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Negotiation skills: let foreigners teach you a few tricks

Many managers realized the impact of cultural differences until they discovered problems with foreign negotiating strategies. Learning some negotiation strategies from other cultures can reduce the risk of cross-cultural negotiations and improve your skills in negotiating in your home country. Are you a typical American negotiator? How much do you know about the negotiation style of other cultures? Imagine how you would react if you encounter the following situations? Example 1: You signed a contract with a manufacturer to produce a batch of bicycles. After signing the contract, you will receive accurate information and know that the manufacturer has quality problems, especially the bicycles that it will give you, which may squeak. Your bikes are expected to be delivered next week. Which of the following options is closer to how you respond to this matter? A. You go to the factory to check the quality problem immediately. You tell the factory manager that the problem of the bicycle creaking must be resolved before delivery. B. You go to the factory to test several bicycles. Then you take the biker and ride a bicycle around the country. Then you ask: "Is all the bicycles squeaking? Is this sound a problem for the buyer?" Then you leave. Example 2: Your raw material costs skyrocket because of some uncontrollable reasons. You need to re-sign a contract with your biggest customer and negotiate a higher price to cover the rising costs. Which of the following options is closer to how you respond to this matter? A. You meet with the client and explain calmly to the other party. Some unavoidable reasons affect your raw material costs, and focus on the facts, and then ask to renegotiate the price. B. You meet with the client and express your personal and whole company's gratitude for their long-term cooperation. At the same time, the rising raw material cost may affect the relationship between you. You express your sincere apologies and plead, "We need your help!" Example 3: You find an excellent opportunity to expand your business, but need and another A company negotiates a joint venture. You need to understand the needs and priorities of this company. Which of the following options is closer to how you respond to this matter? A. Ask the other person directly about the imperative and disclose a little information about your company. B. Instead of asking questions directly, you should euphemistically try to infer the answers you want by listening to each other's reactions to your proposal. Now consider whether your answer will change, if in the first case you are an American working in Hong Kong and the manufacturer is in mainland China; in the second case, your client is a large Japanese retailer; In three cases, your partner is a prestigious Korean company. Your intuitive choice just tests what kind of negotiation you will take. If you choose A at the beginning of each situation and have not changed your answer after providing the above further information, then you are the most common American negotiator. If you change A to B when you know that the other party is an Asian company, it means that you have some international negotiation experience. Our survey found that there is a huge cultural difference between American negotiations and people in other cultures. Although this intuitive approach works in the country, it can be troublesome when it comes to foreign countries. Learning some negotiation strategies from other cultures can reduce the risk of cross-cultural negotiations and improve your skills in negotiating in your home country. In this article, we will discuss three negotiation strategies that are commonly used in Asian countries: euphemistic responses, relying on status persuasion, and using proposals to obtain information. They may be strange to American negotiators, but they are useful. Trying a euphemistic way to squeak a bicycle is a real story, and there is a happy ending. The American who signed the contract went to the factory in China, tested several bicycles, and the factory manager rode a few laps in the country and embarrassedly asked questions. The buyer finally received the bicycle without squeaking on time. The buyer was very satisfied with the quality and placed an order. The typical American-style contradiction solution is to face it directly: "Let's talk about it." The American individualistic culture encourages people to put their personal interests first and reverse the situation that is not conducive to achieving the desired results. The downside of the positive response is that it makes the problem personal, like the example of a bicycle, from the problem of the car to the people who produce the car. In contrast, euphemistic coping styles are standardized in the team spirit culture. Most Asian countries advocate this culture. They emphasize social harmony and always consider the interests of other parties. Therefore, parties with conflicting interests do not need to face each other. Negotiators in Asian countries often rely on intermediaries for coordination. If there is no middleman, the verbal conflict is euphemistic, let the information recipients analyze and draw conclusions; "What do you think buyers will see this squeak," instead of "If the buyer does not solve the problem, the buyer will return it." The response can avoid problems for a certain individual. In a culture where face is vital, euphemism can avoid causing disrespect for others. One might think that direct response is always applicable in Western culture, and euphemistic responses always apply to other cultures. However, recent research has questioned such a theory. Euphemistic responses are equally applicable to Western culture. After