Best Negotiating Practices®
Resources
Learn more about The Watershed Way Framework, Best Negotiating Practices®, and all things related to negotiation.
Negotiation Fundamentals
Start Your Journey
Collaborative negotiation is the key to productive decision-making and conflict avoidance. Before entering into the negotiation stages, it is important to understand why you should negotiate and how it will result in mutual satisfaction for both parties.
The Watershed Way Framework
This framework drives every engagement, balancing empathy, strategy, and assertiveness—so you secure value without sacrificing long-term relationships.
Prepare Stage
The Prepare Stage is key to any successful negotiation. Proper preparation helps form the best strategy by allowing time to research facts and stakeholders, analyze data, identify interests and positions, and build a relationship based on trust.
Exchange Stage
The Information Exchange Stage marks the first engagement with the other side during a negotiation. It is crucial for building trust, sharing information and exploring options before positions are taken.
Bargain Stage
The Bargain Stage is where the give-and-take happens during a negotiation. During bargaining, you make and manage concessions to satisfy both parties while creating and capturing lasting value.
Conclude Stage
The Conclude Stage of negotiations is where you reach agreement. This is the time to verify that the other side has the capacity to follow-through with their commitments and to put the agreement in writing.
Execute Stage
The Execute Stage is the time to implement the agreement. This stage can also lead to new negotiation opportunities.
Topics, Strategies, and Skills
Best Negotiating Practices®
Watershed’s 22 Best Negotiating Practices, or BNPs, are the skills, behaviors, and strategies to implement as you negotiate. Several BNPs are useful in multiple stages of Collaborative Negotiations. Applied with discipline, the BNPs produce predictable and repeatable results. Master Negotiators in all cultures consistently adhere to these BNPs in their critical Negotiations.
Popular Topics
As you continue your learning journey, explore these essential negotiation topics to master the art of negotiating: collaborative negotiations for achieving win-win results, cross-cultural negotiations, navigating difficult and unique negotiation situations, personal and consumer negotiations, and effective tactics and maneuvers.
Negotiation Glossary
This Negotiation Glossary offers a quick resource to define terms. This glossary covers terms that are unique to the negotiating field, both acronyms and slang. The glossary also covers terms that are commonly used in business, communication, law and other fields, and provides a definition of how that term is used in the negotiating context.
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