You would have seen canned presentations & oft-heard lines about how to negotiate... There are plenty of training courses which are sold, aiming to develop mastery in the so-called 'art of negotiation'. Like it is some foreign language course! (Negotiations 101 For Dummies?)
It is important to understand that you cant setup a meeting time with your prospective customer writing the agenda-subject as 'negotiation'!
You need to be very clear of what is the end-objective and the result you are aiming to achieve with everything you are wanting to negotiate with
Be clear about what you can discernibly offer in return for getting, what you are aiming at. (remember, not all of negotiation is bargaining; while the vice-versa is so!)
What is your proposition which will directly produce customer value and what will be the transactional outputs which impact your business?
Do you know what the customer needs from you to finalize & make the commitment?
What would you need the customer to help in your requirements, which will facilitate you to deliver to the prospect needs - guiding the decision favorably
The engagement & dialogue to bring out such a course of action from across all stakeholders - to favorably facilitate completion of the transaction, is perhaps an ‘art of negotiation’
Negotiation is not an arrow in the quiver which you pickup from the training menu and shoot at your prospective customer!
All the elements of positioning, relationship, understanding, proposition, need-benefit estimation and fitment are a precursor to negotiating a good deal which lets both the customer & yourselves to win with your individual requirements
You will have to create the levers to negotiate-with and get to a point of mutual conclusion with your seemingly-diverse (??) objectives! You will have to get to the levers the customer is operating - in dealing with you - and to identify the balance of their application which will allow both of you to commit at a common point of mutually beneficial leverage. That’s deterministic negotiating! That’s how we don’t call bargaining as negotiation
Remember that the negotiation-engagement leads to building expectations, which is necessary to committing & concluding the sale. So make it work for all involved
Did you think? - "I have done a masterclass in negotiation tactics and will try some of the new techniques, when discussing on the next proposal”. Now, don't try that! The world has moved far and long past those fairytale-simplistic-well rounded stories on negotiation!!
Your customer has a large number of levers to work with and is likely to choose the path which a salesperson will facilitate - to succeed in addressing the needs - while making good on the sales results.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/negotiations-10-points-note-sanjaya-hasthak/