What do you do if your negotiation and persuasion tactics are falling short?

To improve negotiation and persuasion skills, reflect on past experiences, understand your audience, focus on building relationships, practice active listening, communicate clearly and persuasively, be flexible and adaptable, explore different strategies, seek feedback, invest in training and development, and practice consistently. By incorporating these strategies, you can enhance your effectiveness in achieving your objectives in personal and professional contexts. By incorporating these strategies, you can enhance your negotiation and persuasion abilities.

Contemplation in negotiation is key. What I mean by contemplation is to stop and pay attention, with intention, to what is emerging from the conversation. When you contemplate you are engaging not only your thinking mind but also your emotional wisdom. This space that you create is vital to let go of assumptions and anticipatory expectations, and open the door for possibilities that haven’t been addressed before.

First off, remember that it's not just about the outcome, but also about the process. Are you listening actively to the other party's needs and concerns? Sometimes, a shift in perspective can make all the difference. Try putting yourself in their shoes to understand their motivations better. Additionally, consider the tone and approach you're using. Are you coming across as too forceful or too passive? Finding the right balance of assertiveness and empathy can help foster better communication and build trust. Lastly, don't be afraid to pivot if needed. Flexibility is key in any negotiation. If one approach isn't working, be open to trying something new. Remember, it's all part of the journey towards finding common ground!

Negotiation and persuasion techniques work when we understand the underlying issues or concerns. To understand those finer aspects, one has to be a good listener and observer. We must listen to understand and not just to respond. That's the blunder we often do. The objective is first to understand the premise of the deal, what value the potential clients expect, and what is their level of comfort on various aspects of the agreement. Active listening is a vital element that can solve all of these.

Active listening is different from mindful listening. When you actively listen you are engaging your cognitive habilites to understand the information shared with you. From time to time, you may loose your attention while listening actively when you create a response in your mind or judge what the other is telling you. Mindful listening is about listening to the other person while listening to your inner talk. By learning to listen to your inner talk, you can also learn to manage it in a way that it doesn't get in the way of understanding.

Be flexible in your approach....Give the other person you are negotiating a reason that you can do buisness again.... Relationship are always bigger than deals

Flexibility is no the same as agreeing. Being flexible requires the ability of noticing what are your bias, your expectations and your inner agendas. Are your trying to prove the other wrong? do you want the others to perceive you as competent? Flexibility is more a decision of putting yourself in the uncomfortable position of not knowing. This is by far not the same of agreeing. Maybe you change your view, maybe you challenge some beliefs, maybe you confirm them. What makes you flexible is your openness to view the situation from a different perspective.

Negotiations require order. When your emotions express something and your words don't match with your emotions, you create confusion. Order in this context, means to align your thoughts and emotions. This clarity is key to work on a solution that satisfy both parties. But, if you have a hidden agenda, some way or another, it is going to show up. Mindfulness applied to emotional intelligence is a great tool to learn when and how you are creating confusion.

Building rapport is one of the most important things to do, and quite honestly it should be closer to the top. When we establish rapport with people, we would get to know them on a deeper level. And of course, you should be making connections out of genuine curiosity, but on the other hand, you get to appeal to them more because you know what they like. It seems that if someone is having trouble, then the connection wasn't really there to begin with, with your potential client. Try to spend more time getting to know them!

The first step to build rapport is to be completely present. This means to express in an orderly way (alignment) that: You want to be there, your want to listen, you are open to contemplate a new perspective and your want to learn. Connection follows.