Negotiations have a direct and measurable impact on your (professional) relationships and your ability to seize opportunities. Negotiations permeate our personal and professional lives and you engage in some form of negotiation every single day. How do you get to be in control, more alert about the risks and opportunities involved and more skilful at steering a situation in your favor?
Negotiation Dynamics is an intensive and hands-on program during which you will grasp the key elements of negotiation analysis and practice a multitude of ‘live’ cases. The 3-day program will facilitate you in greatly sharpening your negotiation skills and enlarging your repertoire
Learning by doing
The best way to learn about negotiation is to negotiate. Participants are immediately thrown into the water. Swimming techniques are discussed only after participants have tried out whatever approaches come natural to them – and after they have observed an astonishing range of different results from fellow participants.
Feedback
Contrary to popular belief, learning from experience in negotiation is often not very effective. The main problem is that prompt, comprehensive and reliable feedback about real life negotiations is rarely available. How do we know whether a deal is brilliant, mediocre, or downright poor? And we typically don’t get any process feedback at all! During this program, you will be able to benchmark your own deals against similar deals negotiated by thousands of executives who participated in Negotiation Dynamics programs all over the world. In addition, valuable process feedback both from fellow participants and from Professor Dierickx will enable you to identify some of your real strengths in negotiation, as well as some of your weak spots.
Diversity of Experience
While most executives negotiate on a regular basis, their experience base is usually relatively narrow. As a result, they develop routines and – like experienced drivers – may acquire bad habits. This program will expose you to a broad array of diverse negotiating problems and encourage you to critically examine your own negotiating routines. You will learn to spot – and take advantage of – other negotiators’ bad habits … and, perhaps, identify some of your own bad habits as well!
Real Life Cases
One cannot learn real life negotiating skills from ‘academic’ negotiating cases. In Negotiating Dynamics, all the material cases and role-plays are based on real life negotiations. Examples and anecdotes are drawn from thirty years of negotiating experience.
Practical Skills
Particular emphasis is given to negotiation practice, captured by the experience of negotiation professionals. You will get savvy negotiating tips to deal with many common negotiating challenges (dealing with sharp, intrusive questions, handling aggressive price challenges, etc.). Concepts and techniques are illustrated by countless anecdotes and practical examples. Most importantly, participants build up a personal repertoire of effective moves to deal with common negotiating problems including aggressive challenges on a single issue (such as price) and handling tough questions.
How you will benefit
- Master price negotiations
- Learn to structure complex package deals
- Identify opportunities to create value
- Avoid arguments
- Maintain composure under pressure
- Manage sound long-term business relations
“It gave me so much inspiration and intellectual stimulation. Wonderful! Thank you.”
Treasury Manager Royal Vopak, The Netherlands
Program length
3 days
| Day 1 | 09:00 – 18:00 |
| Day 2 | 08:30 – 18:00 |
| Day 3 | 08:30 – 18:00 |
Next steps
We offer carefully crafted learning paths designed to help you dive deeper into various facets of finance. Take the next step in your professional learning path by choosing one or more of our specialized programs, for example:
Day 1
Price negotiations – concepts and tactics
- Diagnosis and preparation
- The twin pillars of bargaining power: alternatives and information
- Opening offers
- Concession patterns
- Focal points and commitment
- Closing the deal
Package deals – defining the optimal ‘architecture’ of complex agreements
- Creating a negotiable agenda
- Homans’ Law
- Salami slicing
- Evaluating tradeoffs: ‘efficiency ratios’
- Exploring options
- Using MESOS
Day 2
Breaking deadlock – a process perspective
- Aggressive negotiating challenges
- Stand-offs, stalling tactics and waiting games
- Conflict escalation: structural characteristics and psychological dynamics
- Changing the structure of the problem: ‘The issue is never the issue’
- A process perspective on breaking deadlock: the method of the ‘five A’s’
Negotiating deals in an uncertain environment
- The challenges of negotiating long-term contracts in an uncertain environment
- Identifying opportunities to create value
- Playing on differences between negotiating partners to create value
- Creating ‘expected’ value: opportunities and limits
- Competition: playing on differences to lock in sustainable competitive advantage
Day 3
The ‘Nuts and Bolts’ of Negotiation: Handling Common Negotiation Challenges
- Retaining composure under pressure
- Handling tough questions
- Spotting lies – and knowing how to deal with them
- Handling common negotiation challenges
- “We like your solution but we haven’t got the budget for that”
- “We already have another proposal …”
- “Is that your final offer?”
- “Too expensive”
- “I’m prepared to meet you half way”
Asymmetric information: when parties have totally different views of the world
- Gaining personal credibility: a process perspective
- ‘Show, Don’t Tell’: Using proposals to overcome the credibility gap
- ‘Signaling’
- ‘Screening’
- Promises and threats
- The negotiation time frame
Program preparation
There is some preparatory work required for this program. Pre-readings consist of case materials, that will be made available a few weeks prior to the program.
To ensure maximum benefit from the program for participant and fellow-participants, we strongly advise to prepare prior to attending.
Read more:
> ‘Why complex negotiations are easier than simple ones’ with Prof. Ingemar Dierickx.
Negotiations permeate our personal and professional lives and you engage in some form of negotiation every single day. While the Negotiation Dynamics program will benefit virtually all professionals, it will be of particular interest to:
- Investment bankers
- Consultants
- Executives in liaison roles such as country managers
- Lawyers
- Entrepreneurs
- Sales managers
- Key account managers
- Managers handling procurement
Prerequisite
Participants wishing to enroll in the program should have experience in actual negotiations, for both their own benefit and the benefit of other participants. Please contact us should you feel the need to verify your level of knowledge, and/or the relevance of your work context.
Is this program not the right fit for you?
We offer other programs which you might find more interesting or useful, such as:
