Please enjoy the tip of the month from Miller Heiman.

Being an effective negotiator means overcoming two of your biggest challenges:

1. Finding the right balance of what to give and get in order to achieve a win-win
2. Making sure you receive critical information from your customer

Five Key Steps to Effective Negotiations

1. Identify the subjective interests in the sale.
   Be very specific. Start by writing down your customer’s key motivators, interests and drivers. These are personal to the individual you are negotiating with… how will they win? You may not know all of them, but make some assumptions. You can confirm it later with your customer. Next to that, write down your own interests in the sale.
   
   
2. Define objective criteria.
   What are the measurable results that your customer wants to get out of the sale? What are the results that you want? How compatible are these to each other?
   
   
3. Options and alternatives.
   Consider what options are already on the table, and what the alternatives would be if the planned agreement didn’t happen. Analyze these because if the alternatives look enticing enough to the customer, they won’t be motivated to move ahead with you. Your job is to make the agreement so enticing that the alternatives aren’t an option for the customer.
   
   
4. Find out more from your customer.
   You'll want to use the lists you created in Step 1 as a guide to developing the questions you'll ask your customer. These questions should aim to confirm or deny your hypotheses about where your customer is coming from. Many times, the objective criteria are more obvious, so you may want to focus on better understanding your customer's subjective interests. What personal gains or losses will they experience as a result of this agreement? As you discover more information, you can write this down next to the information you already know to have a more complete picture of both your customer's situation as well as your own.
   
   
5. Decide what information to give ahead of time.
   Review the information from Steps 1-3. What information would be helpful to reveal to your customer? Which information should you not disclose? Most often, the subjective interests are the most compelling to share and the least threatening. This can also really help your customer understand your position so that you can achieve a solution that will benefit you as much as your customer.

Understanding the hidden motivators of your customer will enable you to really connect with what your customer wants to achieve. This information also enables you to develop additional options and solutions that will benefit the customer both personally and professionally.