Being able to negotiate is a crucial part of the life of every single person. It is useful in every aspect of our lives. It is an exceptionally good skill to have and polish for both personal reasons and business reasons.
It does not matter if you are negotiating your salary at an interview for your first job, the price for a brand-new TV you always dreamed of, or a multi-million-dollar deal between two companies you’ve worked for your entire life. Negotiations are vital to every area of our lives.
With that in mind, although negotiations are usually associated with business and career, they also play a big role in other parts of life that are much more private or entertainment driven like bets with your friends, choosing a place to eat, participating in various online and bitcoin casino games, checking out the stock market, or going to a real life one and having some fun. Negotiations themselves are often connected to profit one way or another.
The reason behind it doesn’t matter, because you can negotiate at a lot of different levels, just to have an advantage over someone or something and then use it to help both sides benefit. It is an essential ability, and, in this article, we will present just a few tips on how to prepare for negotiations in your whole life so you can live a little easier.
Know Your Goals and Who You Are Negotiating With
One of the first and most important aspects of negotiation is knowing exactly what you want to gain from that process. Before engaging in any negotiation, you should have your priorities straight, be confident in what you want to achieve.
It is all best operated on examples, so if you are at the university and you are going to talk to your professor, then make sure to know what your goal is. Let’s say you got a 70% score on a test, and a better grade is from 73% score. Then make sure that your goal is to get that better grade. It allows you to better assess the situation.
It will help you get more focused on your goal and make everything smoother. You can use that knowledge to your advantage and argue at the beginning that your score on the test should be higher at least 80% and then gradually go down to the desired 73% and get the grade you initially wanted.
Knowing the opposing party of negotiations is also very important. It can give you an advantage up front. The professor could like green, so you purposefully wear a green shirt or jacket before going into his or her office to start negotiations.
Know Your Value and Do Research
The next important part of preparing for negotiation is knowing exactly how much you can offer, knowing your own limits so you always have the upper hand and steering the direction the negotiations are going.
Using another example, you know you are going to buy a new car, so make sure to do the research beforehand to be a bit more familiar with the topic. Then after going to the car saloon, you are less likely to get a bad offer, and not realize it. Knowing your value should also be highlighted that there are limits below which you are not willing to go in this particular negotiation.
You know you will not spend more than 10k on a car, no matter what, so have that firm limit set. Of course, do not reveal that to the other party. You should always have some cards up your sleeve, and other ones hidden away. Also make sure to always listen to the other party or parties involved in negotiation because many people can give hints at what it is that they are looking for and it will make the job easier for you.
Plan and Practice
Not every negotiation can be won of course, but all negotiations can be not lost. What we mean by that is that most negotiations will result in some sort of win-win situation if you play your cards right, however it is dependent on how equally or not equally both sides win. Most successful negotiations and in both sides being happier than before the negotiations started.
It is also particularly important to have a plan before starting the negotiations, but not to be limited by it. Always have a plan beforehand, however, do not be afraid to diversify from it if necessary. If something goes in another unexpected direction, make sure to stay sharp, and not get caught up in some manipulation that will cause you nothing but loss.
As a final example, let’s say that you are given a recruitment task after the interview, and you are tasked with coming up with ideas to improve a company’s webpage. You need to assess the situation, and a good practice is to do the task in a professional manner without giving too much of yourself for free.
You can do the task, and list for example 30 things that you would improve about the website of that company. However, present it in a way that will benefit both sides. While finishing the task inform the other side that you have found 30 things that could be improved upon of different value, so some things are major issues, some are just minor tweaks, and you chose 10 of these issues at random.
All the proposed solutions are of different value and magnitude, but if the company would like to get the full list, then it sounds much more like a paid task, and you have now demonstrated your capabilities, so the ball is in their corner.
Of course, practice is very important in negotiations so make sure you do not get discouraged if everything does not go according to plan, the more negotiations you engage in, the better you are, like with everything.
