Negotiation? It's all Chinese to me!

What a year! In 2018, I advised, trained and coached over 400 people in over 20 companies, on the topics of sales, key account management and... negotiation in China!

My first coachee was able to recover over 40 million RMB from a Chinese client after having delivered the products and the trainings to use the products and therefore lost all leverage... or so it seemed... My second coachee dramatically pivoted on his negotiation strategy internally and externally, and went on to save tens of millions of Euros, again, in a negotiation with a Chinese counterpart.

Later on, one of my coachees, a Chinese entrepreneur, was able to change his perspective and practices in negotiation to negotiate partnerships in the US! You know what? It works both ways!

So what is the secret? Why is the negotiation picture as blurred as the banner of this article? One of the main reasons negotiation is so hard is that a lot of misconceptions about it pervade the business world. To begin with, in my workshops, I ask the attendees to write down their definition of negotiation. Could you believe it, I am yet to have 2 people write down the same thing in the same session, in the same company, or even on the same team! So how do you want to negotiate when the actors in the negotiation are not playing the same game?

Another striking moment is when I project a short text on the screen and give the attendees one minute, the whole of sixty seconds, to read just a few words, and then I ask them to count the number of appearances of a specific letter in the text. I recently did that test with 40 attendees. They all had the very same text on the screen, in their eyesight the whole time, they had a full minute to read it, and the answers almost equally ranged from 4 occurrences to 8! So how are you going to negotiate when you don't see the same object being negotiated, even though it is in plain sight right in front of you? Whether it be a machine, a service, a contract!...

Unbelievable as it is the same goes with a short sound being played and, while not always equally split, part of the people hear one sound, the rest an entirely different sound. Meaning that what is being said and what is being heard are not the same thing, which adds quite an element of complexity in negotiations... and I let you imagine how blurred it can become when negotiations take place in a language which is the native language of neither of the negotiators! How do you plan to negotiate when you don't hear the same words, or picture a different reality based on the same words?

With conscious efforts, deliberate practice, and guidance by the right advisor, these impediments to negotiation can be managed. However, the nastiest impediments to successful negotiations are often invisible. Negotiation myths are the "monster under the bed" of childhood days, and can lurk in the dark as long as we do not switch on the light. Among them:

The fear of losing that deal, the need to please, guilt in pursuing one's own interests (because of course, the other side has only your interest at heart, at their own expense), splitting the difference, solving the easiest issues first (and what do you do two years down the road when only the hard ones are left?), the misconception that because you have a mandate to negotiate it creates alignment (more often than not, the exact opposite is true), the need to "show them", the obsession in finding common points when most of the value is hidden in differences, the rush to "yes" because you are so exhausted that any "yes" will do, one of the most pervasive negotiation killers, together with the irrational belief that by repeatedly conceding to show good faith, you will satiate the appetite of the other party. Does feeding steaks to a tiger make the tiger a vegetarian? Tigers don't eat salad!

So what is the problem? And is there a solution?

Do not confuse negotiation with the "noise of negotiation".

Remember that negotiation is a human performance event, occurring between people who represent other people - everybody is somebody's somebody! Challenge everything: the map is not the territory and we all have biases, whether cognitive or motivational, which get in the way of properly expressing ourselves, properly analyzing situations, and properly deciding! Reflect on two deep thoughts by Ralph Waldo Emerson which capture the paradoxical essence of negotiation:

"Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness". And so is theirs.

"What will you have? Pay for it and take it." If you do not pay that price, you may get the appearance of a deal, but really get something else, which will manifest at execution stage in ways unpleasant to both parties. Invest in preparation, suffer the pain and discomfort of negotiation, internally and externally, take great pain to understand who they really are, what they really want, when, how, why..., to get more of what you want. Easier said than done... maybe we can help.

Nicolas Clement

Founder & General Manager of Nego Asia, Exclusive China Representative of Halifax Consulting