The art of negotiating escapes most of us, even good salespeople, because few take the time to correctly understand the word and follow the golden rules of negotiating.
The first and biggest error is a misunderstanding of the word. When I ask people at my Closers workshop what the word “negotiating” means, I get answers like, “how good a deal can I get” and “how cheap can I buy.” For many people, it’s a process of painful tactics of stall and overcome or a give and take mostly involving the surrender of price and terms.
“Negotiate” comes from the Latin negotiatus, which is the past participle of negotiari, and means to carry on business. This original meaning is critical to understand because the goal of negotiating is to continue doing business by conferring with another to arrive at an agreement.
