Negotiation
...nships at home, at work and in the community. Negotiation can serve not only to preserve relationships, but to continually strengthen and improve them. Before learning negotiation skills, in my mind, negotiation is just a process of arguing. That’s why, every time I want to negotiate with my parents on whatever matters, it will finally turn out into an argue situation. I can’t get what I want, and my parents are mad at me----- lose-lose situation. BUT after learning negotiation skills, I know what “Negotiation” really is. As I am a business student, I would like to share my opinions on using negotiation skills on business. Whenever we want to trade we have to negotiate, the alternative is to accept what we have been offered. But there are many opportunities to negotiate better deals and terms, however these chances are often missed because neither side makes it clear that negotiating is an option. Many people wrongly assume that nothing is negotiable unless the other party indicates that this is the case --- a more realistic view is that everything is negotiable. Nearly all negotiations are characterized by four phases - preparation, opening, bargaining and closing. Below is what I think about these four phases on business negotiation: 1) Preparation involves information gathering - knowing the state of the market, being aware of the supply and demand status, being aware of any current or imminent discounts and special offers and so on. 2) The opening phase of a negotiation involves both sides presenting the starting positions to one another. It usually represents the single most important opportunity to influence the other side. 3) In the bargaining phase our aim is to narrow the gap between the two initial positions and to persuade the oth...