Untitled

Chapter 12 - Negotiating in the Workplace

The workplace is rife with negotiations, whether you are an actual employee of the organization or a self-employed independent contractor. In some cases the negotiations involve the terms and conditions of an individual’s employment, while in others, an individual is representing his or her employer in negotiations with others

IDENTIFYING AND INCREASING YOUR LEVERAGE

The more you have to offer the other party, the greater your leverage in a negotiation. In the workplace this means the more valuable you are to your employer, the more likely you are to be successful when negotiating employment-related matters.

Labor economists have long studied human capital—the knowledge, skills, and abilities a worker possesses as a result of native ability and “raw labor power”.

Social capital is the sum of the resources a person possesses as a result of investments in social networks and provides an advantage based on a person’s location in a structure of relationships.

Negotiation researchers have also recently identified relational capital, a negotiation-specific form of social capital, which focuses on the relational assets that accumulate within a specific dyadic negotiation relationship.

It has been said that the art of negotiating may be the most difficult skill for any salesperson to develop and that many salespeople aren’t effective negotiators because they’re often too willing to do whatever it takes to make the sale.

THE ART OF NEGOTIATION IN SALES

THE NEGOTIATION PERSPECTIVE

When you approach sales from a negotiation perspective, the focus shifts from a list of dos and don’ts to developing a good relationship with customers. The best way to ensure that is to work to develop an ongoing relationship with the customer from the beginning.

BEYOND OUTSIDE SALES

There are many more subtle, informal negotiations that happen daily with customers in a wide variety of settings. The principles are the same whether one is in retail sales, food service, customer service, or any of a myriad of other jobs that involve working with a customer.

PURCHASING ON BEHALF OF YOUR EMPLOYER

Generally speaking, as a customer you want the price to be lower and the quality higher than you would if you were the supplier. As a customer, you must be careful not to give suppliers the impression that you are trying to manipulate them. Know what you want and when you want it, be complete and precise about your expectations, and be honorable in all of your dealings.

Customers need to focus on total value because buying by price, rather than total value, can destroy trust.18 Beyond the negative impact on the relationship, focusing on price alone may result in substantive problems as well.

Negotiating the Procurement of Outside Services on Behalf of Your Employer

As a customer, you need to understand your needs and be able to fully articulate them in a Request for Proposal (RFP). Because this is an ongoing arrangement, the relationship between the parties is particularly important.

Negotiating Individual Employment Agreements on Behalf of Your Employer

A second type of negotiation that may create additional challenges is the negotiation of individual employment agreements to entice an applicant to accept your offer of employment or convince an employee to remain with the organization. These are idiosyncratic deals—often referred to as “i-deals”—

WHEN YOU ARE OVERCOMMITTED

If the task you are being asked to do isn’t something that will help your career or something that you really want to do, you must learn to say no. This can be tricky to do without impacting the relationship with the person making the request.

If you are being asked to do something that you want to do, but you are already stretched thin, it is still a good idea to ask for time to think about it. This gives you time to plan how you will negotiate away some of your other less desirable tasks.