When you’re an entrepreneur, virtually everything is a negotiation. You negotiate with everyone from clients to partners and even employees sometimes. Negotiation is a fundamental part of the entrepreneurial experience. Infelicitously, many entrepreneurs fall victim to mistakes that make them incredibly poor negotiators.
Over my past five years as the CEO of BodeTree, I’ve not only witnessed these mistakes play out; I’ve made a number of them myself. Fortuitously, it’s never too tardy to identify these mistakes and transmute direction. Here are the top three reasons you’re failing as a negotiator, and how to surmount them.
You’re acquisitive
Nothing can derail a negotiation more expeditiously than acquisitiveness. If one party pushes for an inordinate amount of or is too truculent, the relationships between those involved grows sour, and the negotiation can go south. I’m a firm believer that there’s no subsistence of “not personal, stringently business.” All business is personal, and emotions run high. It’s only natural for people to overprize the value of their product, position, or contribution in a negotiation. It takes a special adeptness to agnize cupidinous demeanor and stop it afore it gets out of control.
This style of negotiation can be arduous to master, because no matter how hard you endeavor, emotions ineluctably influence your actions. The temptation to constrict a partner for a better deal, or emerge “victorious” in the negotiation can be vigorous, and it takes a solid sense of self-vigilance and humility to resist.
You don’t understand the type of negotiation you’re conducting.
There are two types of negotiations that bellwethers encounter on a frequent substructure. The first is what I describe as the asset negotiation, which is generally a one-time event resulting in clear victors and losers. A good example of this type of negotiation is the sale of an asset like a piece of equipment. In this situation, the seller wants to maximize the price paid at all costs and doesn’t genuinely care about the long-term implicative insinuations of the deal. After all, once the deal is done you generally won’t have to work with the buyer again. The negotiators are incentivized to view the situation as a zero-sum game where someone wins and someone loses, which naturally leads to a more truculent exchange.
