Not everything is available to everyone. “Negotiations” is one of the key techniques to get what you want. This is not a free lunch. It’s about achieving optimal solutions between two parties to arrive at a win-win deal.
I have come across many books on negotiation techniques. When you glimpse through them, it boils down to one thing. It’s not about convincing rather understanding other perspectives better. So put yourself in other shoes and understand what makes it better.
Ben Franklin says in his Poor Richard’s Almanack,
"If you want to persuade, appeal to interest not to reason."
The above quote is quite profound in many ways. We often try to prove that we are correct and logically provide the reason why we think that way. In theory, this looks like a no-brainer to accept. However, this approach does not give you an optimal outcome for one reason. Most of the time, we don’t want to be proved wrong.
The success lies in identifying the outcome which would make them feel that they had a better deal. So for a successful negotiation, it’s not only “What’s in it for me” also “What’s in it for you”.
Understanding other people better through humble inquiry and knowing their ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ would be a starting point here. We also need to take care of the fact that things you lost will hurt twice as much as you gain. So losing 10 dollars is not the same as gaining 10 Dollars. The emotions are vastly different for the inverse opposite outcome.
During negotiations, we will see situations where people will be flexible with the truth or facts. While bluntly we could say that this person is lying, lying is in fact an expression of discomfort. Identifying and addressing that discomfort would be a key path to success.
To conclude, successful negotiation starts with spending more time on having a clear understanding of what options could appeal to the other party and present it in such a way that he cannot refuse.