The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide To Successful Negotiating

1.4. NEGOTIATING VERSUS SELLING

It is a commonly held view that a good 'sale' will close itself and that negotiation follows when outstanding differences remain. However, negotiation as a skill and as a process is fundamentally different from selling. Whether you sell ideas, services or products, selling is selling, and it has no place in negotiation. To sell is to promote the positives, the reasons, to align the need to the solution. It requires explanation, justification and a rational case. 'The gift of the gab' is associated with the salesman who has an answer for everything. Negotiation does not.

Although relationships can be important, as is a climate for cooperation (without which you have no discussion), the behaviour of the Complete Skilled Negotiator also involves silence, where appropriate. That means listening to everything the other party is saying, understanding everything they are not saying and working out their true position.

NOTE

silence

Silence can also serve to strengthen your position during negotiation: the other person may seek to fill that silence with offers, or information, or in some cases simply capitulate as the silence becomes too much to bear.

Negotiation involves planning, questioning, listening, and making proposals, but it also requires you to recognise when the selling has effectively concluded and the negotiation has begun. Once you start negotiating you have to stop selling. If you find yourself selling the benefits of your proposals during ...