Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

We all negotiate on a daily basis. On a personal level, we negotiate with friends, family, landlords, car sellers and employers, among others. Negotiation is also the key to business success. No business can survive without profitable contracts. Within a company, negotiation skills can lead to your career advancement.

I hope that you will join the hundreds of thousands of learners who have made “Successful Negotiation” one of the most popular and highly-rated MOOCs worldwide. In the course, you’ll learn about and practice the four steps to a successful negotiation:

(1) Prepare: Plan Your Negotiation Strategy

(2) Negotiate: Use Key Tactics for Success

(3) Close: Create a Contract

(4) Perform and Evaluate: The End Game

To successfully complete this course and improve your ability to negotiate, you’ll need to do the following:

(1) Watch the short videos (ranging from 5 to 20 minutes). The videos are interactive and they include questions to test your understanding of negotiation strategy and skills. You can speed up or slow down videos to match your preferred pace for listening. Depending on your schedule, you can watch the videos over a few weeks or you can binge watch them. A learner who binge-watched the course concluded that “It’s as good as Breaking Bad.” Another learner compared the course to “House of Cards.” Both shows contain interesting examples of complex negotiations!

(2) Test your negotiation skills by completing the negotiation in Module 6. You can negotiate with a local friend or use Discussions to find a partner from another part of the world. Your negotiation partner will give you feedback on your negotiation skills. To assist you with your negotiations, I have developed several free negotiating planning tools that are related to the course. These tools and a free app are available at http://negotiationplanner.com/

(3) Take the final exam. To successfully complete the course, you must answer 80% of the questions correctly. The exam is a Mastery Exam, which means that you can take it as many times as you want until you master the material.

Course Certificate

You have the option of earning a Course Certificate. A Certificate provides formal recognition of your achievements in the course.

Subtitles for the videos are available in English, Ukrainian, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish

Created by: University of Michigan

Week 1 Welcome to Successful Negotiation!

• Introduction and Overview

Week 2 Prepare: Plan Your Negotiation Strategy

• Should I Negotiate?

• Position Based and Interest Based Negotiation

• A Dispute Resolution or Deal Making Negotiation?

• Analyzing the Negotiation

• Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement

• Cross-Cultural Negotiations

• Ethical Issues and Standards

• Agents

Week 3 Negotiate: Use Key Tactics for Success

• Getting to Know the Other Side and Using Power in Negotiations

• Psychological Tools: Introduction and Mythical Fixed Pie Assumption

• Anchoring, Overconfidence, and Framing

• Availability, Escalation, Reciprocation, Contrast Principle, and Big Picture Perspective

Week 4 Close: Create a Contract

• About Contract Law

• Creating Contracts

• Business vs. Legal Objectives in Contracting

Week 5 Perform and Evaluate: The End Game

• Dispute Prevention

• ADR Concepts and Tools

• Arbitration

• Mediation

• Contract Performance Review and Evaluation

Week 6 Practice Your Negotiation Skills

• Your Negotiation Exercise

• Planning for Negotiation and Negotiation Tactics

• Psychological Tools, Creating and Performing the Contract, and Building a Larger Pie

Week 7 Final Examination