A Practical Set of Dos and Don'ts for Succeeding at Negotiating

• Use neutral terms when describing your offer.
• Consider proposals fully and give a measured response to their merit.
• Use moderate and value-free language.
• If you do decide to ‘attack’ the other party, go in hard and with no warning.
• Label your behaviors, (e.g. “I’m just going to clarify what I think you said”).
• State the reason or explanation before disagreeing with the other party.
• Ask a high level of relevant and appropriate questions.
• Constantly test understanding and/or summarize.
• Try to establish trust by revealing your feelings.
• Use only strong reasons to back up your arguments.
• Attempt to resolve difficult issues.
• Be prepared to walk away if you cannot achieve your minimum position.
• Use relevant but minor concessions to overcome last-minute reluctance to agree.
• Ensure that ‘final’ really means ‘final’.
• Make sure you get something in return every time you make a concession.
• Summarize and put into writing exactly what you have agreed.

Don'ts

• Use words with a high positive value, (e.g. ‘fair and reasonable’) which may irritate the other party.
• Respond to proposals by immediately putting forward your own counter-proposal.
• Use emotional or value-loaded behaviors or terms as a general rule.
• Begin attacking gently and build it up, so producing a defense/attack spiral.
• Simply jump in with a particular verbal behavior.
• Flag up that you disagree before stating the reason.
• Concentrate purely on giving more and more information.
• Avoid probing into areas of potential disagreement which might prejudice immediate agreement.
• Concentrate purely on the facts and figures.
• Dilute your arguments by introducing additional reasons which can easily be disposed of.
• Leave potential problems until implementation.
• Agree to the best you can get merely to produce an agreement.
• Allow peripheral or unrelated issues to be used as last-minute bargaining chips.
• Agree to further compromise once you have put your ‘final’ offer forward.
• Give things away too cheaply.
• Allow an agreement to be ‘fudged’, simply to avoid any further argument.
• Allow the agreement to drift or abdicate its implementation.
• Allow implementation to be dragged out endlessly.
• Leave the people involved to sort themselves out.

Implementation

Dos

• Work out exactly what you need in order to fully implement the agreement.
• Set precise and realistic timescales for the implementation of the agreement.
• Be clear about who is responsible for what in the implementation.
• Make available the resources necessary to ensure successful implementation.
• Ensure all other parties affected by the outcomes of the negotiation are informed.
• Put in place appropriate arrangements for monitoring and co-ordination.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the outcome and learn from it.

Don'ts

• Allow the agreement to drift or abdicate its implementation.
• Allow implementation to be dragged out endlessly.
• Leave the people involved to sort themselves out.
• Allow the deal to fail for the sake of minor details.
• Risk failure, by an inability to bring anyone adversely affected on side.
• Leave co-ordination to chance.
• Chalk any failures down to bad luck.