Everyone negotiates something everyday. We all have some inherent skill and experience in negotiation. Negotiation skills are well worth developing, as research demonstrates that well planned negotiations regularly achieve better results.

Contract Solutions Group provides a wide range of tools, resources and support in improving negotiating skills and establishing more effective negotiation strategies. Contact us for more information on program offerings.

Successful negotiation requires that you become well informed to the facts, figures and interests of the parties involved, be able to state and address the concerns of each stakeholder, and are flexible and inventive with possible solutions or options to positions, people and tactics.

Just a few examples of how focused negotiations can improve a negotiated result follow:

Achieving additional information regarding the negotiation of the contract is a common method of improving negotiated results. Information is often an effective equalizer to offset a stronger (perceived) bargaining position or an inflexible negotiation style. Contract reviews and recommended risk mitigation strategies provide one source of information for employing this technique. Research to identify previous acceptance to your negotiation objective is a very powerful objective method to gain favorable results. Contact CSG for a list of public owner contracts in which deviations have been negotiated with design professionals.

Selection of the negotiation team is an often overlooked method to improve negotiated results. Purposeful selection of your team prevents embarrassment, failure or agreement to high risk clauses, should some of the subject areas prove to be beyond the reach of negotiation team members. The usual result of a poorly-balanced negotiation team is the failure to negotiate and reach agreement on all inter-related contract issues at the same time. A scope of work and pricing are often negotiated separately from the closely related commercial terms (sometimes without knowing the commercial terms that control performance).

Use of contract specialists can provide an independent view of your position or can be used to develop suggested alternatives or strategies to work within seemingly inflexible contracts. The ability to achieve changes or implement risk mitigation strategies for commercial terms if the scopes, level of effort, pricing and schedule have already been finalized is a useful investment.

Many useful resources are available for professionals who wish to improve their negotiation skills and results. CSG emphasizes the use of shared interests and mutual gain negotiation methods made popular by Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 1st Ed. 1981, Roger Fisher and William Ury. Contact us for information on our negotiations workshops, which are lead by a Harvard Project on Negotiations certified trainer.