22nd May 2008

How to become an expert negotiator

I have always been fascinated by how experts make decisions. Take chess. After a quick glance at a chess board, chess masters (who have 50,000 patterns stored in their memory) can play fast “blitz chess” with minimal loss of performance.

When we first learn a skill such as chess, we are novices, we learn by rules. Experts see things that are invisible to novices.

They notice:

  • Patterns
  • Anomalies
  • The big picture
  • Opportunities
  • Differences too small for novices to detect
  • Their own limitations

Experts, it seems, can rely on intuition because years of experience has given them the abilities to look for the “patterns” of whatever game they are playing.

As a result, when we teach negotiators, in our seminars we are always teaching to read the patterns.

We’ve found showing learners how to “read the patterns” dramatically accelerates negotiators learning and mastery.

Popularity: 38% [?]

If you need advice on a specific deal, a large sale, or staff training please ring me on +64 4 499 6770 or email me, or you can use our contact form. And if you loved this article, don't forget to subscribe by Email or RSS feed

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Deal Preparation, Managing Perceptions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply