Has this ever happened to you? You've prepared well for your listing appointment hoping to win the listing on a great property and arrive to present to the owners. As you start your presentation, the husband begins taking control by raising objections to several of the points in your presentation. Instead of responding, you feel the need to react, feel you have lost control and walk out of the appointment without the signed agreement because they want to "think it over", or "interview a couple of other agents for the job". You know you could have done better.

What happened here has happened to many of us in a sales situation, and can be avoided with a little additional preparation.

I recently interviewed negotiating expert, Dr. George Lucas author of the upcoming book, "The Contented Negotiator" and asked him why sales people had a general fear of negotiations and what they can do to improve their skills. After training over 10,000 people on five continents, he reports that many of us in sales suffer from what he calls, "negotiaphobia", or a distaste of anything associated with the process of negotiating.

Although there are a variety of negotiaphobic causes, Dr. Lucas cites three important reasons:

1. Lack of training: Few sales people get negotiation training. In a group of 25 sales or buying professionals, you are lucky to find 2 people that have read a book, attended a seminar or actually taken a class. This represents about 8-16 percent of a group of people who face negotiation situations every day!

2. Lack of experience: We wouldn't think about bargaining at our local grocery with an offer to purchase an item for less than the marked price. In contrast, a woman at the marketplace in Latin America negotiates daily and her expertise determines if her family will go to bed hungry. We just don't get the chance to perfect our skills on a daily basis, and yet we conduct business every day that requires this skill to best represent our clients, customers and ourselves!

3. Avoiding confrontation: Dr. Lucas says that many people would rather live with what they know to be a bad deal just to avoid having to talk about or renegotiate.

There is no singular solution, but there are activities to help us advance to become a skilled negotiator. Dr. Lucas suggests we begin a concerted personal development effort by reading books, taking a course and initiate a study program to enhance our proficiency. In his upcoming book, he outlines eight characteristics of a good negotiator, some of which are as simple as being a good listener.

His key advice is to invest in preparation to help us better understand our needs and theirs. The best negotiators do their homework, as most negotiations are not won or lost at the table, but won or lost before you even get to that point. Practice will lend the biggest improvement to your development and confidence, as will understanding the different communication styles to improve interaction skills. Ethics and honesty are strong characteristics of a skilled negotiator that prove helpful in building trust.

It is imperative that we learn our own negotiation tendencies and to comprehend and anticipate the tendencies of the other side.

Published: January 20, 2005

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