Cross Cultural Negotiations
Cross cultural negotiation is one of many specialized areas within the wider field of cross cultural communications. By taking cross cultural negotiation training, negotiators and sales personnel give themselves an advantage over competitors.
There is an argument that proposes that culture is inconsequential to cross cultural negotiation. It maintains that as long as a proposal is financially attractive it will succeed. However, this is a naïve way of approaching international business.
Creating the Right Atmosphere for Negotiating Differences
Conflict resolution is one of the most important skills needed in the 21st Century. Think how often you need to negotiate with people, even on the weekends. For example, on Saturday I started out negotiating with my husband whether or not to go for a run or a walk. We settled on a run/walk. Then we stopped into a garage sale to buy a coffee maker. We dickered a bit over the price. Later, my assistant wanted to change the day she came into work. That took some creative thinking to find a solution. In the evening, we talked with our grown son about vacationing together in November. Should he come here, should we go there? It happens constantly. Yet, few of us learned any formal skills in this area.
Mostly we learned conflict resolution when we were young - from watching the adults in our life. They learned it from the adults in their life, and so on. If the big people had good negotiation skills you lucked out, if they didn’t, you get to blunder along as they did. Unless of course, you decide to learn some new skills. Some adults showed us that good negotiation means always having it your way. Conquerors get what they need in life, but may be quite unpopular. Other adults showed us that others should always get their needs met first. Sacrificers are perhaps more loved, but often lose people’s respect. On top of that they may get a symptom of chronic resentment, such as heartburn or pain-in-the-neck. Another popular technique in Western cultures is to avoid all conflict at any cost. Evaders often notice that people don’t trust them. It is hard to feel on stable ground with them because their rugs are very lumpy, too much swept underneath.
Negotiation: A Compromising Position
Negotiating is a hot topic these days for a good reason. It is difficult to imagine a more vital managerial skill than the skill of negotiating. Effective managers must be superior negotiators. Without solid negotiating abilities, managers will inevitably make serious mistakes in dealing with people at all levels, both inside and outside their organizations. As negotiators, managers must concern themselves with substantive issues and their continuing relationships with people. If they push too much, they may create hard feelings and a desire to exact revenge. If they are overly concerned about getting along with others, they may lose in many substantive areas, thereby negatively impacting upon their department and their organization.
Successful negotiating involves trading-off between getting along with people and getting what you want. All negotiators face this dilemma: “How can I get what I really desire and yet maintain a friendly relationship with the other side?” Those who can achieve these seemingly contradictory objectives have mastered the art of negotiating. Negotiation is a discussion between two or more people with the goal of reaching an amicable agreement on issues separating the parties when neither side has the power nor the desire to use its power to get its own way.
Business Negotiation and the Win-Lose Turning to a Lose-Lose in the Courts
One of the most aggravating situations, which can happen in negotiation is when your party fails to understand the true intentions and the cultural nurturing of the other parties. This happens often when dealing with foreigners from other nations who have different ideas of what a negotiation means.
For instance dealing with a Middle Eastern Businessman or an Asian Company. Often your negotiating team will find themselves in a negotiation with a Win-Lose other party who wants to win the negotiation and would prefer you to lose, if you win too well that is okay with them but they would sincerely prefer to leave no crumbs on the table for you at all and if you find yourself in such a hostile environment you may find the negotiations drag out for months and you must spend your time on development of friendship and not negotiating business only.
Just Ask!
Ask and you shall receive & knock and it shall be opened &send an email and see what happens.
As a student of personal finance you are probably familiar with the advice to negotiate with your credit card companies to get a lower interest rate. Why stop there?
Valuing Yourself
During the past few months, I have had the opportunity to talk with many women about pricing and valuing - both themselves and their businesses - when delivering two of my popular seminars: profitable pricing and negotiation. The ability to value yourself, coupled with strong negotiation skills, are critical in terms of determining your own worth and value, and the value which others place upon you.
Society typically determines value through monetary measures - what you make in terms of salary if you work within the corporate realm, or revenue generated by your business if you are an entrepreneur. In a recent newsletter, I asked subscribers to respond to the question of whether or not there were disparities in the value that society places on work performed by women. Over 65% of them agreed that there were indeed disparities. Not surprising when you look at the differential in earnings between men and women.
How Barter Can Help Your Business Online or Offline
How Barter Can Help Your Business
Barter trade is a powerful instrument that represents a solution for companies with available stock or services. By accepting payment in trade money instead of cash, a business maximizes their efficiency by increasing stock turnover or billable hours. Using the trade currency earned, that company can pay for goods or services they want, without paying cash.
Learn to Play the Reluctant Buyer When You’re Purchasing
Let’s say that you’re in charge of buying new computer equipment for your company. How would you get a salesperson to give you the lowest possible price? I would let the other person come in and have her go through her entire presentation. I would ask all the questions I could possibly think of and when I finally couldn’t think of another thing to ask, I would say, “I really appreciate all the time you’ve taken. You’ve obviously put a lot of work into this presentation, but unfortunately it’s just not the way we want to go; however I sure wish you the best of luck.” I would pause to examine the crestfallen expression on the salesperson’s face. I would watch her slowly package her presentation materials. Then at the very last moment, just as her hand hit the doorknob on the way out, I would come back with this magic expression.
There are some magic expressions in negotiating. If you use them at exactly the right moment, the predictability of the other person’s response is amazing. I would say, “You know, I really do appreciate the time you took with me. Just to be fair to you, what is the very lowest price that you would take?”
How Time Pressure Affects the Outcome of a Negotiation
In Puerto Prince, Haiti, former President Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, and Senator Sam Nunn were in intense negotiations with Haiti’s military commander, General Cedras. The phone rang and it was President Clinton calling to tell them that he had already started the invasion and they had 30 minutes to get out of there.
That was putting extreme time pressure on the negotiation, and people become flexible under time pressure. When do your children ask you for something? Just as you’re rushing out of the door, right? When my daughter Julia was attending the University of Southern California, she lived in a sorority house and would sometimes come home for the weekends and need money for books. When would she ask me? Seven o’clock on a Monday morning, just as she was racing out the door she’d say, “Dad, I’m sorry, I forgot; I need $60 for books.”
Ask For More Than You Expect to Get
One of the cardinal rules of Power Negotiating is that you should ask the other side for more than you expect to get. Henry Kissinger went so far as to say, “Effectiveness at the conference table depends upon overstating one’s demands.” Think of some reasons why you should do this:
Why should you ask the store for a bigger discount than you think you have a chance of getting?