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5 Surprising Negotiation Facts



If you don’t ask you don’t get.  If you don’t negotiate you will always pay the full price.
If you don’t negotiate your salary you will never be able to get the pay rise that you deserve.   
People don’t just hand something to you, you need to ask for it and then negotiate.
If you have a fear of negotiating, chances are you try to avoid it. If you avoid negotiating, you will never lose your fear of it. What you need to do is expose yourself to negotiations; embrace it by practising negotiating as often as possible. Fortunately, there are many opportunities where you can practice and improve your negotiation skills daily.

The following five facts about negotiation might give you a different perspective of negotiation and as a result you might approach the negotiation differently.

1.      A negotiation starts with a rejection
People often fear rejection and tend not to move past it whereas receiving a rejection means that this is the beginning of a negotiation.
A rejection gives you an opportunity to resolve an issue or a conflict. It is important to understand common interests and opposing interests and resolve the issues through concessions at the bargaining table.
2.      Make concessions with reluctance
Never give anything away easily, you want to concede with reluctance as people tend to value something more if it was hard to get. If you are buying a fridge and you are asking for a 10% discount and the seller says instantly yes, then that makes me think that I could have gotten a bigger discount as it was too easy to get.
3.      You don’t need to justify
During a negotiation you don’t need to justify or explain your demands, you just need to tell the other party what you want, politely of course. Once you start to justify or explain why you want X, you are demonstrating to the other party that the offer you have made needs justification and it is therefore moveable. You are negotiating with the other party because you want to come to a deal and they are already interested in what you have to offer, they know the features etc, so there is no need to justify.
4.      Mention your price first and anchor your position
       No matter whether you are buying or selling, you should put the offer on the table first to set an expectation and an anchor point. The offer needs to be ambitious; if you are the buyer it needs to be well below your maximum acceptance point; if you are the seller the offer needs to be well above your minimum acceptance point. You open ambitiously so you have room to move in the negotiation  which demonstrates the other party that there is a willingness to come to a deal. At the same time it evokes reciprocity, a basic law of social psychology; when we get something we feel obliged to give something in return.
5.      You can’t be fair
When you negotiate you want to get the best deal for yourself or your company which means that you can’t be fair to the other party as the other party might exploit your fairness. A negotiation is not about splitting the pie 50/50, that is not a negotiation. A negotiation is about getting the best deal for yourself while at the same time making the other party feel as if they have gotten the better deal. You do that by using point 2 and 4.

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