Express trade negotiation skills

Exporters must master negotiation skills in order to succeed. The trade talks are actually a kind of dialogue. In this dialogue, both sides explain their own situations, state their opinions, listen to each other's proposals, make offers, and make counter-proposals. They also back up, concede each other, and finally reach an agreement. By mastering negotiation skills, you will be able to take the initiative in dialogue and achieve satisfactory results. We should master the following important tips:

The biggest weakness of negotiators who listen to more and talk less and lack experience is that they cannot listen to each other's speeches. They think that their task is to talk about their own situation, to say what they want to say and to refute their opposition. Therefore, in the negotiations, they always thought of what they should say below. Without paying attention to the other party's speech, many valuable information would be lost. They erroneously believe that good negotiators grasp the initiative of negotiation because they speak much more. In fact, successful negotiators use more than 50% of the time to negotiate. They listen, think, analyze and constantly ask questions to each other to ensure that they understand each other perfectly. They listen carefully to each other's words, not only what they think is important, or what they want to hear, so they get a lot of valuable information and increase their bargaining power. Effective listening can enable us to understand the needs of importers, find new solutions to problems, and revise our offers or counter offers. "Talking" is a task, and "listening" is a kind of ability, or even a kind of talent. "Listen" is a condition that any successful negotiator must possess. In the negotiations, we must try to encourage the other party to say more. We must say “Yes” and “Please go on” to the other party and ask the other party to ask questions so that the other party can talk more about their situation so that they can understand each other’s purpose as much as possible. .

The second important skill in negotiating a clever question is to ask questions. By asking questions, we can not only obtain information that is not normally available, but also confirm our past judgment. Exporters apply open-ended questions (ie, the answer is not “yes” or “no”, and require special explanations) to understand the needs of importers, because such issues can allow importers to freely talk about their needs. For example: "Can you tell me more about your campany?" "What do you think of our proposal?" For foreigners' answers, we must write down key and key issues for future use.

After the offer, the importer often asks: "Can not you do better than that?" To ask this question, we should not make concessions, but we should ask: "What is meant by better?" or "Better than what?" Enable importers to explain in what ways they are not satisfied. For example, the importer would say: "Your competitor is offering better terms." At this time, we can continue to ask until we fully understand the competitor's offer. Then, we can explain to each other that our offer is different and actually better than our competitors. If the other party gives us an ambiguous answer to our request, such as “No problem”, we should not accept it, but we should ask him to answer it specifically. In addition, before asking questions, especially at the beginning of the negotiations, we should solicit the consent of the other party. This has two advantages: First, if the other party agrees with us, it will be more cooperative in answering questions; second, if the other party's answer is " Yes, this affirmative reply will create a positive atmosphere for the negotiations and bring a good start.

Conditions of Use Question After both parties have a preliminary understanding of each other, the negotiations will enter the offer and counter-offer phase. At this stage, we must use more tentative conditions to further understand each other's specific situation in order to revise our offer.

Conditional questions consist of a conditional adverbial clause and a question. This question can be either a special question or an ordinary question. Typical conditional questions are "What...if" and "If...then". For example: "What would you do if we agree to a two-year contract?" and "If we modif your specifications, would you consider a larger order?" Conditional questions have many special advantages in international business negotiations.

(1) Interact with each other. The offers and proposals made up of conditional questions are premised on the other party’s acceptance of our terms. In other words, our offer is only established when the other party accepts our terms and therefore we will not be unilaterally The constraints of the disc will not allow any party to make unilateral concessions. Only by giving each step, the transaction can be achieved.

(2) Get information. If the other party counters the offer made by us using conditional questions, the other party will provide us with valuable information indirectly, specifically and in a timely manner. For example, we propose: "What if we agree to a two-year contract? Would you give us exclusive distribution rights in our territory?" The other person replied: "We would be ready to give you exclusive rights porvided you agree to a three- Year contract.” From the answer, we can judge that the other party is concerned about long-term cooperation. The newly acquired information will be helpful for future negotiations.

(3) Seeking common ground. If the other party rejects our condition, we can use other conditions to form a new conditional question and make a new offer to the other party. The other party can also use our conditional question to provide a counter to us. Both sides continue to negotiate and make concessions until they find important common ground.

(4) Replace "No". In the negotiation, if you directly say "No" to the other party, the other party will feel no face, both sides will feel embarrassed, and negotiations will even result in an impasse. If we replace "No" with a conditional question, the above situation will not happen. For example, when the other party asks us for an additional request that we cannot agree with, we can ask the other person with a conditional question: "Would you be willing to meet the extra cost if we meet your additional requirements?" If the other party is not willing to pay an additional fee, it refuses. We will not lose our cooperation because of our own requirements.