If you’re new to running your own business, you may be surprised to learn how important your negotiating skills are when brokering deals with anyone—from customers to vendors. Some business owners look to negotiation seminars to sharpen their skills and help grow their business. Finding the best negotiation seminar can be tricky, so here are three things to keep in mind when trying to find the best seminar for your needs.
Evaluate Your Schedule and Budget
Finding a negotiation seminar that fits with your budget and availability is the simplest way to figure out whether or not a negotiations seminar is right for you and your business. Take the time to research the price points of the available seminars and assess how this fits into your budget.
If you’re a small business owner, you’ll most likely be paying for a negotiation seminar out of your own pocket, so you won’t have the luxury of going for the big-ticket seminars that some companies opt for. Fortunately, there are plenty of affordable seminars that can help you hone your negotiating skills.
It’s also smart to take an honest look at how much time you can realistically devote to a negotiation seminar. Some seminars offer three days of in-person training, while others offer online negotiation courses.
As a small business owner, you have to decide how much time you can afford away from your business to attend these negotiation courses. If you can’t take a lot of time off, then it’s best to stick to a shorter course or a class you can attend online.
Know the Different Types of Negotiations
Most negotiations are different. An important part of negotiating is understanding the type of negotiation you find yourself in.
Identifying what kind of negotiation you’re in is key to knowing what kind of strategy to apply to get the best result for yourself without alienating the person or business you’re doing business with. Knowing which negotiation style you need helps you decide which seminar is right for you.
Win-Lose
Win-lose is exactly what it sounds like, where one side wins while the other side loses. A game like Monopoly, for example, is a win-lose scenario. The strategy in a win-lose situation is to determine the bare minimum your negotiating partner would accept and then try to get as close to that outcome as possible.
Win-Win
Win-win situations are usually seen in collaborative relationships, such as business partnerships; and in long term mutually dependent contracts, such as salary negotiations. A win-win negotiation is where no further value can be added for any of the negotiators.
Lose-Lose
These sorts of situations are usually seen in lawsuits, as one party will usually end up receiving less than what is lost, while the other party will be forced to pay a loss.
Adversarial Negotiations
Highly competitive in nature, adversarial negotiations are often seen in win-lose situations but can also be seen in win-win situations. In these sorts of heated negotiations, some even turn to battle strategies to maximize the losses of their opponents.
Collaborative Negotiations
Collaborative negotiations are essentially the opposite of adversarial negotiations. Collaborative negotiations tend to be more optimistic and creative. Such negotiations require win-win negotiation techniques and usually are expected to yield big wins for both sides.
Multi-Party Negotiations
The more people involved in a negotiation, the more difficult it can be to broker a deal. Multi-party negotiations involve more than two parties and require diplomatic skills in order to complete the negotiations. Due to their complexity, such negotiations can take a long time to settle.
Bad Faith Negotiations
Bad faith negotiation isn’t so much a strategy to hone more than it is a strategy you should work on being able to identify and avoid, in which one side agrees to something they have no intention of honoring. A small business owner should work on avoiding bad faith deals.
Understanding the different types of negotiations above should help you get a better understanding of what each negotiation seminar is offering and help you choose the right one.
Find a Seminar that Caters to Your Size
Different-sized businesses need seminars with different approaches. If you’re running a small business and are looking for tips on how to handle small-business-related negotiations, it is unlikely that signing up for a seminar that caters to handling negotiations at major corporations will be helpful.
Finding the right negotiation seminar can give you a leg-up when you’re trying to grow your business. Remember, though, it’s important to research each seminar carefully to find the right fit.
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