The Best Online Negotiation Courses to Help You Close a Better Deal in 2024

Negotiation is a skill that can help you in all kinds of situations, whether you’re a career businessperson who has to make deals every day or you’re buying a new car and want to prepare yourself to talk to the salesman at the dealership. Either way, few things sting more than signing off on a deal and realizing later that you could’ve gotten a better one.

To help you avoid this scenario and get the great offer you deserve, we’ve put together a list of the best online negotiation courses available today.

First, we’ll talk about what factors you should consider in a negotiation course, and then we’ll rank and discuss the best classes according to those same factors. Next, we’ll give you some advice to help you succeed in your chosen course(s), and we’ll answer some frequently asked questions about negotiation courses, too.

What to Consider in an Online Negotiation Course

The good news is that there’s no shortage of great online negotiation courses. However, that abundance can make it hard to tell the differences between them or determine which one best meets your needs. That’s why we’ve ranked the courses on our list according to the following factors, and we’ll discuss each one in our reviews.

Length

The lengths of our list’s courses vary greatly between those with a runtime of less than an hour and others that span over several months. We’ll list each course’s length in our reviews, so make sure you check this before you buy a class.

Cost

The courses on our list come from a variety of websites, each with its own payment policy. Some websites have you pay a one-time fee to access a single course, while others require you to pay a recurring subscription free. Here’s a summary of the different platforms and how they work.

• Coursera lets you take the course for free, but you won’t be able to complete graded assignments or get a certificate at the end. To buy a course, you can pay a one-time fee which gives you access for 180 days. If a course is part of a Specialization, you can pay a monthly subscription to that Specialization and take all of the courses it offers.
• Coursera Plus lets you take most of the site’s courses and earn as many certificates as you want. Coursera Plus costs $59/month or $399/year, and you can try it free for 7 days.
• EdX lets you take its courses for free, but you’ll have to upgrade to a course’s paid version to attempt graded assignments and exams, as well as to get the Verified Certificate when you’re finished. Check out the EdX help pages to learn more about the differences between their courses’ free and paid versions.
• Udemy charges a one-time fee for each of its courses. The Udemy courses on our list cost between $40 and $100.
• Skillshare lets you choose between two payment options for its subscription service, Skillshare Premium. You can get it for $168/year or $32/month. If you haven’t done so yet, you can try it for free for 7 days.
• LinkedIn Learning is a subscription-based service. You can buy it for $30/month or $240/year. You can take advantage of its 1-month free trial if you haven’t already.
• MasterClass charges you $180/year in return for access to their entire selection of courses. If their service isn’t to your liking, you have 30 days after buying the subscription to email them and request a full refund.
• Harvard Business School Online offers a course that is only taught in pre-scheduled 8-week sessions. It also requires an application. You’ll have to check the course page to see when the next program session begins and get your application in before that session’s deadline. If you’re accepted, you must then pay the course fee.

Curriculum

Some of our list’s courses cover negotiation more broadly and provide techniques that can help you in any negotiating situation, while others focus on specific scenarios, like asking for a pay increase or negotiating in a business environment. We’ll begin with courses that discuss negotiation in an overall sense before reviewing more specialized classes.

Experience & Practice

Another relevant factor you’ll want to consider when choosing a course is the experience of the course tutor. Our course list features tutors that have been teaching negotiation at a high-level for many years, including in FBI hostage negotiation. While time in the field is important here, equally important is the ability to practice what you learn.

Negotiation is a practical skill and while online learning can be incredibly helpful, there’s nothing that will bump your skills faster than doing it yourself. Look out for courses that offer role-playing exercises, or that offer suggestions on how to find real-life practical experience.

Course Breakdown

Course Title	Curriculum	Length	Cost	Expertise Level
Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator	Negotiation theory, mock negotiations with other students, various advanced negotiation topics	1-8 hours/week for 9 weeks (recommended)	Free or $49 for certificate	Beginner
Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills	Walkthrough of the negotiation process, making contracts and resolving disputes, mock negotiation, final exam	2-4 hours/week for 7 weeks (recommended)	Free or $49 for certificate	Beginner
Chris Voss Teaches the Art of Negotiation	Universal negotiation strategies, mock negotiations	3h 4m	$180/year	All
Negotiation Skills	Negotiation from start to finish, when to negotiate and when to walk away	2h 12m	$30/month or $240/year	Beginner
Negotiation Mastery	Negotiation simulations, how to handle complex situations, determine your negotiation style	8 weeks	$1,600	All
Introduction to Business Negotiations	Negotiation theory, how to handle different types of problems as they arise, negotiation process and strategies	4-6 hours/week for 9 weeks (recommended)	Free or $349 for certificate	Beginner
Negotiation Fundamentals: How to Negotiate Effectively	Impact of cognitive bias on negotiation, negotiation strategies and styles	1h 22m	$100	Beginner
Negotiation Secrets for Master Negotiators	Negotiation preparation, simple rules to get better at negotiation, mock negotiation	1h 59m	$40	Beginner
Negotiating Your Salary	Salary negotiations	52m	$30/month or $240/year	All levels
Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate a New Job Offer (Pro)	Improving salary and benefits in a new job offer	4h 25m	$95	All levels
Negotiation and Conflict Management – A Freelancer’s Guide	Negotiating with clients as a freelance worker	41m	$32/month or $168/year	Beginner or Intermediate

