Useful Phrases For Business Negotiations in English

Post author:Harry
Post last modified:09/07/2021
Post category:Business English Vocabulary
Reading time:7 mins read

Here you will learn useful English phrases for business negotiations in English. These business English expressions will help you feel confident during your next important meeting in English.

Harry

Harry is a native English teacher with over 10 years of experience both online and in face-to-face lessons. With his extensive experience in business, he specialises in Business English lessons but happily teaches ESL students with any English learning needs.

Phrases for business negotiations in English

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In this particular podcast episode, we’re going to take a look at some phrases for business negotiations in English. We’re going to look at them in four sections:

how to make a proposal
phrases for compromising
accepting a negotiation proposal
objecting to a proposal

making a proposal

Let’s first of all look at making a proposal.

we’d like to propose

We’d like to propose that the next meeting is held in your offices.

We’d like to propose that the contract is renegotiated after two years.

we request
we propose
how do you feel about

How do you feel about inserting a clause in the contract that will enable either party to review it after a period of 18 months?

Phrases for business negotiations in English

phrases for compromising

The second part of this are phrases for compromising.

So compromising is when we have to find a middle ground where both parties have to move towards each other in order to get some type of an agreement. So what are the phrases that we use?

If you were prepared to …, we might be able to…

If you were prepared to accept payment after 60 days, we might be able to give you a bigger discount.

If you were prepared to offer us a bigger discount, we might be able to place a bigger order.

We are ready to accept your offer; however, there would be one condition

In this sentence, you’re making this compromise on the basis of a conditional clause.

We are ready to accept your offer subject to …

In return for this, would you be willing to …?

In return for our agreement to postpone the signing of the contract, would you be willing to extend the contract by a further six months?

The art of compromise. Anytime we want to get a compromise, we must offer something.

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accepting a negotiation proposal

And then accepting a negotiation proposal.

Here are some phrases that we might use when accepting a negotiation proposal:

this agreement is acceptable to us
that all sounds reasonable to us
I think we have a deal
I can agree to that
I don’t think it would be any problem to accept
Okay, let’s go for it (quite informal) Meaning let’s sign it, let’s get everything moving.

Phrases for business negotiations in English

objecting a proposal

And then finally when we object to a proposal and we’re not prepared to accept it. So how do we refuse or object?

Well, that’s not exactly how I look at it
I have some reservations about that

If you want to be a little stronger:

I’m afraid we just couldn’t agree to that
I’m not so sure, I still think…

I’m not so sure, I still think that the proposal that we made is the best way out of this.

So you can object in a strong way or soft (gentle) way.

As always, thanks again for listening to this podcast episode. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you want to contact me, then you can do so on www.englishlessonviaskype.com where I’m always very happy to hear and read your comments. Thanks for listening. Join me again soon.