Online or In-Person Negotiation Training for Organizations

Online or In-Person Negotiation Seminars for Organizations

At Negotiation Advice International (NAI), our negotiation seminars for organizations are led by one of the world’s foremost negotiators and negotiation experts, Peter D. Johnston, our firm’s Managing Director.

Peter conducts a limited number of negotiation seminars annually, each steeped in research initiated at Harvard and Harvard negotiation seminars while incorporating his exceptional global client work and lessons from his international bestseller, Negotiating with Giants. Peter is a Harvard MBA whose unique approaches to influence were formed by working closely with founders of the Harvard Negotiation Project, the Program on Negotiation, and the Harvard Negotiation Roundtable. His expertise in the field of negotiation has been formally recognized by the government of the United States for its positive economic and social impact. He has worked with clients ranging from the United Nations, World Bank, and Heads of State to corporations such as HSBC, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Suez, as well as unions, including the pilots at American Airlines.

As a government, corporate, union, or non-profit team, you can come to us, meet us in a neutral location, train online via Zoom, or we can visit your city or offices to save your team the time and money involved in traveling elsewhere. One way or another, the content for your specific training will be highly tailored and can vary from negotiating trade deals as a nation to negotiating sales as a small company or effective relationships and contracts as a struggling union, all drawing on NAI’s distinct multi-disciplinary approach and unparalleled successes in the realm of negotiation.

“I love the way of capturing collective wisdom in diagrams or lists to help simplify it. You also used personal stories to bring the learning home…I believe this was one of the best learning endeavors I have ever taken. Thank you!”
—Government Official
“Thank you very much for an excellent seminar last week. You were a big hit with everyone. The best compliment I've heard is that people have actually lost sleep thinking about the course materials and exercises.”
—Jan Schwartz
Oracle Corporation
Peter Johnston is “a leading light in his field.”
—Roger Fisher
Harvard Law School Professor, and Bestselling Author of Getting to Yes

Rigorous and Entertaining Negotiation Seminars for Organizations

Our negotiation seminars — one to five days in length — are entertaining, highly interactive, and driven by wide-ranging cases in which participants negotiate together as part of role-playing and then debrief as a class.

Based on our work and findings through the Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, and conducting Harvard negotiation seminars, we find negotiation seminar participants tend to absorb new concepts and ideas better when they first learn them in an entirely different context than the one to which they are most accustomed. This approach means that you may find yourself far from your own world initially, as a soccer player’s agent, an oil baron, a hostage, or a film executive. No matter what role you play, the negotiation lessons are always linked back to your actual challenges.

Among core takeaways from our negotiation seminars, participants learn to:

01
Adopt the mindset and approach of the world’s top negotiators.
02
Prepare systematically and quickly for your negotiations.
03
Deal successfully with hard-bargainers and different personality types.
04
Craft agreements that maximize your results.
05
Create value by negotiating away from the table.
06
Build relationships and coalitions to get and keep what you want.
07
Ensure that agreements are implemented as agreed.
08
Defend yourself from common mind-traps.
09
Understand the two negotiations embedded in every single negotiation.

Specific topics, cases, and presentations to be covered as part of our negotiation seminars are driven by confidential questionnaires filled out in advance by all participants.

There are dozens of potential influence, negotiation, and conflict issues that we can delve into depending on your organization’s profile and needs, spending hours or days on the following subject areas as appropriate, including:

01
Conducting cross-cultural negotiations.
02
Dealing with extreme circumstances, such as hostage-takings.
03
Getting the most from your procurement or purchasing team.
04
Managing gender differences in negotiation.
05
Navigating difficult internal negotiations.
06
Negotiating conflicts in both professional and personal relationships.
07
Negotiating online and by email.
08
Negotiating sales and maximizing the impact of your sales team.
09
Negotiating with towering organizations or individuals.
10
Understanding the psychology of influence in negotiations.
11
Using the media effectively in negotiations, including electronic media.

