Not every entrepreneur, small business owner or freelancer is comfortable negotiating. Many dread the adversarial nature of negotiation.

Even so, it’s difficult (and perhaps impossible) to operate a small business or startup and not negotiate agreements with employees, vendors, customers, and others. And it’s impossible to work as a freelancer without negotiating agreements with your clients.

I’ve negotiated with thousands of people (for 13 years as an attorney and for the past four as an entrepreneur and business owner). Here are ten suggestions that I hope will help you negotiate, based on my experience and practice.

1. Know Your Objective

Successful negotiators know before they begin negotiating what they want to achieve during the negotiation. They also know their bottom line – what they absolutely must have to make the deal work for them. A successful negotiation is one that falls between your goal and bottom line.

Although most people can adequately assess their goals, many skip an equally critical step – evaluating Plan B (your best alternative to a negotiated agreement). What will you do if you are unable to reach agreement? Do you have a number of options and are those options both realistic and practical? If you create a best alternative, you’ll always understand your bottom line (because it will be just slightly better than your best alternative).

Example: When we negotiated the first hosting agreement for crowdSPRING (several weeks of intense negotiation), we were prepared to walk away and work with another major vendor if a few key terms – including our bottom line on price, ability to terminate the contract early without penalty, and a few others – were rejected. After a difficult negotiation with a major vendor’s business team, we successfully obtained concessions on our key deal points, but their legal team rejected several of the terms and refused to budge. Within five minutes, I was on the phone with our second vendor and within several days, we signed a long term agreement (the second vendor made the concessions we needed). If we didn’t know – in advance of the negotiation – our next best alternative, we either would have been bogged down in many more weeks of fruitless negotiation, or we would have signed an unfavorable deal despite our bottom line.

2. Prepare

Most negotiations require a great deal of preparation and strategizing before you begin negotiating. Part of the preparation involves identifying your goals and bottom line, as well as your best alternative (see point 1 above). But research is equally important. The more you know about the other side – the more options you’ll have during the negotiation. You’ll rarely be able to find much information about the person with whom you’re negotiating (although this is becoming easier with the amount of information accessible online). But you’ll nearly always be able to find tons of information about their company. Among other things, try to determine what’s important to the other side and how far they might go to close the deal. You should also understand when something is important to the other side.

Finally – consider what will happen during the life of the agreement. Negotiate concessions on terms that protect you throughout the life of the agreement (such as early termination provisions without penalty).

Example: We nearly always buy computers and equipment from DELL near the end of DELL’s fiscal quarter. We do this because we know that DELL, like every other company, wants to meet and exceed their quarterly numbers. They’re far more likely to offer greater discounts when they’re about to close out their quarter.

3. Never Be Intimidated

Small business owners and young entrepreneurs often get intimidated when negotiating with larger companies. Larger companies know this – they tell you they have “form” agreements and their legal team won’t let them negotiate. Most of the time, that’s untrue. Once you allow yourself to be intimidated, you’ll have difficulty getting your needed concessions during the negotiation. Good preparation and a solid Plan B will help you start the negotiation on level ground – and your ability to negotiate as equals will help you obtain the necessary concessions to make a deal happen.

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