Some negotiators seem to believe that hard-bargaining tactics are the key to success. They resort to threats, extreme demands, and even unethical behavior to try to get the upper hand in a negotiation. In fact, negotiators who fall back on hard-bargaining strategies in negotiation are typically betraying a lack of understanding about the gains that … Read More 
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bargaining strategies
What are Bargaining Strategies?
While you might choose from several bargaining strategies for conducting a negotiation, a mutual-gains approach will help you find ways to create value and expand the pie of resources.
Some negotiators seem to believe that hard-bargaining strategies are the key to success. They resort to threats, extreme demands, and even unethical behavior to try to get the upper hand in a negotiation.
In fact, negotiators who fall back on these bargaining strategies in negotiation are typically betraying a lack of understanding about the gains that can be achieved in most business negotiations.
The most effective distributive bargaining strategies do not require you to sacrifice your integrity or resort to dirty tricks. Rather, distributive bargaining strategies can help ensure that you claim as much value as possible in your next important negotiation—but you have to be willing to prepare.
Business negotiators can negotiate by brainstorming creative solutions, identifying differences in preferences that can be ripe for tradeoffs, and building trust.
When you know the areas of agreement where you and your counterpart are in alignment (and those areas on which you diverge), a skilled negotiator can craft an agreement that most closely approximates her own and her counterpart’s needs while building a bargaining relationship with her counterpart. Rather than antagonistic, the negotiation process becomes a value-creating, integrative situation in which each side gets a “fair share” of the pool of resources.
Wise negotiators recognize the value of both collaborating and competing at the bargaining table. They look for ways to increase the pie of value for all parties. By identifying differences across issues and making tradeoffs, both parties can walk away with a winning deal.
Discover how to boost your power at the bargaining table in this free special report, BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table, from Harvard Law School.
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Make the Most of Online Negotiations
We said goodbye to breakfast meetings, client lunches, and after-work happy hours. Goodbye to handshakes, fist bumps, and pats on the back. Goodbye to the boots-on-the-ground sales game as we knew it, and hello to Zoom calls and text messaging.
To make matters even more difficult, the economy started to trend downwards—and so did the … Read Make the Most of Online Negotiations
Dealing with Difficult People: Coping with an Insulting Offer in Contract Negotiations
The following “Ask the Negotiation Coach” question was posed to Dwight Golann, Suffolk University Law School professor and negotiation expert: “I deal with legal disputes and would like to find reasonable solutions without wasting years in court. But my opponents seem to feel compelled to make extreme—actually, insulting—opening offers. How should I respond to these … Read More
Getting the Deal Done
Negotiation is one of the most complex yet important skills to learn. Even individuals who are “born negotiators” need to practice and acquire new strategies to get some deals done. In Getting the Deal Done, you’ll discover bargaining strategies that have been used by many of the world’s most successful leaders.
… Read Getting the Deal Done
Fairness in Negotiation
Imagine that you and your business partner agree to sell your company. You end up getting an offer that pleases you both, so now you face the enviable task of splitting up the rewards. How do you ensure that there is fairness in negotiation?
… Read Fairness in Negotiation
BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table
Perfect your negotiation skills in this free special report, BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary
For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career.
… Read More
Managing Expectations in Negotiations
Successful negotiators work hard to ensure that when they and their counterpart leave a negotiation, both sides feel satisfied with the agreement. Why should you care whether the other side is pleased with negotiations or not?
… Read Managing Expectations in Negotiations
The Mediation Process and Dispute Resolution
As compared with other forms of dispute resolution, mediation can have an informal, improvisational feel. Mediation can include some or all of the following six steps.
… Read The Mediation Process and Dispute Resolution
Conflict Negotiation Strategies: When Do Employees Choose to Negotiate?
How does the desire to negotiate stack up against other workplace decision-making procedures? Negotiation seems to be the preferred decision-making mechanism when employees are seeking individually tailored solutions.
… Read More
Distributive Bargaining Strategies
Wise negotiators recognize the value of both collaborating and competing at the bargaining table. They look for ways to increase the pie of value for all parties, often by identifying differences across issues and making tradeoffs. And they also rely on distributive bargaining strategies to try to claim as much of that larger pie for … Read Distributive Bargaining Strategies
How to Handle Difficult Customers
Every salesperson has his or her war stories: tales of difficult customers who made extreme demands and threats, tried to take advantage, or were extremely rude. Dealing with difficult customers is inevitable in the sales world, and the question of how to handle difficult customers looms large. The following three guidelines can help you stay … Read How to Handle Difficult Customers
Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
Imagine you’re about to negotiate with a competing firm about a possible merger, but will need to combat emotional triggers. You enter the conference room and find a reasonable and fair representative from the other company, someone you’ve reached mutually beneficial agreements with in the past. But you’re in a terrible mood.
… Read More
Are Salary Negotiation Skills Different for Men and Women?
Most negotiators don’t engage in the kinds of high-stakes bargaining we read about in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, but almost every negotiator will need advanced salary negotiation skills during the course of her career to deal with a scenario that is, in many ways, the definition of a … Read More
Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
When a conflict looms, it can be tempting for each side to try to make unilateral decisions on key issues because of the belief that negotiations with the other side will be a dead end. This dispute resolution strategy may pay off in the short term, but it’s important to factor in the long-term costs … Read Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
Famous Negotiators: Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin
At a January press conference back in 2015, German chancellor Angela Merkel dangled a carrot in front of Russian president Vladimir Putin: the possibility of a summit in Kazakhstan aimed at easing the Ukraine crisis, to be attended by the two famous negotiators as well as the leaders of France and Ukraine.
