How do you feel when you think about negotiation? Anxious, unprepared, filled with dread? Although these emotions are common, they can severely hinder your chances of negotiating successfully or cause you to avoid opportunities entirely.
Harvard Business School Professor Alison Wood Brooks describes her research on how anxiety influences negotiation.
“We found that anxiety had a significant effect on how people negotiated,” Wood Brooks says in the Harvard Business Review. “People experiencing anxiety made weaker first offers, responded more quickly to each move the counterpart made, and were more likely to exit negotiations early.”
Free E-Book: How to Become a More Effective Leader
Access your free e-book today.
DOWNLOAD NOWUltimately, her research revealed that anxious negotiators made deals that were 12 percent less financially attractive than their non-anxious counterparts.
Negotiations are a natural part of business and life; they’re impossible to avoid and can lead to positive outcomes if executed correctly. Luckily, online negotiation training courses can provide the skills, confidence, and practice to curb negotiation anxiety and set you up for success.
“Although many people enroll in negotiation classes to learn strategies and increase skills, one of the primary benefits is the comfort that comes from repeatedly practicing deal-making in simulations and exercises,” Wood Brooks says. “Negotiation eventually feels more routine, so it’s not such an anxiety-inducing experience.”
If you want to approach negotiations with confidence and close valuable deals, an online negotiation course could be the right fit. Here’s a breakdown of how it can help.
Who Can Benefit from Online Negotiation Training?
Early- and Mid-Career Professionals
Negotiation is a necessary skill for leadership and management. Whether you’re an aspiring leader or a seasoned manager aiming to sharpen your skills, negotiation training can help when determining contractual terms with vendors and suppliers, discussing salary and compensation, and requesting funding for a project or initiative.
Entrepreneurs
If you want to start and run your own business, strong negotiation skills can greatly improve your chances of maximizing funds, navigating the investment process, and getting fair deals on materials and resources.
Negotiation Professionals
If it’s your responsibility to negotiate on behalf of your organization, striking deals while maintaining positive relationships with clients, vendors, and suppliers is vital. A negotiation training course can help you practice and discover which tactics work in given scenarios—and which don’t.
Value-Driven Individuals
Whether discussing salary or buying a car, every negotiation is about creating value. If you want to learn how to navigate negotiations in a way that generates value for all parties, an online course is an effective choice.
No matter your reasons for negotiating, you can benefit from gaining several skills. Check out the video below to learn about essential negotiation skills, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!
5 Benefits of Online Negotiation Training
Negotiation training can provide the necessary skills, applicable frameworks, and structured practice to approach the bargaining table with confidence. Here are five benefits you can gain from an online negotiation course.
1. Reframe Your Mindset and Create Value
A common misconception about negotiation is that you should only focus on gaining the most value from the exchange. In the online course Negotiation Mastery, HBS Professor Michael Wheeler explains that it’s not so simple.
“There’s a fundamental tension between creating and claiming value,” Wheeler says in the course. “Negotiation isn’t one or the other—it’s both at the same time.”
Rather than solely aiming to claim the largest slice of the metaphorical pie, Wheeler guides you through techniques for “expanding the pie” to create value for both yourself and other parties.
A course can help reframe negotiation’s goal and provide the tools to strike more valuable deals.
2. Engage with Learners Worldwide
One benefit of taking negotiation training online is engaging with learners from around the world. An online format removes the logistical and financial barriers of traveling to a classroom, creating the opportunity for global connection.
Those connections can give you diverse perspectives on the course material and practice working with peers from other cultures. You can also form a network that extends long past course completion.
Related: Why an Online Learning Community Is Important to Your Success
3. Practice in Real-Time
As Wood Brooks highlights in her research, one of the primary benefits of taking a negotiation course is the opportunity to practice.
In Negotiation Mastery, Wheeler presents scenarios taken from real-world business cases. You’re then paired up with another learner, assigned a goal, and given time to negotiate. Following each simulation, Wheeler prompts you to reflect and draw out key learnings from the experience.
“I enjoyed the simulations and the deconstruction of those simulations the most,” says Peggy Dau, founder and managing partner at MAD Perspectives LLC, about her favorite part of Negotiation Mastery. “I learned quite a bit about myself and how I can improve my approach to any negotiation.”
An online negotiation course provides a low-stakes environment to try approaches and frameworks while helping alleviate anxiety through exposure. It also provides insight into your strengths and areas for improvement.
4. Learn from Real-World Business Professionals
Negotiation courses can provide insight into how real business professionals handle challenging negotiation scenarios.
For instance, Negotiation Mastery features Unshrinkit co-founders Desiree Stolar and Nate Barbera, two HBS graduates who tell the story of building their business and the negotiations they had to navigate at each stage.
As each scene unfolds, you’re prompted to consider how you’d respond before learning what Stolar and Barbera did and the outcome of their choices.
Learning from real-world examples can exercise your skills and equip you with insights that inform your behaviors in future negotiations.
5. Apply Frameworks to Your Work and Life
While learning and practicing skills are essential to a negotiation training course, there’s a third, crucial step: applying those new skills to your work and life.
A strong negotiation course prompts you to reflect on how you’ll use them daily.
“Weekly, I negotiate strategic partnerships for my company,” says Jacqueline Ryan, an integrated marketing manager at YumEarth. “Negotiation Mastery has given me additional skills that I’ve put into practice and have resulted in much more successful agreements.”
For Shane Sabine, an international business and communications consultant, applying Negotiation Mastery concepts proved rewarding in terms of personal growth.
“At first, it felt strange and unfamiliar to put the lessons into practice, but I was encouraged by the results,” Sabine says. “I began pushing past my comfort zone more often and with less hesitation. Lying beneath the positive results is a solid foundation of knowledge and confidence that has left me feeling equipped to make positive changes for myself and the organization I represent.”
Pursuing Negotiation Training Online
An online negotiation course can unlock a value-driven mindset, a global network of peers, and the skills and confidence to negotiate in business and life.
Ensure the course you pursue has the benefits that matter most to you—for instance, peer interaction or real-world business cases—so you can make the most of your experience.
Are you ready to improve your negotiation skills to advance your career? Explore Negotiation Mastery—one of our online leadership and management courses—and download our free leadership e-book.
