Effective NegotiationTechniques for Everyone
For your employees, negotiation with vendors or customers is a daily thing, but it always has difficulties. You would like to learn how to do it better, and teach your employees how to do it better.
Recognizing that need, I offer two different private seminars, each half a day. They are called Zen and the Art of Negotiation and Negotiating Successfully with Bullies and Nut Cases. Each includes substantial material on the real techniques of successful negotiation, not what you see on TV or in movies.
Each is divided roughly in half, with the beginning devoted to an interactive discussion, and the second to role-playing. That’s where the participants try out their new skills in realistic situations. That role-playing helps them both understand the new ideas and make them part of their own permanent behavior. They will feel empowered and confident.
Zen and the Art of Negotiationsm
In this unique seminar participants will learn:
- the real aim of negotiation,
- how to apply the Zen idea of mindfulness to reduce the anxieties and distractions that can occur in the heat of negotiation;
- a multi-part process that involves the counterparts in understanding each other’s needs, mutual problem solving (including “off-axis” solutions), seeking fair and objective values, and avoiding demonizing and hostility; understanding the WHO, and why these techniques produce deals that are best for your own organization;
- when to leave a deal be, and why;
- how to spot and deal with difficult negotiators, including tricksters and intimidators.
They will then practice these skills in small-group role-playing
Negotiating Successfully with Bullies and Nut Casessm
Participants will learn:
- the real aim of negotiation;
- a multi-part process that involves the counterparts in understanding each other’s needs, mutual problem solving (including “off-axis” solutions), seeking fair and objective values, and avoiding demonizing and hostility; understanding the WHO, and why this produces deals that are best for your own organization;
- when to leave a deal be, and why;
- three classes of difficult negotiators (situational, tactical, and chronic)—how to spot them, their differences, and how to deal with each, including tricksters and intimidators.
They will then practice these skills in small groups.
Success
These seminars have both been given in many private sessions and in a session at MIT, and always with great evaluations and vigorous applause at the end. Participants have emailed and phoned me to say they used something I taught them about negotiation and got the deal they wanted. Your group will also be happy they attended, and will learn ideas they never thought of before.
Experienced Trainer
Ilove teaching. I have been teaching adults all kinds of subjects—legal and technical— for decades, since I was in graduate school. Adult training is so much a part of me that I was on the board of a professional organization in Maryland (ASTD) for five years, including a year as president.
The benefit to you is to know and use techniques to make sure participants both understand and retain what they learned and can apply it. They will be happy while they are attending, and afterward. It will be a wise investment.
Phone or email for details, no cost or obligation. Do it before you forget.



