Negotiating in Life, Negotiating Tips, Business Negotiation December 29, 2010

Top Six Negotiation New Year’s Resolutions

As we say good-bye to 2010, and get ready for 2011, what better time to come up with some New Year’s resolutions to improve your negotiationsin the coming year.

Before we look forward to the New Year, it is a good idea to look back and review the year that was. A few questions to get you started:

• How many negotiations were you involved in?
• How did you or your team fare?
• What were the most contentious issues and how did you resolve them?
• Did you deadlock on anything?
• What did you find was the most useful negotiating strategy or tactic?
• If you did not reach a deal that you wanted, what was the main reason?

From your answers above, have you identified areas for improvement? Have you identified areas where you did well? What conclusions can you draw? Are there any trends?

First negotiation resolution for 2011: Continue doing what works.

Second negotiation resolution: Identify and improve your weak areas. Perhaps you should work on your strategizing or your market research.

Third negotiation resolution: Practice an assessment after every negotiation to discover what works and what doesn’t work. Keep a record of your assessments to identify patterns and changes over time.

Fourth negotiation resolution: Keep informed on general business issues and not just issues related to your industry. There may be issues looming that will affect all businesses and the economy in general.

Fifth negotiation resolution: Keep abreast of technological changes. Entrepreneur magazine has a good list.

Sixth negotiation (and business and even personal) resolution: Get and stay organized! For a starting point, read this article about business de-cluttering from USA Today.

KARRASS and Negotiating Space wish you a very happy and successful New Year 2011!