Month: January 2023
Negotiation and Conflict
Conflict is a fact of life. In theory we negotiate in order to avoid conflict, but is that really the case?
Think for a few minutes about how you view the link between conflict and negotiation. Are the two mutually exclusive? Is conflict a part of negotiation or does conflict come about because negotiation fails? Is negotiation the alternative to conflict? Does conflict only come about because when we dont negotiate?
In order to reduce the amount of conflict that you feel, and to make sure you win your negotiations every time, lets look at a few principles and potential approaches to negotiation.
Principles of Negotiation
If you are negotiating and you get what you want then you win. If you fail to get what you want then you lose.
In a negotiation between two parties then, broadly speaking, there are 2 possible outcomes. These are Win / Lose and Win / Win.
The difference? If one party gets all of what they want and the other party doesnt then its a Win / Lose. If both parties get (some) of what they want then its a Win / Win.
Research shows that, in a single round of negotiations, the party that goes for Win /Lose, and wins, wins big.
Imagine this as a scenario. You are selling tee shirts on a market stall and a customer asks “how much for a tee shirt?” You reply “five pounds.” The customer says “thats too much. Ill give you three” and you reply “no the price is five.”
If you win this negotiation you win big because you get all of what you want.
In contrast, if you went for a Win / Win situation it could look something like this. The customer asks “how much for a tee shirt?” You reply “five pounds.” The customer says “thats too much. Ill give you three” and you reply “I cant do it for three. The customer then says How about meeting me in the middle, four pounds?”
If you win in this scenario then you win less than in the first scenario.
So why would you go for Win / Win?
In the two scenarios, how does the other party feel? In the first scenario will they be happy and satisfied with the deal, or are the likely to feel a little bruised and resentful?
Research has shown that over many rounds of negotiation between the same parties the people going for Win / Win will actually win much more than those that go for Win / Lose all of the time.
This is because, if you have gone for a Win / Lose negotiation to start with then the other party is likely to enter into any subsequent negotiations with a much harder stance whereas the parties that have already established a Win / Win relationship and done the deal can move on to bigger things
“So how much is that fleece?” “Fifteen pounds.” “Youll have to give me a better deal than that” “OK. I can do two fleeces for twenty five pounds.” “What can you do three for?”
Now, these guys are really starting to make some progress.
Though there is a huge buzz in the telecommunication market regarding the use of Hosted PBX systems and yet with the addition of new and better Hosted PBX providers, the uncompetitive ones have their foundations weakened. Most of those who do not support a considerable sector of the target areas seem to shut down their business or sell the name to some other new service provider. Now, when you first make the choice of this system, there are many factors that are there in your mind while selection and that affect the level of satisfaction that you have with their services.
The competition in the telecom sector is growing stiff with the growing number of Hosted PBX providers and to become the paramount of the domain is a difficult task. There may be a number of reasons that affect the rise in the telecom world, most important of which include:
*Those business firms that function on a costly service stage in the telecommunication sector tend to the most likely prey to downfall. The reason is that IT sector is a domain where each of the SMBs looks for a cost-cutting solution and in that case, they wouldnt prefer such providers.
*The number of customers that the business firm is servicing has reduced to quite few due to new competition rising in the neighborhood.
Now when you get the sudden news that your Hosted PBX provider is giving up his business and you need to hand over the entire telecommunication infrastructure to some new one within a week or month, this is where you face trouble. Most of the business enterprises are in a state of dilemma when this happens. There are also some of the VOIP telecom providers that would shut down without prior notice. The steps that business owners need to follow in this stage include:
*Search the internet for some of the most dominant Hosted PBX VOIP providers of the time and analyze what they offer. This process would not be so time consuming due to the fact that your requirements would already be there with you. If those are a little outdated, you may create a new checklist to include the latest features of the time and then compare the features.
*A very essential step as far as the confidentiality and integrity of business transactions is concerned is to get all your company sensitive information off from the servers of your previous Hosted PBX providers. This is to guarantee that your data remains secure even when you make a switch amongst Hosted PBX providers.
*When you enter the Virtual PBX market, you would find an endless row of service providers but it is always better to go for the ones that have established a firm foothold in the telecommunication sector for a considerable amount of time. Try to opt for ones that support vast clientele as these services will not give up so easily.
*Ensure that number portability is not an issue. One of the most critical factors when it comes to switch between Hosted PBX providers is the porting of numbers to the new Business PBX. If there arises any such situation in which your provider refuses to get the numbers ported and shuts down the company, what you can do in that case is to opt from amongst the providers who have prior experience in lost numbers recovery.