Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

bargaining skills

What are Bargaining Skills?

Bargaining skills can help buyers and sellers negotiate the specifics of the deal and eventually come to an agreement.

Bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service dispute the price and the exact nature of the transaction with the goal of coming to an agreement. Like negotiation skills, you can practice and improve your bargaining skills. 

Bargaining is often positioned as a way for two or more parties to act as teammates seeking a common goal. This “working towards the same thing” is common as an alternative pricing strategy to fixed prices. 

For example, if it costs a retailer nothing to engage and allow bargaining, he can divine the buyer’s willingness to spend. It allows for capturing more consumer surplus as it allows price discrimination, a process whereby a seller can charge a higher price to one buyer who is more eager (by being richer or more desperate). Haggling has largely disappeared in parts of the world where the cost to haggle exceeds the gain to retailers for most common retail items. However, for expensive goods sold to uninformed buyers such as automobiles, bargaining can remain commonplace.

That’s why it behooves anyone to work on improving their bargaining skills. Even though you may not use them often, when you do, they could help you forge a better, more appealing deal.

You can improve your bargaining skills and discover how to boost your power at the bargaining table in this free special report, BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new business negotiation advice and information on how to improve your dealmaking skills to our website.

The following items are tagged bargaining skills:

Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team

Posted by & filed under Crisis Negotiations.

Few negotiators can imagine negotiation scenarios more stressful than the kinds of crisis negotiations the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team undertake. But police negotiation techniques employed by the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiations Team (HNT) in high-stakes, high-pressure crisis negotiation situations, outlined in an article from Jeff Thompson and Hugh … Read More

Teach Your Students Value Distribution with a Simulation on Solar Power

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

Do your students really understand the difference between value distribution and integrative negotiation, and have you given them a chance to practice their distributive bargaining skills? Do they understand that every negotiation includes elements of both value creation and value distribution? To help teach these key negotiation skills the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) has developed a … Read More

Asking for More in Salary Negotiation: When Jennifer Lawrence and Jennifer Aniston Spoke Out

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

“We’re very much a sexist society,” actress Jennifer Aniston said in back in 2015 in an interview with the New York Times, addressing not just the constant questions she faces about marriage and children, but about recent revelations of pay discrimination and salary negotiation in Hollywood. “Women are still not paid as much as men,” Aniston … Read More

Coming Up with Win-Win Solutions at the Bargaining Table

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Even those who effectively engage in an integrative negotiations or mutual-gains approach to negotiation, a bargaining scenario in which parties work together to meet interests and maximize value creation during the negotiation process, can be stymied by the task of dividing up a seemingly fixed pie of resources, such as budgets, revenue, and time. … Read More

Metaphorical Negotiation and Defining Negotiation Skills

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

Negotiators talk about building agreement, bluffing the opposition, and volleying offers back and forth. According to mediator Thomas Smith, careful attention to such metaphors can reveal deeper meaning beneath the explicit words that people use, notably regarding how they view the negotiation process and their relationship to one another. … Read More

Need Some Negotiating Help? In the future, ask your phone

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

Today, many people use “virtual assistants,” such as the iPhone’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, to perform simple tasks and provide answers to straightforward questions. So-called chatbots, or bots, grease the wheels of everyday life by giving directions, looking up arcane facts, providing customer service, and much more. The best bots can also carry out lengthy conversations … Read More