotiations contribute significantly to business success, as they help you build better relationships. The five phases of negotiation include investigation, determining the ‘Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement’ (BATNA), presentation of your position/s, bargaining, and closure. All successful businessmen and women are those who have mastered negotiation skills to have a winning edge.

Olufemi Adedamola Oyedele, MPhil. Construction Management, managing director/CEO, Fame Oyster & Co. Nigeria, is an expert in real estate investment, a registered estate surveyor and valuer, and an experienced construction project manager. He can be reached on +2348137564200 (text only) or femoyede@gmail.com