Negotiation Speaker for Presentations & Speeches

As a renowned negotiation expert, and award-winning author of the international bestseller Negotiating with Giants, Peter D. Johnston has presented to audiences around the globe. From Asia and Africa to Europe and North America, Peter has carefully tailored insightful, absorbing, and entertaining content as a negotiation speaker to the specific interests of those in attendance.

Peter is the Managing Director of Negotiation Advice International (NAI) and has worked with negotiation 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 high-profile unions, non-profits, and celebrities.

With executives in business and government consistently placing negotiation in the top five skills they need to be successful, an eloquently delivered presentation on negotiation can inspire a room and make everyone better at what they do. Throughout his negotiation speaking engagements, Peter will take any and all questions to ensure those attending can immediately apply negotiation lessons and takeaways to both their work and personal lives.

Be Moved by One of the World’s Leading Negotiation Speakers

As a widely quoted expert on negotiation, Peter loves to exchange ideas with corporate, government, and university audiences about influence and negotiation, delving into everything from the psychology of influence and best practices in negotiation to high-profile negotiations in the media.

He has advised CEOs on critical transactions, guided senior government officials in the face of national conflicts, and helped entire industries initiate and manage significant change. He conducts client engagements worldwide and has worked with some of the largest and most successful organizations in the US, Europe, and Asia. As a keynote negotiation speaker, Peter shares insights from our firm’s advisory work, research, and some of history’s most difficult negotiations, drawing on fascinating stories from across time to engage and entertain, relaying vital lessons about negotiation. Depending on the audience and specific interests, stories can delve into everything from hostage-takings and civil wars to nasty mergers and historic sports deals.

Peter’s exceptional ability to communicate about negotiation, conflict resolution, and current events has attracted dozens of media organizations to interview him, including ABC, CBS, CNN, CTV, FOX, The Globe and Mail, The Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report, and Oprah & Friends.

Wide-Ranging Topics for Keynote Negotiation Speeches

Peter D. Johnston is a powerful negotiator in his own right who imparts lessons to his audiences about what being powerful means — and doesn’t mean — in leading-edge negotiation and conflict management practices.

Our audiences benefit from inspiring, real-life negotiation stories and takeaways directly relevant to their lives and work, often focused on what we can learn from history’s best negotiators, and how to negotiate outstanding results in any situation, even the most demanding.

Every speech and negotiation presentation our firm undertakes will be different than the others because of our attention to your unique needs as a client, including the industry in which you work and the distinct challenges your team faces in its negotiation and influence efforts. Whenever appropriate, we will send out a brief survey to those attending one of our negotiation presentations to find out what topics will be of greatest interest.

We believe that you are negotiating anytime you are trying to influence someone to do something, regardless of whether a written contract is involved or not. As such, there is a lot to talk about that will strike a chord with your audience.

Specific topics addressed by Peter as a keynote negotiation speaker have included:

Negotiating Body Language

How do you know if someone is lying to you? Is that really their best and last offer, or might they be able to move a lot more? Do they really like you and your organization or are they putting on a show to get the deal? We explore what science and the world’s best body readers can tell us about how to act, and what to read in others’ physical traits and behaviors. Spoiler alert: the eyes don’t have it, the feet do.

Negotiating Cassandra’s Curse

How we ignore helpful prophecies from “smaller voices” in our organizations and nations that are trying to influence us — often with dire consequences, and what we can learn from our mistakes and do differently.

Negotiating Change

Lessons from history’s change agents on how to negotiate big, enduring changes in households, organizations, and nations.

Negotiating with Children

Can you negotiate with your kids? What’s been proven to work, and what clearly doesn’t?

Negotiating Contracts

The common mistakes we make when negotiating and drafting contracts — and how to avoid them.

