Goal Statement Negotiations

I believe that the power of negotiation is one of the most divine that one can possess. With a solid set of negotiation skills, I believe I could squeeze a lot more out of opportunities to come, and I mean this in more ways than one.

There have been various negotiations throughout my life. Some have been from the stroke of luck; others were assisted by me being very persistent. That leads me to believe that a process, rather a structure, can be had when it comes to negotiating.

I remember throughout high school, I had a couple of negotiations with woman. I like to think of it as a negotiation because both parties are agreeing to an action. I believe all of this “negotiating” helped me harness at least part of my skill.

I recently applied for a job that required daily negotiating! Before I attended Rutgers, I was a car salesman full-time. Needless to say I was negotiation every day. Something about the negotiation excited me, not in a sense that I liked to haggle but in a sense that I enjoyed the ability to push the situation to my favor. This is where I mention a structure in the negotiation and how I believe that it helped me become a better negotiator.

My strength would be in the preparation of the negotiation. I can remember every time a customer came in to my dealership, I had a list of cars that would be suitable to their needs. I had a plan to not only sell them but to win their repeat business. I was told by many that the negotiation process was effortless and they felt very comfortable around me when doing so.

A weakness of mine may be a direct variable of my strength. The process of negotiation throughout my work may have been effortless for the customer which may have worked to my advantage in the long-run but I believe that I could have squeezed a lot more on my end by negotiating a bit more. I believe this could have been accomplished without tarnishing my future business with the customer. I say this because when I look back I structured the meeting perfectly. Now that I look back I can see that I was fearful that the customer would stand up and leave if the negotiation wasn’t going his way. When looking back, not many customers actually did this to my colleagues (probably 1 in 20). As I learned the first day of class, the customer has the option of walking away at any time but in reality, humans do this with a certain level of respect and now that I can see this more clearly, I don’t believe a customer would have just walked up and left.

So there you have it, my strength is making the customer appreciate my business and come back for more. My weakness is that I cave too quickly and I am a bit weak when it comes to the actual negotiation aspect. In a more simple sense , I’m afraid of the word “NO”.