Comprehensive Virtual Negotiation Skills Training

Course Highlights

This virtual negotiation skills training program will:

• Introduce a structured approach to negotiation from preparation through follow-through.
• Help participants understand clients, prospects, decision makers, and account opportunities through multiple practical lenses.
• Provide tools for identifying what is negotiable beyond price, including terms, timing, volume, scope, access, and service expectations.
• Cover RESOLVE, BATNA, ZOPA, MAP, concession planning, questioning, listening, and post-agreement servicing.
• Strengthen participants’ ability to build rapport, ask better questions, adapt to communication styles, and influence ethically.
• Address difficult tactics, pressure moves, “dirty tricks,” and the discipline needed to avoid negotiating against oneself.
• Reinforce follow-through, documentation, servicing routines, and scope management after agreement is reached.

Course Overview

Let’s Make a Good Deal is a six-part virtual negotiation course for sales professionals, account managers, client-facing teams, and others responsible for reaching agreements while preserving long-term business relationships. The program treats negotiation as a process, not a performance moment. Participants examine what they sell, whom they serve, how decisions are made, where leverage exists, and what must happen after an agreement is reached.

Delivered across six virtual sessions, the course builds from fundamentals to execution. Segment One focuses on the negotiator’s landscape: value, client fit, customer lenses, research, positioning, and long-term account strategy. Segment Two introduces the negotiator’s process, including outcomes, negotiable variables, RESOLVE, MAP, BATNA, ZOPA, planning, and case practice. Segment Three turns to power, rapport, questioning, listening, persuasion, and communication-style adaptation using The Communication Jungle®.

Segment Four focuses on systems: communication channels, disagreements, hidden assumptions, concessions, multiple stakeholders, and documentation. Segment Five examines tactics, pressure moves, decision styles, saying no, closing techniques, and strategies for responding without giving ground too quickly. Segment Six moves beyond the signed agreement and addresses servicing, expectations, milestones, recovery conversations, scope creep, effort creep, and hope creep.

This is a tool-rich, practice-oriented program. Participants work with realistic account scenarios, planning prompts, style observations, questioning practice, concession thinking, and applied case work. By the end of the course, participants will have a more disciplined way to prepare, negotiate, close, document, follow through, and protect the relationship after the agreement.

The following outline highlights the course’s main learning points. For virtual delivery, the structure and timing are intentionally set to support discussion, practice, reflection, and application between sessions. We can adjust emphasis, examples, tools, and cases based on your business priorities. Upon request, we can preview the participant materials with you prior to the session(s).

Segment One Objectives

At this segment’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Articulate a clear unique selling proposition for a product, service, or solution.
• Analyze clients and prospects through profitability, volume, ease-of-service, power, and interest lenses.
• Describe the characteristics of an ideal client profile.
• Explain how research improves preparation and positioning.
• Identify short-term choices that can damage long-term account value.
• Connect negotiation readiness to customer knowledge, business fit, and account strategy.

Segment One Modules

Value Before Bargaining: Understanding the Negotiator’s Landscape

The course opens with the fundamentals many negotiators skip. Participants will examine why negotiation begins before anyone discusses price, terms, or concessions. The group will connect readiness to product value, client knowledge, business fit, and long-term strategy. This opening discussion establishes that negotiators who do not understand their own position, their customer’s world, and the account landscape are not ready to bargain.

Clear Value: Defining the Unique Selling Proposition

Next, attention turns to the unique selling proposition. Participants will practice describing what makes a product, service, or solution valuable to a specific buyer. The work focuses on concise, benefit-centered language that makes value easier to understand before pressure appears. The group will discuss how a stronger value statement improves confidence, reduces overexplaining, and creates a better starting point for the negotiation.

Client Lenses: Seeing Accounts More Clearly

With value clarified, participants will examine clients and prospects through multiple lenses. The group will consider profitability and volume, profitability and ease of service, and power and interest. Participants will discuss how accounts move from one category to another and why service, contact, and negotiation strategies should shift when the account picture changes.

Ideal Fit: Defining the Right Client

This module moves from current accounts to desired accounts. Participants will build an ideal client profile that considers organizational traits, buyer traits, fit, service expectations, and decision patterns. The discussion reinforces that a strong negotiator does not treat all opportunities as equal. Participants will consider how a clear profile can shape prospecting, time allocation, opportunity selection, and negotiation posture.

