Strategies and Techniques in Business Negotiating and Selling: Case Studies

This paper is the result of my research into the applications of useful strategies and techniques in real business situations. I analyzed the way in which various aspects of particular techniques have been adapted to meet the needs and representations (map) of the world of different categories of business people, salespeople, negotiators, or customers. In applying the techniques to elicit performance in customer service communication, I observed both verbal and non-verbal elements of successful business communicators in a specific context. In this respect, I interviewed two groups of banking specialists, and the results were extremely valuable both from the business perspective and the linguistic one. The project was undertaken in the summer of 2009 when I participated in many business encounters and recorded the strategies, values, language and interactive skills in developing rapport with the target clients in conversation. The capability to communicate, understand / identify the clients' needs and offer consultancy was rendered by certain combinations of strategies, language patterns, values, beliefs and physiology. In this paper, I shall describe two of the situations that I consider to be relevant, i.e. the negotiating and selling of a banking service, on the one hand, and the defusing technique, on the other hand, as well as their linguistic approach.