The 6 differences you didn’t know between nEGOtiation and mindful negotiation that likely cost your organization money. In the meeting: It’s all about you

Will never take anything for granted again by Karolina Adams: https://karolinaadams.com

Now that we have prepared, or not… it’s time to meet the other party. NEGOtiators continue to lack curiosity about the other side as their sole focus is on themselves. They don’t think they need to know anything about their counterpart. They want to win, so they tell the other side what they should do, persuading them to agree with their idea, point of view, or justification. Persuasion is our ego’s favorite strategy to reinforce itself, to gain power. There is something very seductive for our ego when we can prove that our point of view is the truth and have the other person leave their point of view behind to agree with ours. All of us (including myself) love to persuade others. NEGOtiators are anchoring their power in talking about themselves, their solutions, their company.

Many salespeople are “selling their value prop” by telling and describing the features and benefits of their product, solution, or service with the hope that the other party will agree with you. It might be the way they are comfortable presenting the data, or it might be associated with their marketing team providing them with material and collateral that focus on features and benefits.

Regardless, selling your value prop is not about selling; it’s about anchoring your value to the other side’s concerns, pain points, drivers, etc. Your counterpart hears features and benefits many times per day as most salespeople are using the same strategy. They want to hear how your product, solution, or service will help them and their organization.

WE CAN’T ANCHOR OUR VALUE ADD IF WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE OTHER PARTY.

You might ask, why bother asking the other side questions? It’s always about price (lower for the buyer and higher for the seller). Maybe you think that you know everything about the other side because you have been doing business with them for many years. It is a legitimate objection. The challenge with that perspective is that we assume what the other person wants without testing that assumption. Everybody wants a better price, but is it what they really need? Money alone doesn’t create value for both parties. There is a lot more than just money that matters in negotiation, such as saving face, proving ourselves, and being recognized as competent.

NEGOtiators try to avoid giving the other side what it wants by using persuasion. Imagine if both sides are nEGOtiators and using persuasion to avoid giving what the other side wants. Both will persuade even more without getting traction, raising the stress level and generating negative emotions on both sides. The nEGOtiation will take more time than planned, and you will likely come to a resolution by focusing exclusively on money without room for anything else.

Under stress, all of us revert to our natural behavior. For nEGOtiators, it’s all about them, all about persuasion. So when persuasion is ineffective, they persuade more, speak louder to gain power, become more aggressive, and occasionally use threats to scare the other side.

Mindful negotiators understand that to be successful in negotiation, they need to be curious about the other side by asking questions that make the other party think. Creating value for both sides means that we need to understand the other person’s motivations, drivers, and personal agenda. Building a partnership starts with how we can help our counterpart improve some of his metrics or help them minimize what keeps them up at night. I’m not saying that mindful negotiators don’t use persuasion at all. They do, and they should. However, they focus on understanding the other party before talking about their product, solution, or services.

Mindful negotiators increase their power by being curious and asking questions to their counterparts to understand what they really need. They usually listen more than they speak to fully understand the other person’s perspective about what is said and what is not said.

I want to take a moment to cover the second area in a negotiation where we leave money on the table. In the last blog about preparation, you remember that we discussed that nEGOtiators often negotiate with themselves, which results in setting objectives and limits that are too pessimistic.

The second area where money is left on the table is the inability to structure the other party’s expectations on things you can’t do. NEGOtiators are challenged to disclose bad news for the other party, and they often use soft language that doesn’t support their objective. It could be presenting a price increase or sharing an inability to meet their timeline. Perhaps it’s about discussing how the scope change can’t be done with a budget increase or at least letting them know that you can’t give them everything they want (otherwise, it wouldn’t be a negotiation). We do that because we don’t want to upset the other person or damage the relationship.

When we are not confident and assertive, we send a mixed message to the other party. We are unclear on what we can do, what we can’t do, what we need, etc. Sending mixed messages is never a good idea, especially when you nEGOtiate with a nEGOtiator who wants to use it against you.  

Early in the process, mindful negotiators spend time discovering everything they can about the other side as they can’t really negotiate with someone if they don’t understand the internal elements of the other person.

We have covered preparation and what to do when you meet the other party. In the next blog on Friday, we will explore the 3rd difference between nEGOtiation and mindful negotiation.

Please refer to chapter 7 of my book Mindful NEGOtiation for additional situations and more in-depth explanations.