International Business Negotiation Skills

Importers and exporters must master negotiation skills if they want to succeed.

Trade negotiations are actually a kind of dialogue. In this dialogue, the two sides explain their own situation, state their views, listen to each other's proposals, offer, make counter proposals, counter offer, compromise with each other, and finally reach an agreement.

If you master the negotiation skills, you will be able to grasp the initiative and achieve satisfactory results in the dialogue.

We should master the following important skills:

The greatest weakness of inexperienced negotiators is that they can not listen to each other patiently. They think their mission is to talk about their own situation, say what they want to say and refute their opposition.

Therefore, in the negotiations, they always think of what should be said in the heart, do not pay attention to the other side's speech, so many valuable information is lost.

They mistakenly believe that good negotiators are able to master the initiative of negotiations because they speak too much.

In fact, successful negotiators spend more than 50% of their time listening.

They listen, think, analyze and ask questions continuously to ensure that they understand each other completely and correctly.

They listen carefully to every word they say, not only what they think is important or what they want to hear, so they gain a lot of valuable information and increase bargaining chips.

Effective listening enables us to understand the needs of importers, find new solutions to problems, and modify our offer or counter offer.

"Talk" is a task, while listening is a kind of ability, or even a kind of talent.

"Listening to" is a prerequisite for any successful negotiator.

In the negotiations, we should try to encourage the other side to say more. We should say "Yes" and "Please go on" to the other party, and ask questions to ask the other party to answer, so that the other side can talk more about their situation, so as to achieve the goal of understanding the other party as far as possible.

The second important skill of negotiation is to ask questions skillfully.

By asking questions, we can not only get information we can't get at ordinary times, but also confirm our past judgement.

Exporters apply open-ended questions (that is, the answer is not "yes" or "no", which needs special explanation) to understand the needs of importers, because such problems can make importers freely and freely talk about their needs.

For example, "Can you tell me more about your campany?", "What do you do"?

After the offer, the importer often asks, "Can not you do better than that?" on this question, we should not give in. Instead, we should ask: "What is meant by by" or ""? "

For example, the importer said: "Your competitor is offering better terms." at this time, we can continue to ask questions until we fully understand the offer of competitors.

Then we can tell the other side that our offer is different, actually better than our competitors.

If the other side gives us a vague answer to our request, such as "Noproblem", we should not accept it, but we should ask him to give a specific answer.

Besides, before asking questions, especially at the beginning of negotiations, we should seek agreement from the other side. This has two advantages: first, if the other side agrees to our questions, we will cooperate more when answering the questions; two, if the answer is "Yes", this affirmative reply will create a positive atmosphere for the negotiation system and bring a good start.

When the two sides have a preliminary understanding of each other, the negotiations will enter the stage of offer and counter offer.

At this stage, we should further understand each other's specific circumstances with more tentative conditional questions, so as to modify our offer.

Conditional conditional (question) consists of a conditional adverbial clause and a question. It can be a special question or an ordinary question.

The typical conditional question is "What..."

If "and" If... "

Then "these two sentence patterns.

For example, "What would you do if we agree to a two-year contract?" and "the two-year", "in the international business negotiations, the conditional question has many special advantages."

(1) mutual concession.

The offer and proposal made up of conditional questions are based on the premise that the other party accepts our terms. In other words, our offer is only established when the other side accepts our terms, so we will not be unilaterally constrained by the offer and will not allow any side to make unilateral concessions.

(2) get information.

If the other side makes a counter offer for our offer made up of conditional questions, the other side will provide us with valuable information indirectly, concretely and timely.

For example, our proposal is: "What if we agree to a two-year contract? Would you give give"?

The new information will be helpful for future negotiations.

(3) seek common ground.

If the other party refuses our terms, we can make other conditions to make up the new conditional question and make a new round of offer to the other party.

The other side can also make a counter offer to us on condition questions.

The two sides continued their consultations and made concessions until they found important common ground.

(4) instead of "No".

In negotiations, if you say "No" directly to the other party, the other party will feel embarrassed, both sides will feel embarrassed, and even the negotiations will be deadlocked.

If we use conditional questions instead of "No", the above situation will not happen.

For example, when the other party asks for additional requests that we can not agree to, we can ask the other person in the conditional question: "Wouldyoubewillingtomeettheextracostifwemeetyouradditionalrequirements?"

If the other side is unwilling to pay the extra cost, he will refuse his request, so we will not lose the cooperation of the other side.

Most of the international business negotiations are conducted in English, and the mother tongue of both sides of the negotiation is not always English, which increases the difficulty of communication.

In this case, we should try to use simple, clear and definite English, not using polysemous words, puns, slang, idioms which are likely to cause misunderstanding.

Do not use words that are easily offensive to others, such as "Totellyouthetruth", "I" llbehonestwithyou... "

, "Iwilldomybest.", "It" snoneofmybusinessbut...

These words are mistrust, which makes each other worried, and unwilling to cooperate with us actively.

A serious common disease of pnational cultural exchange is "to treat others with their own interests", that is, subjectively think that the other party will understand our speech according to our wishes and habits, or what we understand from the other side's speech is exactly what the other party wants to express.

The most typical example is the use and understanding of "Yes" and "No".

There was a business negotiation between an American company and a Japanese company.

During the negotiations, the Americans were glad to find that whenever he put forward an opinion, the other side nodded, "Yes". He thought the negotiation was particularly successful.

It was not until he asked to sign the contract that he was shocked to find that the Japanese "Yes" was a polite "Ihearyou" "Yes" rather than "Iagreewithyou" of "Yes".

In fact, the meaning of the word "Yes" is very rich. In addition to the above two, there are also the "Yes" of "Yes" and "I" llconsiderit of "Iunderstandthequsetion".

The expression of "No" is also very complicated.

Some cultural values are opposed to positive conflicts, so people generally do not say "No" directly, but use some vague words to denial.

For example, Brazilians use "Somewhatdifficult" instead of "impossible". If an inexperienced negotiator understands by literal meaning, it will waste time and delay the negotiation process.

Therefore, we must try to understand each other's culture, their values and customs. Only in this way can we correctly convey and accept information.

To avoid misunderstanding, we can use interpretations to ensure smooth communication.

Paraphrasing is to explain each other's words in their own words, and to ask if our understanding is correct.

For example, the other person said, "Wewouldacceptpriveifyoucouldmodifyyourspecifications.", we can say: "IfIunderstandyoucorrectly, whatyouarereallysayingisthatyouagreetoacceptourpriceifweimproveourproductasyourequest." another advantage of doing this is to deepen the impression of the other side.

Finally, another way to ensure smooth communication is to make a summary before the end of the negotiations, repeat the agreement reached so far and ask the other party to approve it.

The summary must be practical and realistic, and the wording must be appropriate. Otherwise, the other party will be suspicious, and will not recognize the summary.

Before negotiation, we should make a full investigation and analysis of the situation of the other side, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, analyze which problems can be discussed, which questions are not negotiable, and analyze what matters are important to the other side, and how important the business is to the other party.

At the same time, we should also analyze our situation.

Assuming that we will negotiate with a purchasing manager of a large company, we should first ask ourselves the following questions:

What are the main issues to talk about?

What sensitive questions do not touch?

What should we talk about first?

What problems do we know about each other?

Since the last business, what has happened to the other side?

If we talk about it.