ISM Endorsed Certified Master Negotiator

Why Attend

Negotiators tend to concede too much, and focus on price and not enough on exchanging services other than price. The course focuses on these problems and the practical skills and techniques necessary to achieve win/win agreements. Participants will learn to identify, select, and execute various tactics and to respond to adversarial tactics.

It is an engaging workshop that equips negotiators and sales professionals to find and prove the value of their offering and resolve difficult negotiating challenges in a collaborative manner. The course will also provide you with a set of tools to handle the most demanding negotiation like a master. By working on a carefully chosen array of cases you will learn how to enhance your analytical skills and build your intuition, both of which are prerequisites for successful negotiations. 

Course Methodology

The course uses a mix of interactive techniques, such as brief presentations by the consultant and the participants, role plays (rehearsed and impromptu), self-assessment questionnaires, relevant videos, and multiple simulation games.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Assess their own negotiating strengths and weaknesses and those of the other side to optimize negotiation outcomes.
• Identify areas of weakness in understanding to prepare a good negotiation plan.
• Master the process of sales negotiation to achieve long-lasting and mutually profitable agreements on timely-basis.
• Use a variety of skills necessary to conduct successful negotiations
• Apply the concessions management process with minimum loss while preserving good relationship with the counter party. 

Target Audience

Marketing and sales professionals, corporate executives, advertising managers, business development managers, sales personnel, purchasers, and others who are involved in commercial and negotiation activities at all levels of the organization.

Target Competencies

• Handling rejection
• Gaining commitment
• Negotiation tactics
• Negotiation planning
• Concession management
• Problem solving 

What Negotiation Is Really All About

• The many faces of a negotiation
• Some negotiation philosophies
• The urge for being a good negotiator
• Persuasion versus negotiation
• Self-assessment: The “Negotiating Style Profile”

Setting the Stage: Pre-negotiation Preparation   

• Understanding your own personal strengths and weaknesses
• Developing your emotional intelligence
• Characteristics of a good negotiator
• The five stages of the negotiation process
• Barriers to effective negotiation
• Team negotiation: when to use a team 
• Exercise: How to negotiate effectively (work template)

Mastering commercial negotiation 

• Selling versus negotiating
• The 7 milestones of the sales process
• Identifying the different buyer's roles
• The "Buyer's Decision Process

Strategies for the phases of the buyer's decision process

• Strategies for the "Recognition of Needs" phase
• Strategies for the "Evaluation of Options" phase 
• Strategies for the "Resolution of Concerns" phase 

The SPIN selling model 

• Situation questions
• Problem/Opportunity questions
• Implication questions
• Need-payoff questions
• Simulation game: the "war room"
• Negotiation Tools for Success
• Creativity and problem solving techniques
• The importance of creativity in negotiation
• Creativity tools
• Creativity: self-assessment instrument 
• Decision making techniques

Communication skills:

• Active listening skills
• The outcomes of asking questions
• The art of asking questions
• Conflict management styles
• Workshop: Breaking the negotiation impasse using creativity

Concession Management, Tactics and counter-measures

• Different levels of negotiation rules
• Preparing “The Envelope of Negotiation”
• Mastering the “Rule of Halves”
• Setting a concession-making timeline
• Sorting negotiable issues and creating alternatives
• The most common negotiating mistakes
• Advanced negotiation tactics
• Simulation game: one-to-one negotiation using a grade point average