You are preparing for an important negotiation that will affect your organization for the next few years, and the CEO calls upon one of the department heads to help you conduct the process.
Most of the time, this department head will rely on his past experience, intuition and so-called natural talent. He was selected on the basis of the negotiation skills attributed to him, his reputation and his status, not on the basis of formal training and mastery of negotiation methods. Very early on, you observe that the process is not being managed and that organizational politics is getting in the way and not advancing the negotiation. What can you do?
This is where you involve a negotiation specialist, a professional negotiation coach who will prime whoever is going to be doing the negotiating (but will not negotiate on his behalf).

A negotiation specialist assists executives who are negotiating, in achieving their goals in a leadership way, more effectively and more efficiently in terms of trust, reputation, relationships and, of course, financial costs and precious time. The negotiation specialist is an expert in professionally analyzing a situation and devising an astute and practical methodological process adapted to the personalities of the negotiators and to their organizational culture.

The process may combine various methods for gathering and verifying data, recruiting cooperation, and dealing with objections and crises in the most appropriate way for the unique circumstances of the situation.

According to the Tsur Method for negotiation, a negotiation specialist prepares others so that they will be able, based on their abilities and skills, to conduct negotiations on their own with strength and leadership.

Everyone in the world finds themselves negotiating daily in different situations: in heavy traffic, in a conversation with a customer service rep, in deciding where to go out with a significant other, in changing the schedule for a task at work, in getting children to do their homework before going out with their friends…

When we are on automatic pilot, we assume what the other party is thinking, what they want and what they are going to do, and we negotiate according to these assumptions. This kind of process is good for negotiating when the cost of failure is low and restoring balance will not require great resources. In complex situations, however, our automatic pilot may undermine our ability to achieve our goals, lead to unnecessary escalation and incur great financial and emotional expenses.

More and more companies and organizations worldwide have come to realize that negotiation specialists are a must in their business activities, internally as well as externally. These professionals are assigned to streamline decision making in negotiation processes and to provide support in real time for conducting delicate and challenging situations while maintaining leadership qualities. In doing so, they aim for the primary goal which is to protect the assets of the organization and save resources, especially human resources.