Negotiation Skills Training for Teams and Organisations

Commercial negotiation skills training equips professionals with the techniques and frameworks needed to achieve better outcomes in high-stakes negotiations. At CEDR, this covers procurement teams, employee and industrial relations functions, senior sales and client-facing teams, legal counsel, and project managers. The skills — active listening, emotional management, influence, and structured preparation — are consistent across these contexts; the application is tailored to each team's reality.

CEDR's trainers are practitioners, not lecturers — including the former Director of the UK Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Programme and a former Metropolitan Police crisis negotiator with 32 years' service. Every programme is built around your organisation's specific challenges, not delivered off the shelf. A strict 1:6 trainer-to-participant ratio ensures every individual receives direct, one-to-one coaching throughout. 

The skills that resolve life-or-death standoffs — active listening, building rapport under pressure, managing emotion, uncovering hidden interests, and navigating deadlock — are precisely the skills that determine outcomes in complex commercial negotiations. CEDR's trainers have deployed these techniques across six continents and now apply them directly to procurement, sales, industrial relations, and client-facing contexts. The stakes differ; the human dynamics do not. 

CEDR recommends a minimum of three days to embed sustainable behavioural change across the full range of negotiation skills. Shorter, focused interventions are available for teams with specific needs — such as a targeted module on de-escalation or BATNA/WATNA preparation. All programmes include pre-learning preparation and ongoing coaching support following the core training. 

Yes — this is central to how CEDR works. Role-play scenarios are designed around your team's actual negotiation challenges: your sector, your counterpart dynamics, and the conversations that most commonly go wrong. CEDR has built bespoke programmes for Anglo American, Amadeus, Deutsche Bank, and British Airways, among others — each reflecting the client's specific commercial environment. 

CEDR's programmes are designed for cohort sizes of 12, 18, or 24 participants to enable intensive role-play and individual coaching. For larger-scale rollouts, CEDR can train internal trainers to disseminate learning across wider teams. Additionally, we can deliver targeted, modular training for cohorts over a period of time to ensure maximum reach and impact. CEDR's partnership with Sopra Steria has trained over 500 professionals across multiple functions to date. 

 Negotiation training equips individuals to represent their own interests more effectively — covering preparation, bargaining, managing impasse, and closing. Mediation skills training develops the capability to act as a neutral third party, helping others resolve disputes through structured dialogue. The skill sets are closely aligned, and many CEDR clients invest in both — building negotiation capability within commercial teams while developing internal mediators within HR or legal functions.