What are negotiation techniques? Negotiation is a process in which two or more parties, having different needs and goals, discuss about an issue to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution. Negotion skills are very critical in business environment which involves - Informal day-to-day interactions - Formal transactions (for instance negotiations related legal contracts, sale agreement, lease agreement, service delivery requirements etc) Good negotiations play a critical role in business success as they help in - Avoiding conflicts or issues in the future - Build and maintain good relations - Providing long-term, quality solutions The following are the various negotiation techniques. - Integrative: Integrative negotiations, also known as win-win, requires the parties involved to arrive at a solution which makes everyone a winner. This might require that the parties involved make a trade off, consider multiple issues and try to enlarge the pie instead of dividing it. Integrative negotiations promote the development of good working relations and trust - Distributive:Distributive negotiations, also known as win-lose, are the ones in which one party wins and gets what it needs while the other party loses and has to give up something. Consider the case of buying an asset like a land for the firm. In this case the buyer will try to reduce the price as much as possible while the seller will try to get as much as possible. It appears that the parties have conflicting interests. Distributive negotiations will not promote lasting/good working relations. - Inductive: This type of negotiation start with working on small details and continue to work upwards until an agreement is made. An example is the case where the labour union is negotiating with the factory managment regarding the provision of facilities for the employees, employee pension scheme and investment plan. They start with negotiating small details initially and then start moving up onto the bigger things. - Deductive: In this case, the involved parties arrive at an agreed upon strategy to start the negotiations. the negotiations start in accordance with the established principles and considering a formula to arrive at a negotiation while working out the details. - Mixed: This is most commonly used form of negotiation and is a mix of both the inductive and deductive methods of negotiation. Additional content on this topic can be found at http://www.eduxir.com/curriculum/cbse/class-xii/entrepreneurship/enterprise-marketing/