1. Assume you will be negotiating with this person again. Act accordingly.
2. Know your priorities and have a sense of theirs before the negotiation.
3. If the negotiation is complex, start with areas of overlapping interests where agreement should, in theory at least, be easier.
4. You almost always have time. Excessive pressure to make a deal is usually a warning sign of a bad deal.
5. When you reach an agreement, don’t gloat if it was great or squirm if it wasn’t. Why? See #1 above.
Are You in Love With Your Message? Consider Seeing Others.
Even the class clown knows that when a conversation is important, you prepare for it. Preparation is to effective communication like loud is to rock concert—it’s just plain obvious.
But something funny can happen during the preparation phase: We end up falling in love with our message. Once we get the introduction just right, line up our evidence perfectly, and conduct a few flawless rehearsals, we can end up falling head-over-heels in love with our message. U + message = luv 4 ever.