1. make negotiation skills part of your personnel development
Those who have the ability to negotiate well are more successful at work. This may sound like a truism, but it's not. Rather, negotiation skills are one of the most underestimated skills and success factors. Negotiation techniques are practically non-existent in school and university curricula. This is due to a number of beliefs, first and foremost the idea that special negotiation skills are an innate talent. I'll let you in on a secret:
Negotiation is not a talent. You can learn to negotiate!
Our many years of experience with companies of all sizes and from all industries shows that
- Gifted negotiators become even better through targeted support,
- pseudo-poor negotiators become more confident, self-assured and professional.
In the end, everyone benefits: the employees, the management - and of course your company.
Many internationally successful companies (in the automotive industry, e.g. BMW, Ford, GM, Nissan) have learned that a sustainably successful HR development strategy must also teach negotiation techniques. BMW, Ford, GM, Nissan, Opel, Toyota, Volvo; in the financial sector e.g. Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Western Union; in the energy sector e. E.g. BP, Chevron, Shell, Petronas; consulting service providers e.g. Accenture, AT Kearney, Boston Consulting Group, Diamond Consultants, Ernst & Young, KPMG; in the pharma and FMCG sector e.g. Procter & Gamble, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer Starbucks) have long been recognized and implemented in the form of dedicated measures.
I would therefore recommend making the teaching of negotiation skills one of your personnel development measures.
2. Raise awareness of the importance of professional negotiation skills
Make your employees aware of the importance of professional and structured negotiation skills for the competitiveness of your company. And do so at all levels and in all areas: department heads as well as team members, especially in the areas of sales, marketing, purchasing, logistics and finance.
However, you should expect resistance.
because every new personnel development measure can be seen as hidden criticism or even a threat. Especially when it comes to negotiation skills. Employees who already enjoy negotiating are often reluctant to be shown their cards. And those who prefer to avoid negotiation situations see their comfort zone at risk. People rarely show their resistance directly or openly. They are more likely to encounter the classic counterarguments:
- "It's gone quite well so far!",
- "We've never needed that before!",
- "There's no time for that!"
Or the workforce even puts up passive resistance by listlessly and half-heartedly participating in some measures without identifying with the objectives. Here it is important to get everyone on board early on. Explain the benefits that each individual can personally derive from the planned measures, among other things:
- working more efficiently, dadurch
- Zeitersparnis sowie
- bessere Verhandlungsergebnisse, mithin
- stärkere Geschäftsbeziehungen und schließlich
- mehr Erfolg.
And don't forget the fun factor. Every successful and, above all, sustainable training course should be didactically and pedagogically designed in such a way that all participants want to continue taking part and eagerly await the next unit. And the measure should convey the joy that lies in applying the methods and techniques of good negotiation and in achieving negotiation goals.
3. Eliminate prejudices
The perception of negotiation skills is often distorted by two prejudices:
Prejudice 1: Being able to negotiate is a talent
The first prejudice is the assumption that people are naturally skilled at negotiating - or not. Have you heard the snappy saying about so-called common sense? It seems to be the most fairly distributed commodity on earth: Don't anyone complain about not getting enough of it. Many people have a similar distortion of perception when it comes to negotiating skills. But this assumption is fundamentally wrong. Whether accounting or business English, tango or negotiation: Of course it matters whether you have aptitude and enthusiasm. But ultimately, if you want to perform well and achieve lasting success, you can and must learn and practise a skill, with professional guidance, success monitoring and feedback.
Prejudice 2: Negotiating is a battle
The second prejudice is the idea that negotiating is a battle with winners and losers. This misconception, which is particularly persistent in the German-speaking world, is probably based on the often tearful reporting of negotiations. Reports of merciless labor disputes simply get more clicks, and a talk show achieves higher ratings with a negotiation expert who saves the lives of hostages almost single-handedly. A negotiation as high noon? Of course there are such extreme situations. And yet they are only rare exceptions, which make them all the more eye-catching.
But they can be avoided if all parties
- prepare a negotiation professionally,
- work together respectfully and last but not least
- negotiate confidently.
You may remember Ignacio López, the head of purchasing at Opel and later General Motors from 1987 to 1993. His strategy of negotiating mercilessly with suppliers led to a sharp drop in the quality of the components supplied after a few years - the López effect named after him. López's initially successful negotiating strategy ultimately cost General Motors billions. You want to win in negotiations, but you don't want to defeat anyone. Especially not long-term customers, suppliers or partners.
