Just about anything that we do requires planning on our part. We need to take the time to understand what we want to accomplish, how we are going to go about doing it, and what kinds of resources we are going to need in order to get it done. It turns out that a negotiation is just like everything else in our lives: if we want to get the deal that we are looking for, then we're going to have to do some preparation.

What you'll find inside:

• How do you plan a negotiation?
• The difference between sports and sales negotiation: Winning
• Three secrets successful sales negotiators use to win
• Deadly sins of sales negotiations: hope and three others

It turns out that the time that we've spent playing different types of sports has not been wasted. There is a similarity between competing in a sport and conducting a negotiation - in both circumstances we really want to win. In order to get what we want out of a negotiation we need to make sure that we don't just sit around and hope for the best outcome, we need to make it happen.

Our attitude when we go into a negotiation can have a big impact on the deal that we are able to secure. If we go in sad, then we're going to be at a disadvantage. We need to gather as much power to our side as we can and one way to do this is to get time to work for us and not against us. If you work hard at a negotiation, then you'll be rewarded with the type of deal that you've been looking for.

There are a number of different ways to make yourself more powerful in a negotiation. Bringing a team to the table is one way to go about doing this, but there are advantages and disadvantages to doing it. Not all negotiations are done by ourselves. If we choose to bring in a professional negotiator to do our dirty work for us, then we're going to need to know how to find out if they truly know their stuff.