9 Essential Steps to Rapid & Effective Negotiations

Nothing is more important, or happens more often, than negotiation. It starts privately with friends and family and extends into business with sales contracts. We all negotiate several times a day — and yet the same mistakes happen to us over and over again.

With the following 9 steps, you can optimize your negotiation success and record faster growth. We will show you how to prevent long negotiations, encourage quick signing, and ultimately increase sales — no matter which form of negotiation is involved.

Negotiations are about the content on the one hand — which is indisputably important — and about the process on the other. Bad contracts lead to poor results: contracts that aren't signed, messy documents that create risks, or bad experiences that strain the relationship with your new customers and mean lost revenue for future deals.

Because we support companies in automating their contracts every day, evaluating the data has let us identify which practices are helpful and lead to a close quickly. Below are the 9 steps that have proven themselves in practice.

This article bundles concrete, practical tips for a fast close. If you want to improve at negotiating in general, read our guide to negotiating effectively; the structured flow of a contract negotiation is described in the contract negotiation process.

The 9 steps map onto three phases — from preparing to negotiating to closing:

1. Keep the ball flat - use simple contracts

People prefer simple language. We all process information more easily when it's phrased clearly and reads fluently.

Trust is an asset that builds up or erodes over the course of a deal. Honesty, plain language, and direct communication help the other party trust you. Don't make it unnecessarily hard for your business partners to trust you, and don't dress up your products or services in needless jargon. Presenting a concept or product simply is by no means easy — but it pays off.

With a clear layout and understandable language, you strip your contracts down to what matters.

2. External values count - the contract must appeal to your counterparty

Your contracts must not only convince on content — they also have to look good. New customers in particular choose to sign with you because they want to try something new. So your contracts, just like your products, should look modern and appealing. Rely on a professional appearance and prove to your new customers, right up to the signature, that they've chosen the right contracting party.

A professional-looking document can influence a purchase decision positively the moment it's sent. Poor design and structural errors, on the other hand, are often the nail in the coffin for a transaction.

3. Don't hide details - Dare to be honest

Start your contract negotiation with openness and honesty. It makes no sense to begin a business relationship with hidden clauses or imprecise wording. All too often, your counterparty notices when you're holding something back — and such attempts frequently backfire. If your contractual partner senses that you're concealing something, they'll be more cautious, the process will drag on unnecessarily, and in the worst case they'll walk away from your company altogether.

At the end of the day, we all decide — whether professionally or personally — with our gut. Deliberate concealment that's exposed on the first follow-up question is the sudden death of a business relationship.

If you have critical or even difficult points in your contract, address them openly and record them transparently — for example in a table or a dedicated paragraph. Your contracting party will be lastingly impressed by your honesty.

4. Consider the target audience - Write contracts for your clients and not for your lawyer

Every contract should be written for the end customer, regardless of its type. After all, they are the ones who sign at the end of the day — not your lawyer. So your customer has to feel addressed and comfortable with the contract.

Steer clear of complex legalese and subject-specific terms. Your contract is the documentary equivalent of a handshake — make it friendly!

5. Better Safe than Sorry - Prepare and Listen

Be ready for questions at any time and pay attention to the wishes and comments of the other party. You can often learn from your counterpart and their requested changes. In the long run, this learning improves both your contracts and your products and services.

Before any negotiation, determine what you want to achieve and how you could reach that position. Think through in advance — almost like a role-play — how you might react to questions or arguments from the other side. It's best to create a talk sheet for the most important negotiation points, so you show up confident, secure, and authentic.

If your contract automation software allows it, you can store arguments and clauses directly in the contract in response to likely customer requests — for example, liability limits that automatically vary with the value of the transaction. This kind of preparation not only calms your nerves but also pleasantly surprises the customer.

Note down the points that recur with different customers and where you always fall back on alternative positions. If these positions are commercially acceptable to you, set them as the new standard — that avoids complications in difficult negotiations. It can also be worthwhile to deliberately keep some points as room to manoeuvre. If you keep the goal of faster signing in view, it becomes increasingly easy over time to create contracts customers are happy to sign.

6. Friction creates heat but not money - Make the process as smooth as possible

As you consistently apply the points above, templates emerge over time that can be closed with little negotiation effort. Once you reach that point, make these templates the new standard and ensure all of your employees can benefit from them.

7. Stop unannounced changes — rely on security and control of contract access

As a rule, it's fine for sales representatives to create contracts from a defined template. But free drafting all the way to arbitrary changes must be prevented in every case.

With a Microsoft Word-based process, companies can't control this risk at all, or only very poorly. If you rely on a modern, software-based process instead, you can restrict writing rights so that only approved clauses can be used. At the same time, authorized employees can make changes at any time, and those changes take effect globally right away.

Besides mitigating risk through consistent clause rules, contract automation software has further advantages: an assistant guides daily contract creation, so every sales representative can draft contracts independently, without legal support. The usually built-in electronic signature also offers significant time savings over conventional delivery by email or post right up to obtaining the signature.

8. Knowledge is power - digitize your negotiation

So that you and your team get the most value from your contracts, fall back on tried-and-tested templates that include alternative clauses for the negotiation case. This lets you shorten the negotiation significantly.

On some points, however, negotiation is unavoidable — even with extensive preparation and compromises offered up front.

Dare to enter negotiations when the proposed position isn't justifiable for you from an economic or risk perspective, but conduct them properly. Get away from the endless ping-pong of Word files and negotiate — if you can — over intelligent software.

Contract automation software with internal and external commenting ensures, on the one hand, that all negotiation data is recorded. On the other, it sets a secure, digital framework so no party can get the impression that changes were slipped in quietly, without the knowledge of others. Recording the negotiation results in software also lets you learn from experience and improve your contract process over the long term.

9. Complete your game - Get your contracts signed digitally

Signing the contract is the last move in a game with a long preparation. Don't wait until the customer has forgotten what they're actually signing and the time invested is wasted. An electronic signature — ideally embedded in the software — lets you seize the moment the instant the contract is acceptable to all parties.

Make it as easy as possible for the customer to sign. Avoid heavy technical requirements and outdated software with questionable data protection. For the digital signature, rely on the devices you and everyone else use every day anyway: the mobile phone and the digital e-signature.

That way, sales reps can send contracts to the customer on the way back from a meeting or right after the last online call — and the customer signs them effortlessly on their phone.

When your negotiation is about a specific contract, an end-to-end contract platform makes sure the terms you agree on are cleanly documented, approved, and signed — from the first draft to the e-signature, all in one place.

Read next: To speed up internal alignment before the close, see optimizing internal negotiations. For procurement, the supplier negotiation checklist helps.