Introduction
Just like many other business processes, there is an increasing need to use the principles of management during business negotiation. These principles include planning, organizing, directing and controlling. They aid in attaining completeness, as far as business negotiation processes are concerned. This paper explores the need to embrace each of these principles during business negotiation.
Essence of planning, organizing, directing and controlling
According to Lewicki and Hiam (2006), businesses negotiation comprises of different processes. This is why there is need to have adequate preparation for negotiation. Strategic planning is vital since it ensures that all the issues to be negotiated about are identified and clearly understood by the negotiating team. Planning also helps in addressing the critical issues that need to be captured during the entire process. This ensures that there is flow in negotiation.
Organizing is another critical managerial principle in business negotiation. Organizing comes in during the pre-phases of negotiation. The essentiality of organizing during business negotiation revolves around the logistical issue that appertain the negotiation. Issues of venue, time, listing of issues to be negotiated about, and the approaches to be deployed in the process of negotiation are brought out (Lewicki & Hiam 2006).
Directing ensures that a certain level of command is attained by the negotiators in line with the main goals of the firm; which mostly revolve around business sustainability and profit making. Controlling ensures that the desired procedures are strictly adhered to during negotiation. Controlling also ensures that a desired level of flexibility is attained during the give and take part of the negotiation to ensure that the goals of a company are attained.
Skills and competencies for effective business negotiation
Business firms operate under a competitive environment. To this effect, any business negotiator has to be familiar with the prevailing aspects’ competitive dynamics in the market and the essential business strategies that can be used by firms to help ease the competitive pressure. Therefore, the first vital skill in business negotiation is to understand the microeconomic and macroeconomic dynamics in the business environment and how they affect the operations of a firm (Garrett, 2005).
The main reason why a firm engages in business negotiations is to secure outcomes that can aid in increasing the business payoffs for the company. Therefore, business negotiators have to understand the business goals and objectives of the company in order to further them during the negotiations. This also entails understanding the business goals and objectives of the business partners in order to make reasonable demands and adjustments during the negotiation (Lewicki & Hiam, 2006).
Essence of understanding and applying different strategies of negotiation
Several communicative attributes and strategies are deployed during business negotiation. Each of the strategies are applied with the aim of either ensuring that the negotiation flows or ensuring possible maximum payoffs are attained by the negotiating team. The planning stage in business negotiation entails the rehearsal stage.
Rehearsal is meant to ensure that all the strategies that are to be used during business negotiation are mastered by the negotiating team. The technical areas of each of the strategies are developed during the rehearsals. The strategies that are deployed by a given team in the process of negotiation ought to be patterned by counter strategies from the other team. This implies that a mastery of massive business negotiation strategies can help a firm to adjust and attain favorable outcomes (Cellich & Jain, 2012).
References
Cellich, C., & Jain, S. C. (2012). Practical solutions to global business negotiations. New York, NY: Business Expert Press.
Garrett, G. A. (2005). Contract negotiations: Skills, tools, and best practices. Chicago, IL: CCH.
Lewicki, R. J., & Hiam, A. (2006). Mastering business negotiation: a working guide to making deals and resolving conflict. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.