all, Americans don't want to lose face. Once there is a situation that does not respect each other, the relationship breaks down, trust becomes a crisis, and the possibility of retaliation increases. American negotiators can learn from the team spirit culture: If you want to solve problems and maintain relationships, try to respond euphemistically. The second negotiating issue with status is derived from an article by the New York Times Leslie Kaufman about retail giant Wal-Mart and American Rubber Butler. Wal-Mart has always been known for signing low-margin, high-volume contracts with suppliers. When the price of parts for a rubber butler company rose, the meager profits were negated. So they asked to re-sign the contract with Wal-Mart. We don't know the specific content of the request, nor do we know the reaction of Wal-Mart. But it is not difficult to imagine that the rubber butler company made a choice similar to A. "When we talked about contracts, our raw material costs have been stable for the past few years. The recent rise in oil prices is unpredictable and controllable, so we need to negotiate." A rational The negotiators told each other what they saw, hoping to convince the other party to give in. Often this factual logic based on the Aristotle school contains threats and commitments. The negotiations between Wal-Mart and the rubber butler company reflect a rational approach. In the end, Wal-Mart agreed to increase the retail price of rubber butler products; however, rubber butlers have no power to prevent Wal-Mart from removing its products and replacing it with its competitors' products. In this question, choice B is a typical perceptual persuasion in Asian culture. Persuasion is based on relationships and obligations rather than rational arguments. The team spirit and hierarchy prevailing in Asian culture can explain the persuasiveness of this emotional appeal. In Asia, individuals are always in a complex social network. The emotional appeal itself reminds the other party of the existence of a relationship, and one of the parties has a higher status, and the higher status has the responsibility to help the lower-status party. Negotiating with people in non-Western countries is often more important than choice. Choices may change over time, but status is based on a long-term perspective. The rational requirements of the rubber butler company for Wal-Mart are correct, because both sides are Western countries. If Wal-Mart is a Japanese retailer, the result may be different. From Asian culture we can learn that status means responsibility for helping partners get out of trouble. When your choice is wise, the Western negotiation style seems to be better. If the opposite is true, then you have to use status to win the other side's concessions. Negotiators who use the proposal to get information around the world understand that they are looking for the best win-win exchange. But how do you let the other party disclose the information you need? Studies have shown that Western negotiators often share each other's preferences and primary issues by direct questioning, in the belief that the other party is trustworthy and will answer honestly in order to exchange information. This approach may eventually evolve into a proposal involving multiple content. It reflects the preference of Americans for more straightforward communication. Let's take a look at how managers in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Russia collect information. A joint study by several organizations, such as the Jensen School of Management at Cornell University, showed that Japanese managers have much more proposals than American managers. In the first quarter of the negotiations, negotiators from non-Western countries proposed more frequent than negotiators in Western countries; this situation continued until the last quarter of the negotiations, and the number of proposals from both negotiators Almost flat. Collecting information about each other's preferences and primary issues from the proposal requires strong inference and overall thinking. This practice is common in a culture that values ​​teamwork, because implicit meaning and euphemistic communication is a norm. If the proposal covers all the issues in a negotiation, the Western-style negotiation will be more effective. But it is worth noting that Asian negotiators are not limited to multiple proposals, they have more proposals for individual issues than Western negotiators. Inferring from a series of proposals for individual issues requires an understanding of the meaning. Imagine a negotiation involving two issues of price and delivery. I made a delivery date, you did not explicitly refuse; you also proposed a price. I will make a decision based on the delivery date I mentioned and the price you mentioned. If I quoted a price on the basis of the delivery date I proposed earlier, I can infer your priorities if you respond to my proposal. Westerners are good at this kind of work, of course, this is just a question of how to exchange information randomly during the negotiation process. We see from Asian culture that there is not only one way to get information in negotiations. When negotiators are reluctant to share information directly, try to use the proposed method to find the law of the reaction of the other party in the process. The story of this article shows that people's negotiating methods are very different in different cultural environments. It was not until we discovered problems with foreign negotiating strategies that we realized the impact of cultural differences. Understanding the role of culture in negotiations will not only help you succeed in foreign negotiations, but also expand your negotiation strategy in your own culture.

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