All of us negotiators, we are dealing with some negotiations face to face and some remote negotiations.

Let’s be honest, what’s the percentage of your negotiations that are remote?

Think about that for a second.

I’m asking these questions to all of my participants for every training and I’m so surprised about this percentage.

Some of them says “100% of my negotiations are remote“, some of them is 80, 70, maybe 50, maybe less.

But for most of them, it’s at least 50% or more that their negotiations are remotely. Through teams, zoom and all of the platforms that we have, right?

So, how to deal with a remote negotiation?

It’s a different situation, let’s be honest.

It’s not like being face to face in the same room where we can have like small talk, having a coffee and a conversation.

It’s a different thing and we need to be good on that.

So let me share with you three tips, three things to do to be good on those remote negotiations.

Tip number one, we should be extremely formal. What does it mean? Being formal means sending an email before. This will be the agenda. Why not sending an email a few hours or minutes before the real meeting saying “remember that we have this conversation in a couple of hours or tomorrow morning“? And again, “this is the agenda I want to share with you“. And being formal means also sending an email after the real negotiation, saying those were the main topics that we explore and so on, right? So tip number one, being very formal.

Tip number two, forget the camera. Yes, forget the camera. Open the camera and feel that you are in a real situation. So use your body language, your facial expressions, your energy to connect with people. Don’t be like this talking from your camera. You can like if you are in the real conversation and try to think that people are in front of you. That’s why always camera on, please.

And tip number three. Tip number three is use the technology we are dealing remotely, which means that we can share very easily videos, we can share very easily documents and pictures and wherever we want to share, right? So by the end, we can use this platform to be more successful in our negotiations, inspiring more trust. Because we are saying, do you remember that picture? I can share a picture. Do you remember that document? I can share a document, right?

So, summarizing, remember three key things to doing your remote negotiations.

• Thing number one, being very formal, sending emails before and after.
• Thing number two, being yourself in front of the camera.
• And think number three, use technology to share documents, image, pictures and wherever you want.

This will help you to be more successful in your remote negotiations.