Negotiating Difficult Conversations

Pay raises, hygiene habits, poor performance, break-ups, and mental health issues are just some of the toughest things we have to talk about as we try to influence others. What are some rules and approaches for influencing others in particularly challenging situations where relationships can be at risk depending on how we communicate and handle ourselves?

Negotiating with Difficult People

How do you deal with, and influence, your impossible co-worker, your crazy aunt, or your neighbor across the street whose dog is out of control? The person who doesn’t share your political views? Your narcissistic boss? What makes these people difficult, and how to know that you’re not the one who is actually the difficult person?

Negotiating Emotions

We look at the science of emotions and the realities of dealing with our emotions as we negotiate, delving into the mindsets, strategies, and tactics that prove most helpful to the world’s best negotiators.

Negotiating with Giants

Get what you want when the odds are against you, whether in negotiation and contract management or trying to shift a nation’s will in your favor. We also explore how best to compete with much larger forces, taking advantage of your strengths as a smaller player, and their inevitable vulnerabilities.

Negotiating Life

How to maximize the success of your relationships, your community, your family, and your career, weaving effective negotiation approaches into every corner of your life.

Negotiating Personality Types

We explain the origins of personality assessment tools and focus on the mother of them all, Myers-Briggs, to discuss how each of us can benefit in our personal and professional negotiations by knowing our own tendencies, and “speed-reading” those of our negotiation counterparts.

Negotiating Procurement

What are the origins of today’s procurement processes? Where do many approaches fall short? How do the best approaches to negotiating the purchase of goods and services balance the need for arm’s-length transactions with deals that actually meet the needs of all parties?

Negotiating Psychology

How several basic phenomena bias our view of the world, and what we can do to escape that bias to influence and negotiate more effectively. We delve into different psychological tendencies related to everything from anchoring in negotiations and valuing opportunities, to framing choices.

Negotiating Sales to Giants

How can smaller players sell their goods and services to giant organizations most effectively, getting to the table and closing deals as quickly as possible? And what are the secrets of successful smaller companies that have managed to compete against Goliath corporations and their large sales teams, big marketing budgets, and ability to discount heavily when needed?

Whatever you need a keynote negotiation speaker, NAI and Peter D. Johnston will deliver world-class, innovative presentations, customized to maximize their impact on and value for your particular audience.

Overview of One Keynote Negotiation Speech: Negotiating with Giants

How do you negotiate with Wal-Mart as a tiny supplier? With a well-established venture capital firm when you’re a struggling start-up? With a huge competitor that threatens to derail your growing business? An ethical issue with an intimidating boss? A tax issue with an unresponsive government? The return of a stolen client, a valuable former employee, or a canceled credit line?

Peter D. Johnston’s answers to these questions are driven by research he launched at Harvard University and client engagements with smaller players and giants alike, including Wall Street bankers, political leaders, and many of the world’s largest corporations. His presentation aims to make you a more powerful negotiator by drawing on dozens of real-life stories, capturing mindsets and strategies you can apply to your organization with immediate results, whether you are interested in mediation and sports deals or negotiation and contract management.

You’ll see how successful smaller players from across time — such as Ben Franklin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Bill Gates — have consistently turned conventional thinking about negotiation on its head, often changing the course of history as they negotiated against the odds with towering forces.

During this dynamic session with one of the world’s foremost negotiation speakers and negotiation gurus, you’ll explore how to:

Defend

Defend yourself and your ideas.

Level

Level the playing field with your giant.

Craft

Craft deals that meet your long-term interests and take advantage of size differences.

Draw

Draw on distinct helpers to infiltrate, persuade, or pressure your giant to meet your needs.

Run

Run your organization on a daily basis in preparation for your next giant negotiation.

One thing is guaranteed: after listening to Peter, you will think differently about your next negotiation — by learning how others facing apparently insurmountable odds have handled the toughest negotiations imaginable.

Contact us to learn more or to confirm our availability for a negotiation speech that will entertain your audience while ensuring no one leaves the room seeing the world exactly as they did before.