Many in Croatia Consider Negotiation – Impolite

This year’s 10th Procurement Conference, jointly organized by the Croatian Association of Procurement Professionals and the business weekly Lider, will take place on November 12 at the Forum Zagreb congress center.

Under the slogan ‘Procurement Driven by Innovation’, there will be a series of interesting lectures by foreign and domestic experts, one of whom is certainly Davor Bilman, director of Faktor B, who reveals the recipe for successful negotiation ahead of the conference.

• Is it important for a good negotiator to understand psychology, or is it all just about persistence?
– Negotiation is a skill we can learn, and how easily we can apply it in practice depends on our personality. In every negotiation, people play a key role, so understanding psychology is always welcome in the negotiation process. In our society, it is still not common for someone to try to negotiate in business or private communication. As a society, we are still mostly ‘non-negotiable’. There are still too many who are ashamed to ask for better conditions because it is seen as ‘haggling’ with the other side, and that – is not polite. It is very important to know at what moment you are negotiating with someone and in what circumstances that person finds themselves, as the outcome of the negotiation greatly depends on that. The same two negotiators in different circumstances or two different negotiators in the same circumstances will not lead to the same negotiation outcome. This fact best illustrates how important it is to understand psychology in negotiations.

• How can attention from a potential partner be best attracted and retained in negotiations?
– There are negotiations in which we want to participate and for which we have a great interest, just as there are those we wish had never happened. The attention of a potential partner in negotiations significantly depends on their interest in those negotiations. A successful negotiator is always ready to negotiate at any moment and, more importantly, is prepared to understand what the key motivation of the other side is, what the other side wants or needs. Once we discover that, we certainly have the full attention of the other side.

• Where are the most common mistakes made?
– It is always easiest to be a general after the battle, but everyone (even the best) negotiators make mistakes in the negotiation process. Even when we achieve the desired outcome in negotiations, the question is how many mistakes we made along the way. Much more important than knowing how many times we were wrong is that we learn something from it and do not repeat those mistakes in future negotiations. Some of the most common mistakes are: lack of preparation (we do not have a negotiation interval, we do not have a strategy); lack of knowledge about the negotiation topic or the other side; underestimating or overestimating the power of the other side; putting oneself under time pressure; thinking there is no alternative.

• What makes procurement negotiation special, where do the greatest dangers lie?
– I often hear the phrase from various sales negotiators: ‘If only I were on the procurement side.’ But is it really easier to negotiate on the procurement side? It is and it isn’t! There are factors that make negotiations easier because we are on the procurement side, but there are also many that make negotiations challenging precisely because of that. If you are interested in which is more prevalent, see you at the lecture on November 12 at the Forum Zagreb congress center.

Learn more about the conference at this LINK.