Research and Positioning: Preparing Before the Conversation

The final module in this segment focuses on research and strategy. Participants will identify what they need to know about a company, a buyer, competitors, prior relationships, service expectations, and current pressures before negotiating. The group will also compare short-term moves with long-term account goals, including the risk of unsustainable terms, poor-fit sales, and negative competitor talk. Participants will leave with a clearer view of what preparation should include before the next negotiation begins.

Segment Two Objectives

At this segment’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Identify what is negotiable beyond price.
• Distinguish among common negotiation outcomes and when each may occur.
• Apply RESOLVE as a structured negotiation process.
• Define MAP, BATNA, and ZOPA and explain how each concept affects flexibility and leverage.
• Develop measurable objectives for a negotiation.
• Use case practice to test planning, questioning, and decision-making under pressure.

Segment Two Modules

The Negotiation Buffet: Identifying What Is on the Table

This segment begins by expanding the group’s view of what can be negotiated. Participants will identify variables beyond price, including schedule, terms, scope, payment, volume, service levels, warranties, access, communication, and implementation support. The discussion helps participants avoid narrowing a negotiation too soon and gives them a broader set of options before concessions begin.

Outcome Choices: Understanding Where Negotiations Can Land

Next, participants will examine common negotiation outcomes: win-win, win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, and compromise. The group will discuss when each outcome appears, why people often claim to want win-win while behaving otherwise, and what conditions make collaboration more likely. Participants will connect outcomes to the issue, the relationship, time pressure, and short- and long-term consequences.

RESOLVE in Practice: Following a Process

This module introduces RESOLVE as a structure for moving through the negotiation. Participants will compare their current approach with a more deliberate sequence that includes preparation, issue definition, exchange, problem solving, agreement, follow-through, and reassessment. The work emphasizes that process reduces guessing, helps negotiators regroup when pressure rises, and keeps the conversation from becoming reactive.

MAP, BATNA, and ZOPA: Knowing Your Boundaries

The course then turns to negotiation vocabulary and planning discipline. Participants will define their MAP, consider their BATNA, and identify the likely ZOPA. The group will discuss why a strong alternative improves confidence, why a weak alternative requires more caution, and how early discovery helps negotiators understand where the other side’s range may begin and end.

Case Practice: Testing the Process Under Pressure

The segment closes with a negotiation case. Participants will prepare, select a strategy, identify possible moves, and negotiate using the concepts introduced earlier. The debrief focuses on preparation quality, information gaps, missed variables, assumptions, and whether participants followed a process or reacted to pressure in the moment.

Segment Three Objectives

At this segment’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Use The Communication Jungle® to understand personal style preferences and likely buyer preferences.
• Build rapport through better adaptation to communication style, pace, and decision preferences.
• Create stronger open-ended, benefit-framed, and assumptive questions.
• Apply listening, reflecting, and summarizing techniques to gather information and confirm understanding.
• Explain several persuasion channels and when each may be appropriate.
• Practice influence, questioning, and listening in a short negotiation exercise.

Segment Three Modules

Style Awareness: Using The Communication Jungle®

This segment opens with The Communication Jungle®, a Business Training Works communication-style tool. Participants will examine how pace, relationship focus, task focus, and decision speed influence communication and negotiation behavior. The discussion helps participants understand their own default style and consider how another person may prefer to receive information, evaluate risk, and move toward agreement.

Adaptive Rapport: Reading and Responding to Others

Building from the style model, participants will discuss how to adjust without becoming artificial or manipulative. The group will identify likely strengths and challenges for different communication styles in negotiation. Participants will consider how rapport improves when negotiators adjust language, pacing, detail, and relationship cues to match what the other person needs.

Better Questions: Getting Information Without Creating Resistance

This module focuses on the negotiator’s questioning discipline. Participants will practice turning blunt questions into benefit-framed inquiries, using open-ended questions, asking assumptive questions when appropriate, and answering some questions with better questions. The work emphasizes how careful wording can reduce defensiveness, uncover priorities, and prevent the negotiator from giving information before receiving enough in return.

Listening for Leverage: Reflecting and Summarizing

After asking better questions, participants focus on what happens next. The group will practice listening, reflecting, summarizing, and confirming meaning. The discussion reinforces that negotiators often lose power by talking too much, missing clues, or moving to solution before they understand the full landscape. Participants will work with short examples to distinguish surface agreement from true understanding.

Ethical Influence: Using Persuasion Channels

The segment then introduces persuasion as a methodical practice rather than a personality trait. Participants will examine several channels of persuasion, including rationality, authority, aspiration, relationships, politics, and interest-based persuasion. The group will discuss how to choose an approach based on the person, the situation, and the decision being made.