This means that in order to make teaching negotiation skills part of your personnel development measures, you need to dispel both of these prejudices:
- being able to negotiate is a talent that cannot be learned, and
- negotiating is a battle with winners and losers.
4. Analyze your company's critical negotiation situations
Every company is different and will therefore benefit from a specific negotiation strategy. To make this the subject of training, you need to identify your company's critical negotiation situations and analyze them in detail.
Typical questions include:
- What interests are we pursuing when negotiating?
- What are our negotiating objectives?
- What are the interests behind the positions of our negotiating partners?
- What solutions are there that meet the interests of all sides?
- What alternatives do we have if no agreement can be reached?
- How can we improve these alternatives?
- What alternatives do our counterparts have?
- How can we achieve a trusting basis for discussion?
- What do we know about our negotiating partners?
- and the like
These questions need to be clarified as part of each individual negotiation. By intensively examining representative sample cases for your company, you will gain insightful material that will allow you to develop effective tools for negotiation skills.
5. Plan the right training measures
Building on the analyses of critical negotiation situations, you or your HR department can plan the optimal training measures for your company. In doing so, you need to find answers to two questions:
- Which specialists are of particularly high strategic importance for your company's negotiation success?
- Which requirements are particularly important to consider?
The second question covers several aspects, such as
- Which range of measures meets the specific needs of your employees?
- What inspires your employees and promotes their development most effectively?
- Which measures are the most sustainable
Proven formats for further training measures are seminars and workshops, both in-house and external. However, you should also consider individual coaching sessions. This flexible format is particularly appealing to top performers and leads to very good results.
Over-the-counter formats have their undisputed strengths - not least for team building. Nevertheless, the effectiveness and efficiency of professionally planned and implemented blended learning is often not emphasized enough. This is because the mix of different formats, such as
- asynchronous modules for the development and/or repetition of the basics,
- presence workshops for intensive case studies and role plays as well as
- remote coaching sessions for long-term and individual support and development,
can achieve strong synergy effects that far exceed the effectiveness of conventional formats. And perhaps the most important thing at the end: Keep your staff's backs free during the measures. Make it clear that day-to-day business takes a break during a seminar. If possible, workshops should even take place outside the usual working environment. Only those who are not continuously interrupted by customer inquiries or meetings on a training day can achieve good learning success and solid work results.
6. Take into account the individual strengths of your employees
In addition to strategies and methods, the learning content includes above all the promotion of the practical negotiation skills of the individual participant, usually in the context of practical case studies and role plays. It has proven successful to start with generic or generally applicable role plays in order to create a basic understanding of negotiation strategies and tactics.
The next step is to consolidate negotiation skills with dedicated and tailored role plays. Particularly good learning results can be achieved if the participants repeatedly take on the roles of their actual negotiating partners: Sales people play buyers, indirect sales experts get to prove themselves on the front line, supply chain managers become sales managers.
In the process, everyone finds out their individual negotiating style - their personality as a negotiator. This is important because every style has its strengths that need to be utilized. The better someone knows and knows how to use the strengths of his or her own negotiating personality, the more confident and successful he or she will be in negotiations.
7. Give your team constructive feedback before and after negotiations
Give your team sufficient opportunity for constructive feedback before and after negotiations. After all, employee development is not limited to seminars and workshops, but continues in day-to-day work. This also includes an open and active error culture. Mistakes in negotiations should be seen as welcome opportunities to further develop negotiation skills or negotiation strategies. The key here is not to look for someone to blame, but to reflect on the mistakes thoroughly - with the aim of avoiding them in the future.
Mistakes are not the opposite of success, they are part of and a prerequisite for success.
8. Measure the success of your measures
Negotiation success can be measured. However, it consists of much more than just the prices, volumes or delivery times achieved. It also includes maintaining resilient customer and supplier relationships, which are characterized by a self-confident and at the same time appreciative culture of discussion, but above all by reliability combined with flexibility in the agreements concluded. The quality of the insights for the future gained in the respective negotiations and their documentation, analysis and communication are particularly crucial for long-term success. The development and ongoing maintenance of a corresponding catalog of criteria and a best practices database make a decisive contribution to monitoring success and strengthening the negotiation skills of your entire company.
9. Use your measures proactively for your personnel marketing
Your personnel marketing benefits from your strategic measures: Especially in times of an increasing shortage of skilled workers, it is not just a matter of pure professional expertise. With comprehensive personnel development measures in the area of negotiation skills, you can increase your attractiveness as a future-proof employer for trainee specialists and managers.
