Negotiations are an integral part of our lives. Whether it is at work, at home, or with your toddler – we are negotiating every day. Negotiation and conflict resolution are daily occurrences. And how we navigate through these episodes says a lot about us. Negotiating through a conflict to reach an outcome that is acceptable to both parties involved is a skill.
This has proven to be an extremely valuable skill and, during these tough times – an essential one. And just like it is with any skill, to master it and gain proficiency, we need to practice it and practice it often. Before you jump into real-case situations, enrolling in anonline negotiation course will help you sharpen your skills and ensure that you are ready for any scenario.
Guided by expert tutors, you can complete these online negotiation courses from the comfort of your own home or office and at your own pace.
Here are the 12 Best Negotiations Courses to choose from!
1. How To Win In Negotiations – The 5 Skills You Need To Negotiate Like A Pro [Skillshare]
When you can’t always get someone to agree to what you’re proposing straight away, whether it’s in business or life, you need to do a bit of negotiation. The ability to negotiate is a vital skill whether you are looking for a pay raise or trying to close a multi-million dollar deal. This short course is a brilliant way to gauge the level of your skill set and figure out how much you need to polish them.
In under half an hour, you get 5 on-demand video lessons that help you understand the fundamentals of negotiations and the skills that you need to negotiate in any situation with confidence and ease. The course is taught by Len Foster, best known as a speaker, bestselling author, and marketing & sales trainer. He is regarded as an authority on referral marketing, business networking, and business growth.
The videos are short and to the point. The strategies in this course have been tried, tested, and proven to work in any situation. Taking this course will not only improve your negotiating skills but also give you the confidence to use them as well.
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 20 minutes
- Certification: No
2. Negotiation and Conflict Management – A Freelancer’s Guide [Skillshare]
Primarily aimed at freelancers, this course is much needed for everyone who is working or providing a service. Whether you are dealing with clients, customers, or managers – handling negotiations regarding money and timelines and resolving disagreements and conflicts amicably are crucial to your success. Patience, strategy and the ability to anticipate your opponent’s moves are critical, and this course teaches you just that.
The course is taught by Nick Armstrong, and he aims to make everything about small businesses – FUN! His course is just under an hour and is broken into 12 self-paced videos that help you make this aspect of your small business / freelance career more fun.
- Level: All Levels
- Completion time: 41 minutes
- Certification: No
3. Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator [Coursera]
This course is offered by Yale University – a research university that focuses on students and encourages learning as an essential way of life. In this course, they develop a framework for analyzing and shaping negotiations. This framework enables you to make arguments based on principles that ultimately convince others. It will allow you to see beneath the surface of apparent conflicts in order to uncover the underlying interests. You will leave the course with a better ability to predict, interpret, and shape the behavior of those you face in competitive situations.
This course is taught by Barry Nalebuff, a Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale School Of Management. He is a very successful author as well as an entrepreneur and an Adviser to the NBA for their negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association.
This course takes approximately 34 hours to complete and is divided into 4 sections. Each section averages around 4 hours with several self-paced video lessons [65 videos total] as well as recommended/required reading and quizzes.
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 31 Hours
- Certification: Yes
4. Successful Negotiation: Master Your Negotiating Skills [Udemy]
This course is a VERY popular course for learning the art of negotiation. This course will help you develop the tenacity that is required to keep negotiating till you have a deal that you are satisfied with, a deal that you want. During this course, you will discover the various ways to enhance your bargaining power so that you can negotiate with an upper hand. You will discover how to conduct non-confrontational conversations and learn some easy-to-use techniques to convince your opponent.
This course is taught by Chris Croft, UK’s leading trainer, and author. The course is just under 2 hours and is made up of 9 sections with a total of 41 video lectures and 15 downloadable resources. With more than 65,000 students already, this is one of Udemy’s top-selling courses.
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 1h 48m
- Certification: Yes
5. Negotiating: Learn Negotiation Skills in 70 minutes (2023) [Udemy]
Learning how to lead negotiations will always be a valuable addition to your professional and personal skillset. Not only do you gain the ability to make deals collaboratively, but you also structure relationships between people and organizations. Every leader in every organization must have expertise in negotiation, which can be challenging and complex. To help you navigate this maze, you need a resource that brings a research from top institutions with practical applications presented in an engaging format. And this course does exactly that. It is taught by 2 instructors, Davis Jones, and Ludell Jones. Davis Jones is the Chief Learning Officer of Eazl, while Ludell Jones is the COO of Eazl, – a business school whose courseware is used by organizations like Tesla®, Harvard, the World Bank, and Lyft® and by more than 400,000 students worldwide.
This course has 4 sections with 23 self-paced video lectures in all, along with required reading and assignments. The total course duration is about 1 hour 19 minutes and covers topics like Integrative Negotiation Strategies, Strategic Negotiation, Negotiation Communications, Closing the Deal, and more.
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 1h 19m
- Certification: Yes
6. Negotiation Mastery [Harvard University]
This course is offered by the Harvard School of Business – one of the top institutes in the world. It has been structured to help you understand what the Art of Negotiation is all about. Negotiation is nothing but the process of coming to an agreement between two or more parties by exchanging ideas and bargaining to achieve a mutually beneficial result. With this course, you will hone your negotiation skills to close deals, maximize value in the agreements you reach, and resolve differences before they escalate into costly conflict.
This course is taught by Michael Wheeler, who has taught Negotiation in Harvard Business School’s MBA program since 1993. He has served as faculty chair of the required first-year MBA program and is the author of 11 books, the most recent of which is The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World.
