Since the first day I run my business, I know that it is very important to learn the negotiation skill for our businesses. In fact, in our life if you are good in negotiation skill, you tend to get a lot of good deals and benefits from people. At least you can get what you think is reasonable and fair when dealing with others. 

So what is Negotiation Skill?

To keep this simple, negotiation is a way of communication between you and others in order to find a line that both of you agree. Negotiation always happens in business and it is very important for you to learn the negotiation skill for both your business and your job. In business, you have to negotiate with 2 main parties – your customers and your suppliers.

Sales Negotiation - Sometimes customers will negotiate with you and you have to learn how to reply and negotiate with them so that you can get the profit you want. The most important thing is to make your customers happy to pay for your products and services and come back in future. Yes, if you good in negotiation, you will make your customers happy with your business and become a repeated customers in future.

Purchase Negotiation - On the other hand, you have to negotiate with your suppliers or manufacturers. In this condition, you are a customer to them. You have to negotiate with them so you can get a better deal and lower costs from them and hence increase the profit margin for your business.

Tips on Business Negotiation

Don’t worry, business negotiation can be learnt by gaining experience.

When I start my business, I really feel overwhelmed and always make mistakes in business such as making a bad deal, make my customers angry and so on. This is because I am weak in negotiation and communication with my customers. However, I keep doing and today, I learnt the most basic skill of negotiation and my business starts running smoothly.

The conclusion that I get is actually this business negotiation skill can be learnt from our life. All you have to do is be patient and learn from the mistakes you made along the way.

So today, I want to share with you some of the 9 tips that I learn in last few years that help me a lot in business negotiation. I wish my 8 tips can help you too.

1. Be confidence about your business. In earlier years, I always fail in negotiation because I’m lack of confidence and doubts about my business and my products or services. Customers can feel this and use this point to attack me. So I start learning about the Strength and Weakness of my products or services. The more I learn the more confidence I have. Now I can speak loudly that my services are the best and my customers trust me because of my confident level.

2. Learn about the market and do something that is different. Customer tends to do their research when they want to pay money for something. Every one of us wants to get something that worth the price and be treated specially. So I usually do some research and understand my market. Then I just slightly modify my services and do something different from my competitors. Now my customers always come back to me because we are different compare to others. How I know this? My customers are telling me!

3. Prepare the reasons “why”. Business negotiation just like a war and you must well prepared in order to win the negotiation. So you must prepare the reasons or “why” that will help you to defend your price, business or services. From my experience, price negotiation happens very often in business. So you must get ready the reasons and why a customer should pay more for your services and products.

4. Prepare your Up selling plans. It is good to have plan B to support you. If you really fail in defending your offers, especially in price negotiation, you can always use your plan B – up selling other products or services to your customers. This not only can push up your profit margin but also help you to increase your sales volume.

5. Understand your customer. Spend some time and learn the negotiation pattern of your customers. This will be a great weapon for you to deal with customers with different kind of characters.

6. Build Rapport with customers. People tend to trust their friends and do business with their friends. So if you can build rapport with your customers and make friends with them, a lot of meaningless negotiation will be avoided and in most cases you can win in the negotiation easily too. This is the method that I am using in my business and it really helps me a lot. Of course, you must really make friends with your customers and really care about them and not just make friends because of business. They can feel this.

7. Learn how to say “NO”. In the earlier years, I always fail in negotiation because I don’t dare to say “NO” to my customers. However, I found that in certain conditions, I must say no and reject my customers. Sometimes they are demanding a lot and over the limit. If this really happens, I have no choice but have to say no to defend my business. Something I found is if you can say “no” in proper way, you actually comprise your customers.

8. Learn how to let go. Try not to view negotiation as a contest that must be won every time. This will indirectly give a lot of stress on you and create more difficulty down the road. So if you really can’t win in 1 negotiation, just let it go and focus on the next one. Learn from the failure and win more in future.

9. Choose your customers! 80/20 rules. There are a lot of people with different kind of characters. Because of this, I understand that my business will not 100% help and make everyone in this world happy. So choose your customers. In most cases, 20% of your customers support your 80% of business sales. So spend time to spot these 20% customers and focus on them rather than dealing with those customers that spend most of their time in complains and negotiation.
   

Above is what I learn and use in my business. I hope the tips can help you in your business too. If you have anything that is better than my tips, please share it here. 

Do you have any tips on negotiation? Why not share it here with me and others. We will appreciate this.

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