Top 11 Best Online Negotiation Courses 2024

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1. Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator

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Why we like it

This course is a great place for new learners to get started with negotiation. It teaches you negotiation theories, lets you apply them in mock negotiations, and has you hear from several accomplished negotiators who serve as guest speakers.

If you’re new to negotiation and you want a deep, comprehensive look at the art, look no further. This course doesn’t just provide you with negotiation theories and techniques. It also has you practice them in several negotiations with your peers. The mock negotiations and lectures show you how to handle many different types of situations you can encounter during a negotiation. Lastly, the guest lecturers in the final few modules are all negotiation experts with their own lessons to impart.

The professor’s teaching methods are another reason this course is so beginner-friendly. He gets his point across in an easy-to-follow manner, and he often uses graphics and animations to keep the lessons interesting.

As we mentioned earlier, the course has you do several mock negotiations with other students. While these parts of the course let you experience different negotiation scenarios and apply the theories you’ve learned, finding another student to do the assignment with you can be frustrating.

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2. Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

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Why we like it

If you have a formal business negotiation coming up, this course is for you. You’ll learn what to do before, during, and after the negotiation to get the best possible outcome.

This course provides an in-depth walkthrough of the negotiation process, including how to prepare for a negotiation, which strategies you can use to secure a better deal, how to draw up contracts, and what to do if one of the parties doesn’t honor the agreement after it’s reached. While the course focuses mostly on business negotiations, some of its teachings, especially in the strategy module, apply to everyday situations as well. The class also touches on some legal aspects of negotiation.

It helps that the instructor does a great job explaining his tactics in a way that’s easy to follow, and he gives examples throughout the course. One of the later modules has you engage in a mock negotiation with either a friend or fellow student so you can apply what you’ve learned. The course ends with a challenging final exam that you can retake until you feel comfortable with the material.

The course’s only significant drawback is that it doesn’t come with much written material for you to use as a reference later. The course encourages you to buy the professor’s book, but you’ll have to pay extra to get it because it’s not included when you purchase the class. The book also mostly consists of information the course teaches, so it doesn’t provide much additional value.

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3. Chris Voss Teaches the Art of Negotiation

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Why we like it

A decorated former FBI hostage negotiator teaches you techniques that work even in the most stressful situations.

Few situations are as stressful as negotiating with armed criminals while innocent lives are on the line. Those are the scenarios that this course’s instructor, Chris Voss, saw many times while working as an FBI hostage negotiator. While your negotiations hopefully won’t happen under such extreme circumstances, many of the same techniques and principles that Voss used in his job work in other situations as well, and he shows them to you in this course.

Throughout the course, Voss shows you several mock negotiations as examples to demonstrate his methods. Some of these mock negotiations resemble scenarios you might encounter in your everyday life, while others are more extreme. Voss also references his old FBI cases to provide examples of his teachings, and he even plays a recording of one of his hostage negotiations to show you how his strategies worked for him in the field.

Voss himself is one of the course’s biggest selling points. He’s able to distill everything he learned from his years of literal life-and-death negotiating into understandable lessons. It also helps that he has a genuine passion for teaching others negotiation so that they can improve their lives.

If the course has any serious downsides, it’s how Voss gives some of his examples. The stories he tells from his FBI career are great, but the mock negotiations aren’t as effective. For these sections, he speaks to an actress, Pam, who roleplays as the other party in the negotiation. While Pam plays her part well, these examples aren’t as realistic as they could have been if Voss had chosen another experienced negotiator as his counterpart, especially since Pam knows in advance which techniques Voss is going to use.

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4. Negotiation Skills

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Why we like it

If you’re looking for a quick, easy introduction to negotiation, this is your course. You’ll get an overview of the entire negotiation process with tips for what to do at each step.

If you’ve never tried it before, negotiation can seem intimidating. Perhaps you just don’t like confrontation, or maybe you’ve always thought that learning negotiation wouldn’t help you unless you were a high-ranking businessperson. This course proves that negotiation is an important skill that anyone can use to get a good deal and save themselves time or money.

