As a small business owner, you can enhance the outcome of your business negotiation using concessions. These are things you are willing to offer to the other party but offering them will serve as a loss to you.

Concessions can be deployed in any form of negotiation and it can be offered by any party to the negotiation. It is false to assume concessions are only offered by those who have been forced into it or have been backed up against the wall. It is also false to assume they can only happen in cooperative and solution based negotiation.

The negotiation party that holds the stronger position can decide to use concession as a palliative of sorts to allow the negotiation (and their “victory”) to go down well with the other party. That is, use it as a form of consolation to the other party.

• It could help close the deal in their favor faster as the opposite party may just want to keep dragging it even when they know they are on the losing side.
• It could serve as a means to keep the door open for negotiation in related areas with the same party. These negotiations may not be directly related to the one that was just closed but it could just be the leverage they need to get a good deal from it.

Concessions can also be applied in a hostile or competitive negotiation. In such cases, they are being used to aggressively pursue their objective. It is still recognized as one party conceding to the other, but the manner it is used is different, as it becomes an aggressive weapon deployed to force an issue.

Any party to a business negotiation can use concession to push their case and they may not necessarily reveal the real reason why they are tabling an item as a concession.

Look At The Concessions You Want To Offer

To use concessions as an effective tool you have to be prepared beforehand to know what you are willing to offer. This is different from when the other party springs it upon you during the negotiation process by demanding you should concede in one area.

Knowing what you can offer is akin to knowing the weapons in your arsenal. You do not have to compile the list because you want to make that offer but compiling such a list is important because it can give you an idea of what the other party would want to demand.

Look At The Concessions The Other Party Want You To Offer

Making up a list of possible requests the other party might make of you in form or what they would want you to concede will give you a chance to have a ready response plan. It could become part of your strategy to negotiate until they make such a request and you put your response plan into action.

Such a plan would of course turn their request into something that would benefit you even more than they imagined.

Lock Your Concessions To Their Own Concessions

One way of using the aspects we discussed above is to lock your concession to a demand of your own. Planning ahead prepares you in such a way that you would be able to state your case, to be caught ill prepared could cause you to make errors especially if the negotiation has been structured in such that you may not have time on your side to carefully look at everything on the table.

Tradeoffs can enhance the outcome of your business negotiations. They are basically concessions all the parties agree upon.

SEE ALSO: Fundamental Structure Of Negotiation

There are so many things that can influence the outcome of a business negotiation. it is quite a fluid experience as people that come into it in a position of strength can find themselves in a position of weakness and end up capitulating. Enhancing the outcome of your business negotiations may not necessarily be tied to what happens on the negotiation table alone. Anything from outside the negotiation table can influence what happens on it.

It may be another court ruling, an industry news, and a change of direction from the other company or market reaction to one thing or the other. You can get added value to the outcome of your business negotiation if you look to the things we have mentioned in this series. However, you must keep at the back of your mind that it is not a science as nothing is carved in stone.