Today’s article is written by Lucy Adams. Lucy is an aspiring businesswoman. Most of all, she’s interested in covering the most intriguing topics of yours, whether they are about business, writing or literature. Share your best ideas with the blogger and get a high-quality guest blog in a week or so!

The surrounding reality is now always benevolent, especially when it comes to relationships in business. Entrepreneurship is always about interpersonal interaction and negotiations, and to get the most out of it; you should be not just a good orator but also psychologist.

How to Win a Tough Negotiation

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Whether you like it or not, as a businessman, you’ll need to participate in tough negotiations of unusual sharpness and emotional intensity. To win such discussions, you should realize your advantages and disadvantages, as well as tricks that the opponent can use against you.

Let’s review some strategies and tactics of conducting tough negotiations together with Lucy Adams, an outsourcer from https://bestessay4u.co.uk/.

Negotiation Strategies

There are two big strategies:

  • Defensive – applied if the opponent has a certain advantage, for example, psychological or professional.
  • Offensive – applied when you have an obvious advantage over the opposite side. The strategy lies in asking provocative questions to break the opponent’s balance, that is to make him lose self-control, make mistakes or say something that should not be said.

As for the tactics of conducting tough discussions, they are:

  • Psychological comfort, which implies cajoling the opponent by using the language that can be reduced to something like “We wish you only the best.” This tactic makes the opponent more malleable and inclined to make concessions because the psychological comfort calls for vanity, a sense of one’s importance, etc. The opponent’s greed can be used as well if one can’t properly assess the situation.
  • Negotiations based on the opponent’s point of view, which implies putting yourself in the opponent’s shoes and analyzing the issues from his perspective. Here you can operate with arguments that matters much for the interlocutor. The goal is to undermine his (her) confidence in his conclusions, unobtrusively imposing your point of view.
  • Sudden change in opinion, meaning a very tough negotiation until achieving the intermediate result and subsequent change in tactics. Once you begin to show empathy, compassion, understanding, etc., the opposite side gets unconsciously imbued with confidence and takes your point of view for the reason of gratitude one experiences towards those who originally held the opposite viewpoint but afterward began to share their point of view. This trick is extremely effective because the opponent tries to use the temporary loyalty of the initially aggressive side.

There are some other psychological methods of influence based on the insufficient competence of the opponent, when he (she) is discouraged by a huge number of terms, names, official data, etc. In many cases, not to show the lack of education and awareness, one won’t try to clarify these incomprehensible moments and will have to believe in what is being said.

The most experienced communicators can apply some methods of hypnotic influence, for example, NLP, to immerse the interlocutor into a trance state so that the latter will simply lose the ability to analyze and critically assess the situation.

However, the productivity of tough negotiations depends not only on the ability to use the above strategies and tactics. There are also some techniques to regulate the opponent’s behavior:

  1. Be as open as possible and clearly state your position from the very beginning to achieve a similar behavior of the opponent.
  2. If the format allows communication on extraneous topics, use it to your advantage. Nothing brings people closer as much as common interests/problems. Communication on abstract topics is not just a pleasant pastime but also a great way to solve the problem in the best way possible.
  3. Many people are afraid of asking for help. However, such a move can easily disarm even the most aggressive enemy. Given the characteristics of the psyche of most people, the chances to get help are quite high for many reasons, including the fear of losing one’s own importance, compassion and subconscious desire to help. You can start with something banal, for example, with a request to lend a pen or a piece of paper.
  4. In no case should the opponent be allowed to manipulate or make pressure on you! It is even possible to say that the opponent goes too far! He (she) will not be able to manipulate you if you constantly maintain awareness and self-control.

Even if the negotiation turns into a conflict, don’t become personal and insult the opponent! The most effective way to say goodbye is to admit that you take all responsibility for a failure in the negotiations. You can also point out that it is your opportunities that do not allow you to reach a mutual understanding, but in the future, you do not mind to discuss these issues again.

I wish you always to be the winner of tough negotiations! Good luck in your business endeavors!