The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide To Successful Negotiating

9.10. CONCLUSION

Your ability to broker agreements, dissolve deadlock situations, precondition expectations and attract sustainable deals requires all of the skills, attributes, knowledge and self-awareness we have covered in The Negotiation Book.

For many, the challenges presented by negotiation don't come naturally and, as with any performance coupled with your own motivation to continuously improve, you have one of the most rewarding (in so many ways) personal development opportunities available to you.

Negotiating effectively is firstly about you accepting that it is only you who can influence the situations you are faced with. You can blame the market, personalities, timing, your options, the power balance or any circumstance that you may think happens to be working against you, but ultimately it is you who can turn around situations and make what would otherwise be deadlock situations into workable and profitable deals.

It is time to stay calm, see the tactics for what they are and exercise nerve and patience. Power real or perceived, however generated, will play its part in your negotiations and, no matter how good you are as a negotiator, where the balance of power is against you or your circumstances, you will no doubt experience the frustration of feeling of being compromised. Trust your instinct, exercise composure. It will make the difference between those agreements where you create value and those where you simply distribute it.

If you have to take a time-out, adjourn ...