What are the essential elements of advancing the income of your business? Hard work, communication skills, and a generous dose of luck all play a role, of course. Another important key ingredient suggested by business professions is one that is often overlooked—the ability to recognise and capitalise on opportunities to negotiate.

Because your role in your business is almost constantly up for negotiation, the importance of negotiation in business and your career can’t be overestimated.

And while the word negotiation can sometimes bring to mind heavy and aggressive talks with clients, things like peacefully dealing on the prices, salaries and other forms of business can be done in a peaceful way, and to your advantage, they are all part and parcel of proper negotiation techniques.

Hence, negotiation skills are considered as highly essential for effective teamwork, decision-making and managing conflicts. Thus, they should be developed to improve customer base and attract more clients.

As a business owner or manager, you participate in various negotiations every day. If you are hiring a new employee, you negotiate their salary. When you are talking to a prospective company, you negotiate your terms of business, but how can this impact your business and how can you acquire proper negotiation skills?

The ability to negotiate is beneficial to everyone, be it a leader or an employee, according to businesspeople who affirm that while the ability to negotiate is an important part of business meetings and accomplishing contracts, its benefits may extend far beyond.

Emmy Nshimiye, the human resource manager at Mount Kenya University, says that negotiation helps by tackling both sides, the business and the customers.

"It leads to a win-win situation because it leads to an agreement between parties after taking into account each other’s interests. Finding a deal which satisfies both parties is not that easy, but is what a good negotiator does,” he says.

Ultimately, the goal of a negotiation is to get the best deal possible for you and your organisation, Nshimiye says. In doing so, you are by definition improving your bottom-line and increasing the profit at a higher rate as you can.

"For example, if you are able to reduce your overhead by 10% due to an effective negotiation, that money goes straight to your profit margin, and the money increases,” he adds.

In order to get the utmost productivity out of your employees, it is very important that your customers, suppliers and others whom you negotiate with, respect you.

Innocent Bahizi, a business firm owner in Gisementi, is of the view that the confidence and impression you leave to clients can have a long-lasting impact and create a good image in the industry for you.

"The impression you leave after a negotiation can have a lasting impression, which can impact everything from future negotiations to your reputation in your industry. If used well, I assure you, the ability to negotiate will make people want to work with you,” he notes.

Bahizi also believes that it is far better to be a somewhat intimidating character due to your negotiating skills than it is to be looked at as a pushover at the negotiating table, adding that instead, good negotiations will generally lead to further negotiations in the future.

Bahizi adds that negotiation skills teach us to be patient and understand others’ needs and opinions, while giving importance to our own and find out a solution that benefits all.

To improve your negotiation skills, it is better to be a good listener, recommends David A. Lax, the co-author (with James K. Sebenius) of 3-D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals.

The authors are of the belief that a skilful negotiator knows that the key to success lies in listening. "If you find a way to let the other party talk more, you might discover something advantageous in the negotiation process,” reads part of the book.

The authors add that negotiation skills are not always inborn, they have to be developed through learning and can be very useful to advance your career.

"Keep your career moving forward by capitalising on the advantages of negotiation in business,” the authors write.