The result of negotiation is not necessarily “you win and I lose” or “I win and you lose”. The two negotiating parties must first establish the concept of “win-win”. The outcome of a negotiation should make both parties feel “winners”. What kind of negotiation means, negotiation methods and negotiation principles to adopt to achieve such an outcome is the purpose of our study and research on negotiation.
When people mention negotiation skills, they often focus on introducing the so-called “skills” that one party tries to take some means to deal with the negotiating opponent, especially the one-sided pursuit of one party’s victory. The win-win negotiation principle we introduce here is a principle that all negotiators should follow and accept, and can be applied in continuous practice.
To achieve a win-win situation, the following three standards should generally be met:
(I) Negotiations should reach a wise agreement
The core feature of a wise agreement is win-win. The result of the negotiation should meet the legitimate interests of all parties to the negotiation, be able to fairly resolve the conflict of interests of all parties to the negotiation, and also take into account the public interest.
(II) The negotiation method must be efficient
Efficient negotiations enable both parties to seize business opportunities and have more energy to expand business interests. If the two parties drag on in the negotiation and find it difficult to choose a solution that satisfies both parties, and waste time unnecessarily, it will bring pressure to the negotiating parties and increase the risk of unsuccessful negotiations.
(III) Negotiations should be able to improve or at least not harm the relationship between the negotiating parties
The result of the negotiation is to gain benefits, but the benefits cannot be gained at the cost of destroying or harming the relationship between the negotiating parties. Because business cooperation is not something that can be done overnight, from a development perspective, long-term business cooperation relationships will bring you more business opportunities. Negotiations that ignore building relationships often cause negative reactions in the negotiators, which can easily hurt their “face”, thus having a negative impact on the final negotiation results.