Our negotiation seminars are driven by the results our firm has achieved for clients in corporations, governments, NGOs, non-profits, and unions across hundreds of negotiations. As a negotiator and negotiation advisor who has conducted Harvard negotiation seminars for decades, Peter D. Johnston shares real-life stories in our negotiation classes as he leads discussions and transfers world-class negotiation skills and mindsets to seminar participants.

Premium Negotiation Seminars

In our premium negotiation seminars, a number of the cases we study are developed expressly for the unique negotiation challenges that you, as a client, encounter in your internal or external dealings.

As part of our premium negotiation seminars, in addition to extensive interviews, more detailed upfront questionnaires, and newly created case materials, participants can opt to be filmed negotiating, with the films later reviewed individually or as a group. There may also be negotiation films to watch and discuss, sometimes as part of a special evening session. Finally, time is often set aside in each teaching session to work in teams on challenges you face as an organization, applying the methodology you have just learned so you can immediately attack these challenges.

Negotiation Workshops

Find out more about what makes our training different.

Find out about our negotiation training for individuals. We conduct virtual negotiation seminars for individuals anywhere in the world — via Zoom.

In-Person, Online, and Hybrid Negotiation Training: Case Examples

Negotiation Programs
Case #1: Hybrid Negotiation Seminars for a Global Chemical Company

To meet the very specific needs of this leading-edge group, we combined in-person and online negotiation training for their buyers and sellers from around the world over the course of a week. When teaching online, NAI delivered tailored negotiation classes and negotiation cases twice daily, once for Europe, North America, and Africa, later repeating the same material with different applications for those in China and Singapore.  

Case #2: Negotiation Training for a Global Food and Beverage Company

Working closely with this food and beverage company, we brought together a team of its commodity buyers from around the world to improve their already strong performance through intense, tailored negotiation training over five days. During our time together, we delved into: the strategy and psychology of their craft; how to get creative in their negotiations despite perceived limitations related to buying and selling commodities; and approaches for keeping multiple suppliers operating for diversity’s sake and to avoid the rise of monopolies. Based on advance interviews and surveys with participants, we developed new cases for this client, allowing us to successfully target their most critical influence and decision-making challenges.

Case #3: Negotiation Training and Mediation for an International Mining Company and Union

Our Managing Director Peter Johnston led a labor-management engagement with a bitter history including recent lockouts and strikes. At the request of both parties, union and management, Peter and his team started by training all the parties together in best practices for negotiating differences with each other for three days. With Peter’s guidance, the parties dug into brainstorming about some of their most challenging issues in upcoming talks on the final day of training. Peter then helped structure talks and mediated them until the parties were able to operate on their own. A ground-breaking contract was reached and the parties agreed that our training and facilitation of their contract discussions was critical to this positive outcome.

Case #4: Negotiation Sales Training for a Healthcare Company

A healthcare company seeking rapid growth brought us in to advise on negotiating key account sales, managing those accounts effectively, and handling their most challenging sales dynamics and customers. This advisory work included specialized training for all sales team members in how to best influence prospective customers, negotiate large sales, and close deals in a timely manner.

Case #5: Negotiation Training for Purchasing Medical Clinics

We developed a seminar tailored to the needs of this group that aggregates medical clinics to maximize efficiencies in branding, sales, and marketing, as well as cost savings through scale purchasing. Our specific training was related to the mindset and best negotiation practices of successful business buyers. This included how to approach and influence individual clinic owners to gauge their interest in selling; structure lasting deals tailored to the specific needs of those selling; close deals in a more timely manner; and knowing when to move on from those less inclined to sell.

Find out more about what makes our training different.


Find out about our negotiation training for individuals. We conduct virtual negotiation seminars for individuals anywhere in the world — via Zoom.

Contact us confidentially to learn more or to confirm our availability.

Cambridge, USA — Vancouver, Canada