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Foreign trade negotiation skills


Avoiding ambiguity arising from cross-border cultural exchanges Most international business negotiations are conducted in English, and the mother tongue of both parties is often not English, which increases the difficulty of communication. In this case, we should try to use simple, clear and clear English, and don't use polysemous words, puns, proverbs, and idioms that are easy to cause misunderstanding. Don't use words that are easy to cause resentment, such as: "To tell you the ruth", "I''ll be honest with you...", "I shall do my best." "It''s none of my Business but...". These words have a distrustful color that will cause the other party to worry, and thus do not want to actively cooperate with us. A serious common problem of cross-border cultural exchanges is "to take people by themselves", that is, subjectively believe that the other party will follow our wishes, our habits to understand our speech, or from the other party's speech, we understand that the other party is the other party. I want to express the meaning. The most typical example is the use and understanding of "Yes" and "No". There was a US company and a Japanese company conducting business negotiations. During the negotiations, the Americans were pleased to find that whenever he made an opinion, the other party nodded and said, "Yes," he thought the negotiations were particularly smooth. It wasn't until he asked for a contract to find out that the Japanese said "Yes" was "Yes" for polite "I hear you.", not "Yes with "I agree with you." In fact, the word "Yes" means very rich, in addition to the above two, there are "Yes" of "I understand the question" and "Yes" of "I''ll consider it". The expression of "No" is also very complicated. Some cultural values ​​oppose positive conflicts, so people generally don't say "No" directly, but use some vague words to express rejection. For example, Brazilians use "Somewhat difficult" instead of "Impossible". If inexperienced negotiators understand it literally, it will waste time and delay the negotiation process. Therefore, we must try to understand each other's culture, the other's values ​​and customs, in order to pass and receive information correctly and without error. In order to avoid misunderstanding, we can use the interpretation method to ensure the smooth communication. Interpretation is to explain the other party's words in their own words, and to ask the other party whether our understanding is correct. For example, "I would accept private if you could modify your specifications." We can say: "If I understand you correctly, what you are really saying is that you agree to accept our price if we improve our product as you request Another advantage of doing this is that you can deepen your impression of the problem. Finally, another way to ensure a smooth communication is to make a summary before the end of the negotiations, to restate the agreement reached so far and ask the other party to endorse it. The summary must be realistic, the wording must be appropriate, otherwise the other party will be suspicious, do not recognize the summary, and have already talked about the problem. Before preparing for negotiation before the negotiations, it is necessary to fully investigate and understand the other party's situation, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, analyze which problems can be discussed, and which issues are not discussed; What is the problem, and how important this business is to the other party, and so on. Also analyze our situation. Suppose we are negotiating with a purchasing manager of a large company. First we should ask ourselves the following questions: What are the main issues to be discussed? - What are the sensitive issues that you should not touch? - What should I talk about first? ——What problems do we know about each other? - What changes have occurred to the other party since the last business? ——If you are talking about renewing orders, what lessons have you learned before doing business with each other? - What are the strengths of the companies that compete with us for this order? - Can we improve our work? - What issues might the other party oppose? - In what ways can we give in? What do we want the other party to do? - What are the needs of the other party? What will their negotiation strategy be like? After answering these questions, we should list a list of questions to be asked in advance, otherwise the effect of the negotiations will be greatly reduced. In short, many international business negotiations have failed due to lack of negotiation skills. By cultivating the ability to listen and ask questions, and by mastering the above skills, importers and exporters can take the initiative and obtain satisfactory results in the negotiations. The authenticity of this information has not been confirmed by Alibaba, for your reference only. repost is not allowed without consent. Source: Mom Online

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