Applied Practice: Negotiating With Style and Influence

This segment closes with an applied exercise. Participants will work through a short negotiation scenario that requires questions, listening, persuasion, and style adaptation. The debrief focuses on what information was gained, what assumptions appeared, how influence was attempted, and what participants would adjust in the next round.

Segment Four Objectives

At this segment’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Select communication channels based on negotiation goals, relationship needs, complexity, and risk.
• Work through disagreement without giving up too early or solving the wrong problem.
• Recognize that verbal agreement does not always mean commitment.
• Identify hidden assumptions and reduce misunderstanding.
• Plan, monitor, and document concessions.
• Capture agreements clearly enough to support follow-through and implementation.

Segment Four Modules

Channel Choice: Matching the Medium to the Moment

This segment begins with communication channels. Participants will compare in-person, telephone, video, and email negotiation and identify the strengths and risks of each. The discussion considers visual, vocal, and verbal inputs, relationship needs, complexity, documentation, and when to change channels because the current one is not producing useful information.

Disagreement Discipline: Working the Problem Before Walking Away

Next, participants will examine disagreements and stalled conversations. The group will practice backing up to confirm goals, review areas of agreement and disagreement, ask “what if” questions, and revisit possible solutions. The focus stays on exhausting the right possibilities rather than surrendering too early or solving a problem the other side does not actually have.

False Agreement: When “Yes” Is Not Enough

This module addresses the danger of assuming agreement because someone uses positive language, nods, or avoids objection. Participants will examine signals that may suggest politeness, delay, uncertainty, confusion, or genuine commitment. The group will practice confirming understanding and commitment without sounding accusatory or repetitive.

Assumption Checks: Finding the Missing Information

The course then turns to hidden assumptions. Participants will identify where they are filling gaps with guesses about budget, authority, timing, priorities, competitors, or implementation. The group will practice questions and summaries that surface missing information before it creates conflict, rework, or disappointment later.

Give and Get: Managing Concessions Methodically

This module focuses on concession planning. Participants will discuss why concessions should be deliberate, recorded, and tied to something in return. The group will examine how concession tracking protects the negotiator from nibbling, repeated requests, shifting expectations, and unbalanced agreements.

Plain-English Records: Documenting the Deal

The segment closes with documentation. Participants will discuss how to summarize conversations, capture open issues, translate complex terms into plain English, and reduce the chance that agreement becomes distorted when it moves to a contract, implementation plan, or service handoff. The emphasis is on making the next step clear enough for others to act on it.

Segment Five Objectives

At this segment’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Recognize common negotiation tactics and pressure moves.
• Respond to tough tactics without becoming defensive or reactive.
• Identify decision-style differences that affect timing, evidence, confidence, and closure.
• Say no professionally while preserving credibility and relationship value.
• Avoid negotiating against themselves.
• Use closing techniques that fit the situation and the relationship.

Segment Five Modules

Tactics and Tricks: Recognizing the Move

This segment opens with a review of common negotiation tactics and pressure moves. Participants will examine withholding information, last-minute changes, out-of-the-blue calls, belittling, apples-to-onions comparisons, future-business promises, nibbling, higher authority, cherry-picking, splitting the difference, and “you’ll have to do better than that.” The focus is not on becoming combative; it is on recognizing the move early enough to respond with discipline.

Countermoves: Responding Without Giving Ground Too Fast

Next, participants practice responses to difficult tactics. The group will discuss how to ask for specifics, pause the conversation, return to documented terms, compare value accurately, require give-and-get discipline, and avoid unilateral concessions. Participants will work with short examples and practice language they can adapt to their own work.

Decision Styles: Helping Buyers Move

This module focuses on how people make choices. Participants will compare decision preferences, including fast or deliberate, qualitative or quantitative, relationship-based or evidence-heavy. The group will discuss how decision style affects what people need before they say yes and why the same closing approach will not work equally well with every buyer.

Saying No: Protecting the Deal and the Relationship

The course then turns to a skill many negotiators avoid. Participants will practice saying no without sounding dismissive, apologetic, or combative. The discussion includes language for declining unsustainable terms, resisting inappropriate discounts, redirecting unreasonable requests, and explaining boundaries while keeping the conversation open when the opportunity still makes sense.

Closing Choices: Moving Toward Agreement

This module examines several closing approaches, including direct questions, implementation-focused language, summary closes, conditional closes, and limited-time value adds when they are legitimate. Participants will discuss when each technique fits, when it may create pressure that damages trust, and how to close without rushing a buyer who is not ready.

