Persuasion in negotiation is the comprehensive use of various skills such as listening, questioning, answering, and narration to change the other party's initial thoughts and make them accept one's own opinions. Persuasion is the most arduous, complex and skillful task in business negotiations.
1. Three stages of persuasion
Roughly speaking, persuasion generally goes through three stages.
(1) Cold water heating stage
Suppose a stranger tries to persuade you to take a certain action (sign a contract, order certain goods, etc.), your reaction on the spot may be : "Who are you to actually want to influence me?" This means that when a person considers whether to accept persuasion, he will first measure the familiarity and affinity of the persuader with him. It follows that if you want to play the role of a persuader, you must first establish a trusting interpersonal relationship with others before trying to persuade them.
The best way to improve interpersonal relationships is to find your passion. If you want to persuade the other party, you must first find the resonance with the other party, eliminate the other party's confrontational mood, use issues of common interest to both parties as a springboard, and take advantage of the situation to unravel the crux of the other party's thoughts. Only in this way can persuasion be effective.
(2) Analysis and influence stage
After the other party has established a certain degree of interpersonal relationship with you, you can start your own persuasion process. In order to make one's own persuasion appear particularly sincere, negotiators can start from several aspects such as interests and prospects to break down the other party's psychological defenses.
Generally speaking, the person being persuaded will gain some benefits by accepting one's own opinions, but will also suffer some losses or bear some responsibilities. The one must make an analysis on these two aspects. For example, "Mr. Zhang, I understand that it is not easy for you to give up the old market and open up a new market. I don't want to tell you that this can be done easily. In fact, if you follow my advice You have to work extra hard to do it; and at the beginning of opening up a new market, your income may be less than before. These are obvious shortcomings. But over time, opening up a new market will be more beneficial to you, because the old market will be more beneficial to you. Already saturated, and the potential of new markets is limitless. If you switch to new markets, I firmly believe that your success will far exceed everything you have now." This language not only affirms the advantages of the other party's market change, He also made no secret of the losses the other party would suffer. The analysis is more objective and realistic, so the other party is easier to convince.
In order to make the other party accept your opinion, you must make it clear that you will choose him as the target of persuasion among the many "candidates". Taking the previous example, you can use the following words to answer his inner doubts: "The reason why I suggest you to open up new markets without making the same suggestion to others is mainly because your past distribution record has always been at its peak, which shows that you Fully capable of overcoming various difficulties in market expansion. ”
In some cases, one may try to persuade others to accept one’s opinions based entirely on “altruistic” motives. But in most cases, in order to win the trust of the other party, negotiators often need to frankly tell the other party some or all of their "self-interested" motives, depending on the situation. Taking the above example again, you can tell the person being persuaded in the following way to make him understand his self-interested motives: "Frankly speaking, if you accept my suggestion, I may also benefit from it. I once tried my best to propose to my boss to develop New market, he finally reluctantly agreed, but he asked that only highly capable people be responsible for this job. Therefore, if you can accept this challenge and perform well-I absolutely believe that you will perform well- -The boss will definitely look at me with admiration." This method of persuasion will give the person being persuaded the impression that the person being persuaded is honest.
In the process of persuasion, we must be patient and meticulous, take the trouble to use reason and understand the benefits, and talk deeply and thoroughly about the benefits of accepting one's own opinions and the harms of not accepting one's own opinions, and persist until until the other party can listen to your opinion. In addition, persuasion must also follow a step-by-step approach. At the beginning, you should avoid heavy topics and difficult problems, start with those questions that are easy to convince, and then gradually expand. Problems that are difficult to solve at the moment can be put aside temporarily and wait for the appropriate time.
(3) Proposal acceptance stage
In order to make the person being persuaded accept one's proposal and prevent him from changing his mind midway, the acceptance procedure should be made simple. For example, when a written agreement is required, you can prepare a preliminary agreement in principle in advance and tell the person being persuaded: "You only need to sign this draft agreement in principle. As for the formal agreement, I It will be prepared within a week and will be sent to you for your detailed consideration.” This way, you can get the person’s commitment on the spot and avoid having to worry about the details.
2. Persuasion skills
Among the three stages of persuasion, the second stage is probably the most difficult. As the saying goes: "There is no invincible fortress." As long as the situation is clear and the method is correct, the enemy can be defeated. The following persuasion methods and techniques can usually be used.
(1) "Kneading the dough" persuasion method
The "kneading the dough" persuasion method refers to persuading by mixing controversial issues into issues that are easy to reach agreement.
In some negotiations, both parties negotiate the purchase and sale of several commodities at the same time. Some commodities are urgently needed by the other party, while others are not urgently needed or less needed by the other party. In order to sell those goods that the other party does not need urgently or needs very little but we are eager to deal with, we consider what the other party wants to buy at the same time as the goods we want to sell, forcing the other party to buy the goods we want to sell while buying urgently needed goods. commodity. In actual business negotiations, this method is very common:
A: We only want rice, not special glutinous rice, because we are not used to the taste of this kind of glutinous rice.
B: The supply of rice in our country is very tight, and the quantity you require is far from being met. However, our country has a large production of this kind of glutinous rice, and the quality is good. In fact, people will like it if they get used to it.
A: We can consider your opinion. Should we talk about rice first? Set the rice.