… Read More
Understanding Different Negotiation Styles
In the business world, some negotiators always seem to get what they want, while others more often tend to come up short. What might make some people better negotiators than others? The answer may be in part that people bring different negotiation styles and strategies to the bargaining table, based on their different personalities, experiences, … Read Understanding Different Negotiation Styles
A Top International Negotiation Case Study in Business: The Microsoft-Nokia Deal
Let’s look at the international negotiation case study of Microsoft’s decision to purchase Finnish mobile phone company Nokia’s mobile device business for $9.5 billion. The deal, which closed in 2014, quickly proved disastrous: Microsoft wrote off nearly all of the deal’s value and laid off thousands of workers in July 2015. Although there were many … Read More
10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
Here are ten popular business negotiation articles on the Program on Negotiation website. Drawn from a variety of negotiation case studies as well as negotiation research, the following articles offer strategies for engaging in integrative negotiations aimed at creating win-win scenarios for each party at the negotiation table.
… Read 10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
Dispute Resolution on Facebook: Using a Negotiation Approach to Resolve a Conflict
For several years, Facebook has been working with social scientists to bring traditional methods of dispute resolution to cyberspace. The site has begun to offer users tools to resolve disputes with one another over offensive or upsetting posts, including insults and photos.
… Read More
Star Wars Stories: George Lucas and a Strong BATNA, Passed Over
In negotiation, your best source of power is typically your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. When you are aware that you have an appealing alternative deal to the one you’re working on, you will be less tempted to accept an agreement that doesn’t meet your minimum requirements. A strong BATNA gives you … Read More
Negotiating with Millennials – How to Overcome Cultural Differences in Communication
Negotiation training often focuses on bridging gaps between negotiators with different styles, backgrounds, or objectives, but what about overcoming generational barriers in negotiation? Generational differences need not stymie efforts at the bargaining table. In this segment from “Dear Negotiation Coach,” we explore how to overcome cultural differences in communication with members of the Millennial generation.
… Read More
Negotiation in Business: Ignore Sunk Costs
Think about what your house, condominium, or some other valuable asset might be worth in today’s market. Did the price you paid for it affect your answer?
… Read Negotiation in Business: Ignore Sunk Costs
How to Create Value at the Negotiation Table: Strategies for Creating Win-Win Negotiations
While you might choose many processes for conducting your negotiations, we recommend the following three steps of a mutual-gains approach to negotiations:
… Read More
Business Negotiation Skills: Fairness at the Negotiation Table
Negotiation research sheds light on negotiator expectations of fairness and equality in negotiations. The negotiation skills advice contained here can help business negotiators more effectively craft agreements with their counterparts in business negotiations.
… Read More
How to Use MESOs in Business Negotiations
It’s not uncommon in business negotiations to find yourself on the brink of impasse. You and your counterpart have exchanged a series of offers and counteroffers, and you’ve met somewhere close to the middle—but not close enough. With each side firmly rooted in its position, there may seem to be no way forward.
… Read How to Use MESOs in Business Negotiations
How Mood Affects Negotiators
What are social psychologists learning about the connections among emotions, negotiation, and decision making? Negotiation contributor Jennifer S. Lerner of Harvard Kennedy School and her colleagues have identified two critical themes. First, they have studied the carryover of emotion from one episode, such as a car accident, to an unrelated situation, such as a workplace … Read How Mood Affects Negotiators
How a Bad BATNA Keeps Medicare Drug Prices High
It’s Negotiation 101: to get what you want, you need to be able to make a credible threat to walk away from a subpar deal. And for your threat to be credible, you can’t walk in with a bad BATNA, you have to have a strong BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In … Read How a Bad BATNA Keeps Medicare Drug Prices High
A Chance at a Win-Win Negotiation in Hollywood?
Question: What’s the best way to minimize the risk of long-term financial commitments and wrap up a win-win negotiation?
… Read A Chance at a Win-Win Negotiation in Hollywood?
Adaptability at the Bargaining Table: How Improvisation and Jazz Music Inform Negotiation Strategy
Aggressive tactics and hard-bargaining strategies may, at face value, provide a roadmap to success at the bargaining table but, as the Washington Post’s Kelly Johnson discovered in her interview with Program on Negotiation faculty member Michael Wheeler, adaptability to ever-changing circumstances is essential for the “dynamic” negotiations one encounters in everyday life.
… Read More
Negotiation Skills for Resolving International Conflicts
What are the essential skills a negotiator needs to resolve conflicts abroad? How do international conflicts differ from domestic conflicts? What issues specific to bargaining across borders emerges in intercultural negotiations? In this article we explore ways in which negotiators can develop bargaining skills to overcome any barriers to communication they may encounter in negotiations … Read More
To Improve Your Negotiation Skills, Learn from a Pro
On February 16, in the midst of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) All-Star weekend, members of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) unanimously voted to oust Billy Hunter as the union’s executive director.
“This is our union and we have taken it back,” National Basketball Players Association president Derek Fisher said, as reported by ESPN.com. Fisher … Read More