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“How To Use Value Perspective To Win More Negotiations”
In your negotiations, what’s your value perspective and how do you assess the other negotiator’s value perspective? The better you determine what’s of true value to the opposing negotiator, the better positioned you’ll be to win more negotiations.
An item is only worth what someone is willing to pay. Thus, value is based on someone’s perspective and the value-add an item contributes to one’s environment.
When it comes to assessing value, perspective is based on current needs, wants, and desires of the negotiator making the assessment. Thus, when negotiating you should observe the value proposition that one holds per how he can be influenced to obtain the outcome sought from the negotiation.
To understand someone’s perspective of value, understand it from an emotional and physical perspective (i.e. what it does for them, why he wants it, what he’ll do with it, how others will view him once he has it based on how he wishes to be perceived).
Value Perspective Based on Positioning:
To maximize the perspective of an item, in the planning stage of the negotiation consider how you might make the item more appealing to the opposing negotiator. In some cases, you can increase the perspective of an item’s value by making it harder to obtain. In other situations, it may behoove you to make an item easier to attain based on concessions you may seek.
Value Perspective Based on Current Needs:
When considering a negotiator’s perspective of value, consider how long an item may be perceived as being valuable to him, based on why he needs that item. If the item is not truly a need, but instead something he wants, the value of obtaining the item may subside quicker than if it was a real need, something he has to have. Wants tend to dissipate faster than needs.
Value Perspective Based on Increments: (give a little now with the promise of more later)
Another way to increase the perspective of value is to deliver concessions in incremental phases. It’s akin to allowing the opposing negotiator to experience what it might be like to possess all of what he’s seeking while keeping him engaged in the negotiation to obtain more of what he needs. By allowing him to experience the sensation of what it would be like to have it all, the degree of what he doesn’t have takes on a heightened desire for him to possess the totality of your offering.
Personality Type Value Perspective:
Always consider the personality type of the other negotiator when assessing how she might respond to the strategies above. Since some negotiators are more disciplined than others, some may be better at delaying the gratitude they’ll experience from obtaining an item, which will make it more difficult for you to give the item a heightened sense of value.
As you can see, the way one views value is totally dependent upon one’s perspective. Therefore, you should never assume because an item has value to you that it has the same degree of value to your negotiation counterpart. Since needs shift with the passage of time, in order to maximize a negotiation opportunity, assess the ‘shelf life’ of offers/counteroffers. To the degree you position your offer from a perceived value perspective at the optimum time, you’ll be more successful in your negotiation efforts … and everything will be right with the world.
Remember, you’re always negotiating!