Overview

We transform average negotiators into skilled negotiators who get better results and build stronger relationships.

• Successful negotiation requires more than knowledge.  It takes skill.  And there’s a big difference between the two.

• Skill is the artful application of knowledge, after practice and feedback have made that knowledge second nature.

• No one wants surgery, for example – even from the valedictorian of a medical school – until practice and feedback have made that person’s surgical knowledge second nature.  Skill requires more than knowledge.  

• You can download information, but you only get skill with practice and feedback.

Knowledge of negotiation theory alone is not enough.

• Knowledge alone does not control negotiators’ behaviors when they are pressed to perform in real negotiations. 
• Under pressure, they fall back on their natural behavioral styles, however effective or ineffective they may be.

If successful negotiations were only a matter of knowing what you want and win-win theories for getting it, then everyone would be a skilled negotiator.

Having trained thousands of negotiators, we know something else is required.

• Most people who enter our program profess a win-win theory of negotiations.
• But when we observe them in actual negotiations, they practice win-lose.

We transform average negotiators into skilled negotiators who walk the talk with powerful joint problem solving skills. Our participants gain negotiation skills as well as knowledge.

Here’s how we train them: We integrate negotiating theory with practice, feedback and individual coaching in a customized, multi-day program that is lean, immersive, and intense.  Knowledge:  Our negotiating theory is consistent with the research of the Harvard Negotiation Project, but we go beyond it to teach participants how to implement the theory in actual negotiations with practical tips, tools, and techniques. Practice:  Participants learn by doing, using exercises and cases that are custom-written for their company to contain the real issues they face every day.  We never use one-size-fits-all or off-the-shelf cases.  Participants spend more than 60% of their time planning, conducting, and debriefing program negotiations.

• Feedback:  All participants get personalized, constructive feedback on their negotiating performance in order to set goals for improving it.  This feedback is both quantitative and qualitative, and the goals based on it are pursued in subsequent negotiations.  To maximize individual coaching and feedback, we provide two expert facilitators for each workshop, and we limit the number of participants to 12 – all from the same company. 

• Sustainability:  All participants leave with quantitative records of their negotiating goals and achievements, extensive feedback and coaching on their performance, including how their personal needs influence their negotiations, program materials, handouts, planning tools and job aids, their individual action plans for future negotiations, and next steps to sustain their learning.

• Expertise:  For some clients, we have provided dozens of programs over many years.  We have delivered our program in over 30 countries, and our book on negotiations has been published in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.  We can train both sides of a negotiation, and both sides will get better outcomes.  Our training is too advanced, however, for the general public, and we do not offer it to them.  It is available to professional negotiators only.

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Our training program powerfully transforms average into skilled negotiators – which is why we have over 45 years’ of combined experience in presenting it to Fortune 500 companies like these:

American Express Atwood Richards Babcock & Wilcox Bailey's Irish Cream Banque Lambert (Paris) Bantam Doubleday BOC – British Oxygen Corp. Canadian Tire Corp. Cobe Labs Dade Behring International Electronic Arts EMI Music Goodman-Fielder Gulf Oil Häagen-Dazs Insurance Services Office J&B Scotch (IDV) Johnson & Johnson Intl. KFC-International

Komatsu-Dresser Kuwait Food Co. (Kuwait) Lear Siegler Aerospace Levi Strauss Lincoln National Life Lion Nathan McKinsey & Co. Metaxa Microsoft Monsieur Henri Wines Nabisco Ontario Blue Cross PepsiCo, including: Pepsi Cola – domestic Pepsi Cola – international Frito-Lay Gatorade Quaker Tropicana

Phoenix Mutual Pierre Smirnoff Remy Amerique Rollerblade S.C. Johnson SmithKline Beckman SmithKline Beecham Solaris Taco Bell Thorn America Warner-Lambert Wilson Sporting Goods Woman's Day

Who should attend?

Our program will improve the skills of all who negotiate – whether inside or outside of their companies:

• Internal negotiators – upper, middle and matrix managers who negotiate budgets, services, resources and relationships with peers, supervisors, subordinates, HQ, branches or field personnel

• External negotiators – those who communicate or negotiate with government or regulatory agencies, banks, insurance companies, franchisees, customers, and suppliers

Is our training worth the investment?

• Time spent aiming a gun precisely makes a big difference down range. 

• Time spent training negotiators gets them more effectively on target and with higher impact.

When there are millions on the table, Advanced Training for Professional Negotiators doesn’t cost:  it pays.

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