Tailored Negotiation Training
Best Negotiating Practices® Program
Your participants will reach a watershed moment – the turning point from which their negotiations will never be the same
Watershed’s training challenges habitual approaches with skill development that changes behaviors and improves negotiated results
Why Watershed?

No Negotiation is the Same, and Neither are Learning Environments
Starting with a base curriculum market-tested across the Global 1000
Delivery that transfers hard and soft skills aligned with how adults learn
Respecting your team’s current negotiation skills and experience
Trainings are tailored to target your team’s real world negotiation challenges, counterparts, missed opportunities and market pressures
Expert Negotiators Deliver Practical Learning
Facilitators are seasoned negotiators passionate about negotiating
With cross-industry experience and hundreds of negotiated agreements to their credit, our faciliators don’t just teach; they enthusiastically engage, empowering participants to challenge the ideas and discover more impactful negotiation behaviors and strategies. Beyond the experience we bring, before leading a workshop our team talks with your leaders, learns your business and comes prepared to relate the learning to your negotiating environment.


Skills and Resources for Sustainable Success
Delivering insights on the psychology that drives negotiators’ behaviors, allowing participants to discuss and apply the ideas to their own pressing issues, counterparts, stakeholders and objectives
Helping ensure negotiation becomes a core competency in your organization
With eTools, free online learning, our NeedHelpNow Advice service, and ROI toolkit, your team is supported long after a workshop ends
How to Make this Happen?
Consider the training formats and offerings from foundation to advanced
Check out the practical nature of our content in our online Negotiator’s Learning Center
Start a conversation as to how we can suport your negotiators
If there’s a good fit, we’ll propose a format and approach to match your objectives, making the process as easy as possible for you

Best Negotiating Practices® Learning Formats
Learn how we can serve your sales, procurement, project management, mixed function, and government teams.
Delivered in English and Spanish
Foundation Negotiation Workshop
The flagship workshop of the Best Negotiating Practices Program, "Create and Capture Value as You Negotiate," explores the fundamentals of negotiation process and strategy for business practitioners of all professions. Talented negotiators outpace their colleagues and competitors in business and in life because they build relationships that bring desired results. Watershed Associates researches your industry and interviews your team, developing negotiation case studies to address your challenges.
Who Should Attend?
The foundational workshop is designed for all professional functions.
Flexible Formats
Varying lengths (from 3 days to a 1⁄2 day) and timing aligned with your needs.
Participant-Centered Engagement
Training focuses on engaging participants through a variety of methods including: facilitated discussions, practical and relatable examples, role plays, creation of a company-specific concessions list, Hollywood movie clips debriefed, planning company-specific live negotiations, recaptured learning, and goal setting.
Role Plays
Brainstorming
Planning
Movie Clips
Review
Goal Setting
Skills Developed
Participants are introduced to the framework for negotiating. They overcome any reluctance to negotiate as they engage in exercises and role plays that demonstrate how to solve a party's interests rather than confront their position, and how to engage in bargaining that achieves creative solutions.
Key modules are bargaining, preparation, and information exchange and validation, with a focus on the most critical Best Negotiating Practices®. We also focus on the relevance of common tactics to collaborative negotiations – how to recognize them, when it is appropriate to use them, and how to defend against them. Participants are guided in their practice of planning, probing, and development of creative concessions.
A selection of optional modules that best meet the client’s needs, such as email and phone negotiations, cross-cultural negotiations, dealing with difficult, emotional and hostile negotiators, team negotiations, sources of power, internal negotiation for scarce resources, and negotiating styles assessment can be substituted in the workshop curriculum.
Continuous Learning
Job aids, e-tools, 3 months coaching for individuals and teams, ROI toolkit —
We support your learners’ continuous learning at their pace, designed to meet your goals.
Advanced Negotiation Workshop
Excellence in Negotiating + Applied (EIN+A) is an advanced negotiation workshop that focuses on application of negotiation strategies to your business. Confident and experienced negotiators have the opportunity to tackle negotiating strategies in complex situations and connect them to their work. Your negotiators become more strategic, and team leaders become more effective mentors and coaches. The approaches we use support enduring behavioral changes that strengthen your team’s competitive edge and ability to capture more value in their negotiations.
Who Should Attend?
Ideal participants have taken at least two days of negotiation coursework and have five or more years of on-the-job negotiating experience.
Flexible Formats
Varying lengths (from 2 to 3 days) and timing aligned with your needs).
Participant-Centered Engagement
Adding to the best practices in adult learning used in the foundation workshop, participants complete a pre-work live negotiation plan and bargaining styles self-assessment that fully connects the learning to their daily work and behaviors. With smaller groups and 3-day lengths, we also use video debrief of role playing to deepen participants’ reflection and insights, growing their negotiation competence.
Role Plays
Brainstorming
Movie Clips
Review
Goal Setting
Behavioral Coaching
Case Study
Planning Strategically
Video Coaching
Skills Developed
Designed with maximum flexibility of the content to meet your group’s business goals, negotiation challenges, class size, time commitment and budget. Participants typically submit pre-work, and experience an interactive refresher, strategic negotiation planning, behavioral coaching using role play, and live case study application. Specialty topics (hyperlink) are selected based on each group’s needs.
Continuous Learning
Participants receive Watershed’s Negotiator’s Field Guide and other job aids. The Field Guide is also available for system licensing and individual tablet download. Post-workshop support is available in the form of webinars, plan reviews, deal coaching, and individual and team coaching.
Specialty Topics
Optional modules that can be added to multi-day workshops or as stand-alone keynotes, webinars and refreshers. We address your team’s on the job challenges, industry, and market pressures.
What Challenges Do Your Negotiators Face?
Keynotes
Watershed's expert negotiators inspire your audience to negotiate more effectively.
From general sessions to keynotes on negotiations, conference and meeting participants want the tools for conducting effective and efficient negotiations, and we deliver. Watershed’s Best Negotiating Practices® conference sessions inspire even the reluctant to use the negotiating process to develop trust and reach mutually beneficial agreements, with a safe environment to practice new negotiation skills.
Why Meeting Planners Choose Watershed Speakers

Coaching
Watershed coaches negotiators in the workshops and beyond!
Developmental Coaching builds on your negotiators’ strengths.
Recommended that negotiators participate in the Best Negotiating Practices® workshop before undergoing private negotiating coaching by Watershed. Our experience has proven this to be a more effective path to improve negotiation skills and develop strategies.

Virtual Training
Virtual training can be effective to meet business constraints
Live Virtual Training
Interactive Workshops are available in live virtual classrooms
Webinars
Designed to meet the needs of a specific company, agency or organization, the Best Negotiating Practices® webinars delve deep into critical skill areas and focused topics of unique interest to your negotiators.