Commit or Walk: Knowing When to Stop

The segment closes by returning to discipline. Participants will identify signals that the negotiation should continue, pause, move to another channel, escalate, or end. The group will connect closing decisions to MAP, BATNA, relationship value, service capacity, and long-term account fit.

Segment Six Objectives

At this segment’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Explain why post-negotiation servicing is part of the negotiation process.
• Set expectations before the agreement is signed.
• Establish service milestones and client follow-up schedules.
• Respond effectively when the organization causes a problem.
• Respond effectively when the client contributes to a problem.
• Recognize and manage scope creep, effort creep, and hope creep.
• Use follow-through to strengthen the next negotiation.

Segment Six Modules

After the Agreement: Why Servicing Belongs in Negotiation

The final segment begins by reframing servicing as part of negotiation rather than an administrative afterthought. Participants will discuss how future deals are won or lost after the current agreement is signed. The group will examine how expectations, communication rhythm, handoffs, and early follow-through affect renewal, expansion, trust, and future leverage.

Expectation Setting: Preventing Problems Before They Start

Next, participants will identify what should be clarified before an agreement is signed. The group will consider preferred communication methods, timing, service expectations, milestones, roles, decision authority, escalation points, and possible implementation risks. The discussion reinforces that many service problems are created by vague promises, missing details, or assumptions made before the contract exists.

Service Milestones: Building a Follow-Up System

This module focuses on contact points and schedules. Participants will identify service milestones for different customer types and consider which clients need different follow-up patterns. The group will discuss simple tracking tools, CRM options, spreadsheet approaches, and calendar habits that make follow-through visible rather than dependent on memory.

When It Is Your Problem: Owning Failures Well

The course then addresses situations where the seller or provider causes a problem. Participants will discuss truth telling, ownership, listening before solving, and recovery language. The group will practice identifying what the client needs first: acknowledgment, explanation, correction, timeline, reassurance, or a change in process.

When It Is Their Problem: Helping Without Absorbing Everything

This module turns to situations where the client creates, contributes to, or inherits a problem. Participants will discuss how to remain helpful without taking responsibility for everything. The group will work through language for clarifying roles, returning to the agreement, offering options, and involving others when a problem exceeds the negotiator’s authority or capacity.

Creep Control: Managing Scope, Effort, and Hope

The program closes with scope creep, effort creep, and hope creep. Participants will distinguish requests that fall outside the agreement, activities that consume disproportionate effort, and timelines that are slipping without a real recovery plan. The group will identify practical responses, including restating terms, documenting changes, asking for trade-offs, escalating early, and deciding when a customer may no longer be a good fit.

Target Audience

This virtual training program is designed for groups that want to:

• Improve negotiation discipline among sales professionals, account managers, and client-facing teams.
• Build a shared negotiation vocabulary and process across a department or organization.
• Help participants prepare more thoroughly before price, terms, or scope are discussed.
• Strengthen questioning, listening, persuasion, concession planning, and documentation.
• Reduce avoidable losses caused by pressure tactics, unclear boundaries, weak follow-through, or poor servicing.
• Support stronger long-term client relationships before, during, and after agreement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this course only for sales teams?

No. The examples often fit sales and account management, but the course is also useful for customer success teams, procurement groups, project leads, internal consultants, and others who must reach agreement while preserving working relationships.

Does the course focus mostly on price negotiation?

No. Price is part of the work, but the course treats negotiation more broadly. Participants examine terms, timing, volume, scope, service expectations, access, authority, communication, implementation, concessions, and follow-through.

Can the cases be tailored to our industry?

Yes. The program works best when the scenarios reflect the group’s real negotiation environment. During the pre-session conversation, we can discuss products, services, customer types, approval paths, common objections, service expectations, and the pressure points participants regularly face.

Does the course address difficult tactics?

Yes. One segment focuses specifically on tactics, pressure moves, and “dirty tricks.” Participants learn to recognize those behaviors and respond with questions, pauses, documentation, give-and-get discipline, and clearer boundaries.

Does the program include communication-style content?

Yes. The course uses The Communication Jungle® to help participants understand communication preferences, decision speed, relationship needs, and task focus. The style work supports rapport, questioning, listening, and influence.

What makes the final servicing session important?

Many negotiation courses stop when agreement is reached. This course does not. The final session focuses on what happens after the deal: expectations, milestones, service routines, recovery conversations, and scope management. That work protects the current relationship and often shapes the next negotiation.