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 8 weeks
- Certification: Yes
7. Mastering Negotiation and Influence [by MIT Management Executive Education)
Negotiation is a vital skill for professionals across every job, whether it applies to partners, vendors, colleagues, employees, or recruits. Successful negotiation requires self-awareness, preparation, and practice. In this course, you will learn negotiation skills and strategies that will enable you to understand, plan and achieve your objectives in a variety of contexts.
This course is taught by Jared R. Curhan – a Gordon Kaufman Professor of Management Professor, Work, and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Faculty Director of MIT’s Behavioral Research Lab.
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 10 weeks
- Certification: Yes
8. Introduction to Business Negotiations by edX
This course introduces you to the basics of Negotiations for Business. During this course, you will discover how to initiate negotiations, beginning with correctly ascertaining the purpose of the negotiations, understanding the predicament of each party, and moving toward the skills and tactics needed for an amicable negotiation. The course framework will not only help you understand negotiation dynamics and how to prepare for uncertainty but also craft an agile strategy and be quick on your feet in changing circumstances. This course features a simulated business negotiation model that brings the deal inside the classroom, where its multiple aspects can be studied.
The instructor for this course is Jay Gary Finkelstein. Mr. Finkelstein has taught business negotiations since 2003. In addition to being part of the adjunct law faculty at Indiana University and Mauer School of Law, he is also a member of the adjunct law faculties at Stanford, Berkeley, Georgetown, and the University of Pennsylvania.
- Level: All levels
- Completion time: 9 weeks
- Certification: Only for the paid version
9. Negotiation Foundations [LinkedIn Learning]
In this course, leadership coach, negotiation expert, and author Lisa Gates demonstrate the core skills of interest-based negotiation to get win-win outcomes every time. Lisa believes that negotiations are all about your mindset. And simply shifting from “my way or the highway” to a “win-win solution” perspective can change the outcome dramatically! Lisa covers techniques such as diagnostic questions, anchoring, framing, and labeling, which help you navigate the impasse and generate satisfaction on both sides of the bargaining table.
- Level: Beginner + Intermediate
- Completion time: 65 Minutes
- Certification: Yes
10. Strategic Negotiation [LinkedIn Learning]
Learning negotiation skills not only helps one accomplish their objectives but also fosters superior rapport with associates, managers, vendors, and more. In this course, leadership consultant and trainer Mike Figliuolo teach unassuming yet valuable negotiating skills. Every negotiating cycle has four main phases, and Mike walks his students through them all – namely assessing the situation, gathering relevant data, negotiating a deal that satisfies all concerned, and then re-assessment and recalibrating your skills according to your experience. Mike also discusses typical difficulties that one might face during negotiations and how one can steer clear of them.
- Level: General
- Completion time: 48 Minutes
- Certification: Yes
11. Sales Skills And Negotiation Skills Masterclass (Skillshare)
With 293 video lessons, this is one of the longest courses on Negotiation Skills. This is a complete guide to mastering Sales Skills and Negotiation Skills. There are so many opportunities in life that are missed because people don’t develop good sales skills. And to develop good negotiation skills, good sales skills are imperative.
This course runs for 12 hours and 19 minutes and is taught by Mark Timberlake. Mark owns and manages a marketing company called SME Heroes. His firm focuses on the training of all that is needed for online course creation, online marketing, and his personal passion for photography. He has a vast experience of more than 15 years with online business in all formats. Mark is dedicated to passing on the valuable lessons and techniques that he has learned along the way to ensure success for all online businesses.
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 12 Hours 19 Minutes
- Certification: No
12. Northwestern University – Kellogg’s High-Performance Negotiation Skills
This course is all about learning the science of negotiation. You will learn about Kellogg’s proven approach, best practices, and strategies that will give you an edge over your competitors. You will come across a new way of thinking about negotiation, new ways to conduct them, and how one can create and apply the right negotiation strategy, supervise a negotiating team, and remain alert and focused in an ever-evolving situation.
This course is taught by Leigh Thompson and Jeanne Brett in a LIVE VIRTUAL FORMAT. This allows you to interact with your instructors and peers in real-time during live lectures and discussions. As part of the course, you will receive three books on negotiation written by your faculty.
- Level: General
- Completion time: 19.5 Hours – 16 Virtual lessons spread between 5 working days
- Certification: Yes
What is MCNE Certification?
The Master Certified Negotiation Expert [MCNE] is a certification program conducted by the Real Estate Negotiation Institute (RENI, also known as Negotiation Expertise, LLC). The MCNE program is considered to be one of the premier and most comprehensive negotiation programs in real estate. The Master Certified Negotiation Expert (MCNE) program is made up of 6 other training programs that teach theories and techniques on negotiation. It also covers practical applications to real estate negotiation situations.
Graduates of the MCNE certification will have achieved mastery of the skills needed to navigate and negotiate any deal confidently. They will have built the tools to develop greater trust between the parties involved. They will have developed superior tactical and negotiation skills that will enable them to see immediate results for their clients as well as themselves.
Conclusion
No matter where you are in life, apply for one of these online negotiation courses and equip yourself with the best negotiation skills. The ones we have shared above are some of the best negotiation courses available online that will not only give you an edge but also make sure that you never leave the table unsatisfied. The great thing about negotiation training courses is that they can be tailored to fit the exact needs of the individual – whether you’re a senior leader in an organization, a female negotiator trying to navigate gender bias barriers, or just curious about negotiation, there’s a course for everyone.