There’s no question about it, negotiating effectively is a skill that must be mastered if you want to be successful in business. It is also a very good skill to have under your belt in daily life as well. According to some negotiation experts, you could save up to 10% on your household bills and purchases if you are willing to negotiate. So it’s worth investigating how you, too, can become an effective negotiator. This article won’t teach you everything about negotiation, in fact it won’t teach you much more than the basics, but what it will do is show you how you can apply mind mapping to your business negotiations. So this article is for you if you have some trading experience and want to get a better handle on what you’re already doing.
The negotiation process can be divided into three main areas: preparation, negotiation and follow-up. Each of these can be enhanced using mind maps, so I’ll take each one in turn and explain how you might use mind mapping.
1. Preparation
This is probably where the success or failure of a negotiation is decided. Preparation is such a key stage and clichés like “If you don’t plan, then plan to fail” and “Preparation prevents poor performance” are also valid in effective negotiation.
During your preparations you will need to collect all the relevant information to support you in your negotiation and of course using a mind map is a great tool for this. These days you likely have multiple sources of information across different types of media and by linking those documents together you can access them all from one place. This is one of the most useful features of the excellent mind mapping software.
The other thing Mind Mapping is extremely useful for once you’ve gathered all of your supporting information is to review and consider your current position, where you want to be at the end of negotiations, where your opponent is and where you are. is likely to be found. want to finish While you can never fully know where your opposite number is and where you really want to be, thinking about it ahead of time will allow you to consider the various options and alternate stances you may need to take.
As you lay out these various options and explore them using a mind map, you will begin to see themes and connections and potential win-win positions that you may not have seen before. I know of no other thinking tool that can handle multiple what-if scenarios and “if they say, I’ll say so” options so well without you feeling overwhelmed or lost.
2. The negotiation itself
During the negotiation itself, a mind map can be applied in a number of different ways. It can be used for the meeting agenda to set things up. You can use it to personally track the twists and turns of conversations or you can create a shared mind map that everyone can see evolve and is used to capture what was agreed upon. Much of the groundwork for the negotiation will have been done in the preparation stage, so you may need to refer back to the mind maps you prepared before the meeting. In more proactive and dynamic negotiations, mind maps can be used to present your position, consider alternatives, and even generate new ideas and solve problems. It’s such a powerful tool that it only enhances the thought process you apply it to.
3. Tracking
After a negotiation has taken place, it is important to follow up and make sure that what was agreed upon is actually implemented. Tracking using mind maps is one way to do it. Sharing the maps generated during the negotiation is a good way to ensure that everyone has the same record of the meeting and the decisions made.
