Forget Everything You Know About Negotiations: How to Achieve Better Results Immediately

About this episode

Most negotiations fail before they even begin. This sobering insight comes from Matthias Schranner, founder of the Schranner Negotiation Institute and one of the leading experts in negotiation strategies. In an enlightening conversation, he shares his key insights on how you, as a founder, can dramatically improve your negotiation results.

Preparation Determines Success or Failure

Creating an Excel spreadsheet with numbers isn't enough. True negotiation preparation goes far beyond that. Schranner emphasizes that strategic preparation is the key to successful negotiations. You must not only know your own goals but also understand your counterpart's motivations, constraints, and alternatives.

The first step is defining clear maximum and minimum goals. What's the best outcome you can imagine? What's the worst outcome you could still live with? This clarity gives you the framework within which you can operate.

Another crucial point: Never start with an offer. Whoever makes the first offer already reveals information about their position and weakens their negotiating stance.

Emotions Are Your Enemy

Emotions have no place in negotiations – neither in you nor in your counterpart. Schranner urgently warns about the danger of emotional reactions. They lead to irrational decisions and poor outcomes.

The challenge is recognizing and controlling emotions early. For yourself, this means: Learn to know your body's warning signals. Do you notice your voice changing, your breathing becoming shallower, or yourself starting to speak faster? These are alarm signals.

With your counterpart, you should also watch for emotional indicators. People under emotional stress make worse decisions – this can mean both opportunity and risk.

Understanding Negotiations as a Game

Schranner recommends viewing negotiations like a game. This perspective helps maintain the necessary emotional distance. In a game, it's about strategy, tactics, and achieving goals – not about personal sensitivities.

An important building block of this game philosophy: Through targeted demands, you maintain control. Whoever makes demands determines the direction of the negotiation. Whoever only reacts is already in the weaker position.

When You Shouldn't Negotiate Yourself

A common mistake among founders: They believe they must personally conduct all important negotiations. Schranner shows when it's wiser to deploy a negotiation team or delegate the negotiation.

Especially in emotionally charged situations or when you're too personally involved, another person can achieve better results. A neutral negotiator brings the necessary distance and can act more objectively.

Avoiding the Most Common Negotiation Mistakes

Schranner identifies several critical mistakes that regularly cause negotiations to fail:

• –Insufficient preparation regarding the other party
• –Revealing your own position too early
• –Emotional reactions to provocations
• –Lack of flexibility in finding solutions
• –Missing alternatives to the current negotiation

Each of these points can end a negotiation before it properly begins.

Practical Tips for Everyday Negotiations

Negotiation competence can be trained. Schranner recommends consciously using smaller negotiation situations to practice techniques. Every interaction where interests need to be negotiated offers learning potential.

Additionally, there are small tricks that can make negotiations more pleasant: proper framing, conscious pauses, active listening, and willingness to find creative solutions.

The Bottom Line for Founders

Negotiation is a core competency for every founder. Whether with investors, customers, partners, or employees – the ability to negotiate successfully often determines business success.

Schranner's most important message: Forget your assumptions about negotiations and relearn the fundamentals. With proper preparation, emotional control, and strategic approach, you can achieve significantly better results – often even in situations that initially seem hopeless.