Some people are natural negotiators and others are not. I fall into the latter category. I don’t enjoy buying cars, wheeling and dealing on Craigslist, or haggling with a street vendor when I’m on vacation in a developing country. All of these scenarios bring me significant stress and some degree of anxiety. My wife, Wendy, on the other hand, gets a huge thrill of adrenaline whenever she can talk a salesperson down to their bottom basement price. I’m glad I have Wendy, but that’ll never be me.

As I progressed through my career in enterprise technology, I eventually found myself in the position where I was responsible for recommending technology purchases for my company. I made the recommendation, but I left the price negotiation and final deal-making to my boss. That was fine with me. However, I learned that if I wanted to advance to that next level, I needed to tackle this fear.

About this time, I remember taking a negotiation course offered through my corporate learning and development department. Most of the people in the class were like me. We needed confidence in the art of negotiation so we could bring the best value to our company, and avoid feeling like a victim. Here are some of my lessons learned from this class, and the decade of negotiation that I’ve done since.

Be Defensive

I learned all sorts of negotiation tactics, both the ethical ones and the not-so-ethical ones. I learned not to use them, but to identify when they are being used on me. This was probably the most important thing for me to learn. Negotiations can get emotional and out of control in a hurry. Falling blindly for negotiation tactics makes you a victim. Spot them for what they are, and stay calm and in control.

Get Information

Negotiations are basically a war over information. Do your homework. Make yourself the most well-informed, well-researched party in the room, and you’ll do well. There are plenty of public sources of information, but some of the best information cannot be obtained from google searches. Reach out to your peer network, or contact a market research firm to give you what you need to make a well-informed negotiation.

Get Options

The official term is BATNA or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. As technologists, we can get emotionally committed to our technology. It doesn’t matter if it’s network gear, operating systems, management platforms, service desk tools, or even resellers, we often get religious in our commitment to a particular brand. That’s bad news for us as negotiators. We need to be heads-up about this. Do we really need best-of-breed in this given scenario, or are several options workable? Since I am a technologist, I understand that sometimes you don’t have good alternatives. That’s fine, but you have to know that going into your negotiation, you’ve got a weak position.

Look for the Win-Win

Negotiations are adversarial by nature. The entire setup feels like Win-Lose. Of course, the other side is saying all of the right things, like how they want to be your strategic partner, blah, blah blah, but at the end of the day, that’s all part of the negotiation. Corporations need to buy technology. Technology companies need to sell their products. This is basic commerce. Find the best technologies sold by decent human beings for a fair price and everybody wins.

Get Experience

My goal with this blog article is to give the average technologist a pathway to becoming a better negotiator. This doesn’t mean that you should go out tomorrow and single-handedly negotiate multi-million dollar deals. Start negotiating small deals and work your way up. Get in the room with people that are better at negotiating than you, and see how they do it.

Get Help

We all have our limits, and different deals have different stakes. Know the resources you have at your disposal. This could be your boss, an internal sourcing department, an outside sourcing advisory firm, or legal counsel. Some deals will require all of the above. Play your part, and use the expertise around you. Never overplay your hand, especially when it comes to your own negotiation skills.

Celebrate Success

It’s fun to make great deals. I love being able to get great technology at an excellent value for my company. Some deals save money on commodity services, so you can reinvest the saving elsewhere. Sometimes you get to bring in cutting-edge technology that will make an incredible difference for your company. It feels good when the hard work pays off.

I hope this article was encouraging. You can move from a place of complete intimidation to solid confidence with time and training. While some are naturals and others aren’t, negotiation can be learned by all. Have any negotiation lessons of your own to share? Please comment below.