B: No, no, let’s discuss glutinous rice first. It’s not too late to discuss rice later. What do you think?
Since Party B is in urgent need of Party A’s rice, in order to reach a deal as soon as possible, Party B agreed to the proposal to import rice and glutinous rice at the same time. The "dough persuasion" method was successful.
(2) Participate in the persuasion method
Robert Huffa, manager of Azore Chemical Company in Marinette, Wisconsin, USA, said: "People support what they help create. ."The same is true in negotiations. If you publicly claim an opinion as your own, you may encounter overt or potential resistance from your opponents. In business negotiations, good negotiators always try to disguise their own opinions as those of the other party. Before putting forward their own opinions, they first ask the opponent how to solve the problem. When the other party proposes a solution to the problem, if it agrees with your own opinion, make the other party believe that it is his own original idea. In this case, the opponent feels respected, and he will think that opposing this solution is opposing himself. . In this way, a program linked to the right values ??and concepts is firmly established. This is the point of engaging in persuasion.
A hospital in Brooklyn, Green York City, recently wanted to purchase a set of X-ray equipment. Many manufacturers sent people to introduce the products, and Dr. L, who was in charge of the X-ray department, was very annoyed.
However, another manufacturer only sent a letter saying: "Our factory has just completed a set of X-ray equipment recently. This set of equipment is not perfect. In order to further improve it, we sincerely ask for You are here for advice; in order not to waste your precious time, please feel free to contact us and we will drive to pick you up immediately."
Dr. L was very surprised because no manufacturer had ever asked him about it before. Opinion. He went to see the equipment and made some irrelevant comments. After the manufacturer made some minor improvements, Dr. L liked this set of equipment, which he had expressed his opinion on, and he decided to buy this set of equipment.
Under the clever offensive of that manufacturer, the original opponent, Dr. L, became an ally. He would clear all obstacles, such as convincing the hospital's board of directors and manager's office. To conclude, Dr. L also prepared detailed information because he felt that buying this equipment was his "own idea."
(3) Comparative effect persuasion method
When people judge a matter, they often compare it with other matters unconsciously. That is to say, when a person is prompted to something, he will use the general common sense in society, that is, the common sense, as the basis for judgment to weigh the pros and cons of the two. This is what most people agree with. must be understood.
Therefore, we should find out in advance items that are contrary to common sense and propose them together with the important matter to be reminded, so that the other party's mind will be filled with these two matters, and only one of them will be more advantageous. Maybe the thing you were reminded of was an unacceptable request when you think about it in advance, but when compared with each other at the time, you thought it was a more favorable direction and accepted it without resistance. This is the "contrast effect" . In other words, compared with the intended big gain, the original disadvantage will be minimized.
In business negotiations, the comparative effect persuasion method is widely used. In the following example, Tom successfully used this method.
Tom wanted to buy a Fiat car, so he went to various car showrooms and dealerships to inquire about prices, but none of them provided him with a clear lowest price. However, he believes that a car priced at 60,000 yuan can be counter-priced at about 3,000 yuan.
When ordinary people encounter this situation, they are likely to go to the person in charge of the car dealership to negotiate directly. Tom believes that the people in charge are all smart and capable, and the chance of success in negotiating with them is too small. So, he found a small dealership in charge of an assistant salesman and told them: "I am preparing to sign a contract with a dealership. They offer very favorable terms and hope that the business will be closed. Because they have too much inventory. They are worried that they will not be able to sell the car in time, and if each car cannot be sold for 6 consecutive months, they will have to pay the bank more than 20 yuan in interest, so they are eager to complete the transaction."
Qimu finished speaking and prepared. When leaving, the salesman stopped him: "So, how much do you want to pay back?"
"4,000 yuan." The salesman asked him to wait for a while, and then went in to discuss with the person in charge. Successful transaction. Tom spent a lot less money than ordinary people and bought a comfortable car.
(4) The trump card surprise persuasion method
In order to reach the most favorable agreement, make the most of the trump cards in your hand and make a surprise attack when the opponent has no defense. It can often make the opponent of the negotiation unprepared and thus persuaded.
Here is a case of making full use of trump card raids to achieve success.
A certain city government decided to increase corporate loss taxes, but large companies did not agree. The strength of the two opposing negotiations is not determined by budget size or political pressure, but ultimately depends on alternatives when the two sides are uncoordinated. As a result, the city government increased the tax from 1.5 million yuan to 3.5 million yuan per year.
It turns out that the city government has already considered the measures to be taken when negotiations fail to reach an agreement, which is to expand the urban area so that the company is located in the urban area, so as to tax it at the residential area tax rate. A land tax of 5 million yuan is levied every year, but the company only held an optimistic attitude before the negotiations and did not carefully consider the alternatives that could be adopted if there was no coordination. As a result, when the city government showed its trump card and threatened, it was caught off guard and agreed to conditions that it should have refused. In fact, this company plays a decisive role in the economic development and employment of this small city. Once the company closes and relocates to another location, the city government cannot afford the losses. However, it was precisely because this company was unaware of its advantages that the other party succeeded in sneak attack.
So, thinking proactively about how to deal with failure to reach an agreement will greatly enhance the power of negotiation and make it easier to convince the opponent.