Negotiating Tip #33:
Tips Are Not Enough To Make You a Good Negotiator
What people usually want from a course on negotiating, is 3 things: Tips, tips and more tips. And MCN offers a lot of tips – a lot of strategies, tactics, and techniques that work. But that’s not the issue. The issue is whether people use them, and use them to top efficiency. And people often have a lot of trouble there. Many people who get negotiation training fall apart when they get into actual negotiations.
To negotiate better, it’s not enough to just get a list of tactics and strategies, but you have to see and experience negotiations so you can better understand how to deal with the pressures and tension of negotiating. So you don’t get overwhelmed by the conflict that’s baked into the negotiating process.
The key to successful negotiation is not just to know what to do but also – in the phrase that applies to so many things in life: practice, practice, practice. At the very least, do serious mock negotiations, in which those playing the other side are told to do everything they can to derail you – after all, that is what will happen in the real life negotiations.