negotiation skillsDefine value, win credibility and respect at the negotiation table. Learn the key negotiation skills, including how to generate winning conditions, regardless of what is being negotiated, or with whom.

Below, you will find blog posts with insights into effective negotiation skills. And for a much more thorough discussion of negotiation skills, download our complimentary whitepaper “Negotiation Games: Spotting and Neutralizing Five Tactics that can Damage Deals”

Define Value, Win Credibility and Respect at the Negotiation Table

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Define Value, Win Credibility and Respect at the Negotiation Table with a Few Simple Questions

Have you ever heard this from a customer during a discussion? “We’d like an additional 10% discount. If you give this discount to me, we can close the deal.” Sellers hear this all the time. More often than not, sellers concede immediately in the interest of getting the fast close. But is this the correct response? Let’s consider the advantages. As a seller, if the deal really closes after you give the quick discount, you can count the revenue and move on to the next deal. And maybe the client likes you for that moment. Read more

Shaping Your Value Argument

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Shaping Your Value Argument: Know Your Internal Audiences on the Client Side and Close the Deal

Relentless and thorough preparation is where negotiators on the vendor side shortchange themselves. It’s a major point of focus during our negotiation training, and one of the most critical aspects of this is considering the various groups of stakeholders across the table that need to understand and buy your value argument. Crafting your value argument – the ultimate answer to the question, “What’s in it for us?” – can fall flat and jeopardize the deal if your argument is presented with only one kind of stakeholder in mind.

The diagram below shows the relationship between roles, motivations (measurement concerns) and relative numbers of people that are typical at many lines of business. Read more

Overcoming Negotiation "Dealbreakers": K&R’s MID Chart of Goals™

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How often have you encountered a “must have,” a “need” or a “dealbreaker” in a negotiation? People on both sides of the table can be unnecessarily painted into a corner when these supposed “non-starter” positions are expressed.

But in reality, there are very few dealbreakers in negotiations. More often than not, the true problem is that people in negotiations have trouble breaking down the issues and organizing them in matter of importance. Either as partners in the negotiation process or during our negotiating seminars, we help our clients break down each issue on the table so they can identify and separate means (how we’ll get there) and ends (the desired destination). Once ends and means are untangled, it is amazing how many seemingly intractable issues are suddenly neutralized. Read more

Negotiation and Leadership

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K&R Negotiations’ Mladen Kresic Pens Guest Piece on Negotiation and Leadership for the Hartford Business Journal

K&R Negotiations co-founder and CEO Mladen Kresic recently penned a guest column for the Hartford Business Journal’s Talking Points section. The guest post discusses Kresic’s recent encounter with Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Paul Bucha, who was a captain of the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War and, later in life, a successful business leader and chief executive.

While accompanying his son’s Cub Scout troop to hear a talk given by Bucha, Kresic was struck by how the principles of leadership described by the speaker were indispensable qualities for a good negotiator. Read more