Why your persuasive negotiation could fail

Why your persuasive #negotiation could fail

Persuasive negotiation is a tricky art that requires an ability to factor in faultless logic with empathy and an intuitive understanding of other people’s needs and desires. You may feel you have a mastery of all of these, and yet find that after hours of work with a client, your persuasive negotiation still teeters on the edge and has potential to fail.

There are a number of reasons why this could be the case. Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” While we all understand this to be true intuitively, we all tend to carry on repeating our patterns of speech and behaviour, believing that eventually we will ‘break through’ to different results.

If you observe carefully, you will see this pattern over and over again in all manner of persuasive negotiation -whether that’s negotiating between partners over who will put the garbage bags out, or negotiating terms between a company and a potential client.

We believe that our own logic is faultless, and that if we just repeat it to the other party enough times, they will see the inherent ‘sense’ in what we’re saying, and come around to our point of view. Endless arguments have been dragged on with this type of thinking. 

Once you’ve understood this concept, you will be able to understand why your persuasive negotiation could fail. You’ll be able to see that people are much more open to your logic if their emotional attitude resonates with yours. If you can persuade on an emotional and attitudinal level, your ‘logic’ will be much more likely to get across to the other party.