The prospect of improving your negotiation skills can feel so overwhelming that we often put off taking the very steps that would help us most, such as making time to prepare thoroughly. Negotiation improvement can seem abstract, time-consuming, or even intimidating.
The five guidelines that follow are designed to break this challenge into a series of manageable and truly essential strategies—ones that can strengthen your performance at the bargaining table without requiring you to reinvent your approach from scratch.
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1. Recognize the power of thorough preparation.
We all know we are supposed to prepare thoroughly to negotiate, yet many of us fail to follow through on our best intentions. That is a serious problem. Research consistently shows that underprepared negotiators make unnecessary concessions, overlook sources of value, and walk away from agreements that would have served them well.
In fact, the single most valuable step you can take to improve your negotiation skills is to prepare carefully for important talks.
Effective preparation might include:
- Setting aside dedicated time to research and plan
- Creating a negotiation checklist of key tasks
- Role-playing the negotiation with a trusted colleague, friend, or family member
- Enlisting a negotiation coach (see guideline 5)
- Set clear goals
- Decide which techniques to test
- Rehearse difficult conversations
- Debrief outcomes after the negotiation ends
Susskind suggests that effective negotiation coaches tend to share four traits:
- Their advice aligns with their own behavior
- They emphasize preparation
- They rehearse skills with you
- They help you analyze results afterward
Improving your negotiation skills does not require perfection, nor does it happen overnight. It is a process—one that rewards preparation, reflection, and sustained practice.
What do you think is the most effective way to improve your negotiation skills? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills
Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
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As part of your preparation, determine your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA—what you will do if the current negotiation falls through—and do your best to assess your counterpart’s BATNA as well. Knowing your alternatives gives you clarity, confidence, and leverage at the table.
2. Take a proactive approach to negotiation training.
If you decide to improve your negotiation skills through formal training, resist the temptation to be a passive note taker. Writing down key points is useful, but it is not enough.
Instead, actively engage with the material. Ask yourself how each concept applies to your own negotiations. Where have you seen this dynamic before? How might this idea change your behavior in real situations? If an idea feels abstract or unclear, ask for a concrete example.
Max H. Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School, advises negotiation trainees to listen carefully for concepts that recur throughout a course or program. Research shows that we learn more effectively when we can abstract common lessons from multiple experiences. For this reason, proactive learners perk up when ideas are repeated and are more likely to retain them over time.
3. Be ready to make mistakes.
Negotiation training can be a humbling experience. Many instructors rely on role-play simulations designed, at least in part, to expose flaws in participants’ thinking—such as overconfidence or faulty assumptions.
According to Bazerman, students often feel threatened or defensive when they realize they have been relying on intuition that leads them astray. Yet this reaction does not signal a personal failure. Feeling uncomfortable is often a necessary step toward improvement.
Psychologist Kurt Lewin, who developed an influential model of behavioral change, argued that progress requires first “unfreezing” old habits. When negotiators accept that judgment biases affect nearly everyone, they put themselves in a strong position to adopt better patterns of thinking and decision-making.
4. Practice, practice, practice.
Developing new ideas into strategies that feel intuitive takes time and repetition. As Bazerman has written in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter, negotiation training allows us to practice concepts, but real change does not end when the course concludes.
To transfer newly acquired negotiation skills into daily practice, negotiators must remain vigilant. Reflect on what you have learned. Identify the concepts you most want to apply. Then practice them deliberately.
Low-stakes negotiations—with friends, family members, or colleagues—can be especially valuable. These environments are often forgiving, allowing you to experiment and refine your approach. As Bazerman notes, when new strategies are consciously applied across multiple situations, they gradually replace old habits and become second nature.
5. Find a good negotiation coach.
When facing an important negotiation, there is often someone within your organization—or professional network—who can offer sound guidance. The most effective negotiation coaches do more than dispense advice for a single situation; they focus on strengthening your underlying negotiation skills.
According to Lawrence Susskind, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, strong negotiators are grounded in an explicit theory of negotiation, such as the mutual-gains approach taught at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. This theoretical foundation allows them to explain why certain strategies work and others do not.
A good negotiation coach can help you:
In my experience preparation is key and understanding the market for the product or service you want to buy or sell. My position involves doing quite a lot of tenders for the businsses I work for, the two biggest issues I come across is a stakeholder not preparing the tender requirements correctly (knowing what they want) and the other issue is the seller not responding or communicsting what they can offer in the right way (framing their ressponse correctly). These are criticial requirements in terms of getting a suxcessful outcome and a win/win for both parties.
Finding a Negotiation Coach will help me improve my negotiation skills. I benefit significantly from the articles you share and they sharpen my negotiation skills in the area of Labour law.
This is a great blog for one who wants to pursue their career in sales this blog will offer them many tips regarding negotiation.
Thank you