Negotiations Skills Training

With over twenty-five years of proven industry experience, the Negotiations Training Institute of America is the recognized leader in negotiations training, consulting and performance coaching. Through public open enrollment seminars and private on-session training sessions, we have helped leading corporations, non-profit organizations and governmental agencies improve their ability to negotiate better outcomes for their constituencies. First-time negotiators as well as those with the greatest competitive drive and amount of first-hand experience and negotiations wisdom can benefit from our time-tested workshops. Whether focusing on negotiating a contract with a vendor or jumping in to the often-stressful car buying process to deal with a dealership, our courses provide useful skills, proven techniques and various classroom role plays to help you become more aware of negotiations that you must face on a daily basis.

For more information on our negotiation skills training courses please contact us.

Negotiation Skills and Strategies - Bracketize the Offers

During March Madness sports fans affectionately refer to the NCAA Basketball tournament as "bracketology". It's a 65 team playoff, over 18 days, single elimination (winner keeps going, loser goes home)... one ultimate winner. I think it's the best event in sports. In negotiation, we sometimes pride ourselves on "thinking on our feet" or "winging it." Don't fool yourself. There is a better way. It's called "bracketizing."

The best chance for Negotiation success comes from what we call "Aggressive Preparation". In the Humble Confidence Negotiation Workshop we dive into the 6 Stages of Negotiation Preparation. Stage 5 is what we call "bracketizing" our offers. We prepare and bracket 4 offers:

1) The Best (better than expected)
2) The Realistic (what it should be)
3) The Fallback (acceptable range of backup)
4) The Alamo (don't go there...call a timeout!)

Bracketizing means we project ahead and determine a range of offers. We gain the discipline of staying within the plan, or "bracket". We never "wing it" or freelance deals at the table. Never.

Now that's not to mean we're rigid or "un-creative". Not at all. But it does mean we control our emotions and don't get caught up in the euphoria of deal-completion. Sometimes we just want to be done...be careful not to let your desire to finish drive a sub-par outcome.

Bracketizing is just one stage. There are 5 more in "Aggressive Preparation". We call it "Aggressive" because you have to drive your team and yourself to embrace the process.