The course gives you a solid overview of the entire negotiation process, starting with a discussion of under which circumstances you might want to negotiate and how to get past any fears you may have. It then guides you through every step, from how to prepare for the negotiation to how to close the final deal and when you might want to walk away. The instructor gives you plenty of tips and tricks for each step in the negotiation.

The instructor also demonstrates his strategies in role-playing segments throughout the course. In these segments, the instructor acts out a negotiation with a partner so you can see how his tactics might work in real life. The instructor also uses these sections to show you what behaviors to avoid during a negotiation.

While the course is a great option for newcomers to start learning about negotiation, it likely won’t offer much to those with more experience in the art. It’s possible that intermediate negotiators will pick up a couple of new tricks from this course, but other classes are more tailored for advanced learners.

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5. Negotiation Mastery

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Why we like it

This course offers a comprehensive look at negotiation and is great for both newcomers and experienced deal-makers who want to improve their skills. It’s a rigorous class that has you participate in simulations and learn from accomplished negotiation experts.

As you would expect from a Harvard Business School program, this online class provides deep, thorough instruction. You’ll learn how to approach many different negotiation scenarios, adapt when situations change, get the most value out of deals, and manage your emotions in stressful moments.

Throughout the course, you’ll complete 4 negotiation simulations with another student. These simulations will allow you to practice what you’ve learned in each module. You’ll get the chance to learn different aspects of negotiation from a wide variety of experts, including, among others, business professionals, military veterans, and local-level politicians.

The course also offers a somewhat personalized experience since, at the start, it helps you determine your negotiation style and set goals for your development. The ending Capstone Assignment has you think about the skills you picked up during the course and how you’ll use them to improve your negotiating style.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, this is an intensive course. It’s also expensive and time-consuming as it takes almost two months to finish and requires you to meet several deadlines throughout its duration. Additionally, you have to apply to take the course. If you want to take the class, consult the course page to find an upcoming session and submit your application before that session’s deadline.

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6. Introduction to Business Negotiations

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Why we like it

This course is great for anyone wanting to focus exclusively on learning negotiation strategy. You’ll learn how to execute a successful negotiation and handle the many types of problems that can occur.

Some negotiation courses give you instruction on strategy as well as the chance to try those strategies out during mock negotiations. This course focuses entirely on teaching you the theories behind successful negotiation so that you’re prepared either for real-life negotiation or more advanced classes with a heavier emphasis on simulations.

The best aspect of this course is that it teaches you what makes a negotiation successful and how to address issues that can occur during the process. These problems include conflicting objectives, cultural differences, and impasses, as well as ethical, professional, political, and social issues. Lastly, the class shows you the negotiation process and which strategies you can use to improve your chances of success.

However, this course doesn’t have you practice real negotiations. As we mentioned before, this course is the first part of a two-course series. The second course, Applied Business Negotiations, has you work in a team to carry out a complex negotiation. This class is a prerequisite of Applied Business Negotiations and teaches you the theories that you will use in that class. The second course has its own fee for a Verified Certificate, though you may get a discount on both classes if you buy the full program.

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7. Negotiation Fundamentals: How to Negotiate Effectively

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Why we like it

If you’re interested in how human psychology and cognition influence negotiation and you want to find out how to use them to your advantage, this is your course. You’ll also learn about common negotiation strategies and styles.

It never hurts to have a solid understanding of psychology and cognition when you’re heading into a negotiation, and this course focuses on teaching negotiation through that lens. You’ll find out how people make decisions as well as how to appeal to the other party’s emotions instead of relying just on logic to persuade them.

After a brief introduction, the course discusses human cognition and cognitive biases before walking you through the different types of pressure that can present themselves in a negotiation. You’ll also learn about the negotiation styles your opponents might use and what you should do to respond to them. Finally, you’ll find out which strategies you can use at the beginning, middle, and end of a negotiation. It helps that every section of the course ends with a downloadable exercise that you can use to apply what you just learned.

The course’s only notable drawback is that the presentation is a bit lacking. The instructor makes his points well enough, but his delivery isn’t the most engaging.

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8. Negotiation Secrets for Master Negotiators

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Why we like it

A Harvard-educated professional gives you some simple but effective tips to become a better negotiator. Plus, the course comes with a mock negotiation at the end so you can try out what you’ve learned.

This course proves that negotiation doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can get better results just by adopting a few simple rules. In this class, a Harvard-educated professional shows you 3 things you can do to improve negotiation outcomes. You’ll find out how to adopt a more productive negotiating philosophy, how to get the other party to work with you, and how to best prepare for a negotiation.

Once you’ve finished the lessons, you’ll have the chance to practice your new skills in a mock negotiation. All you have to do is find a partner to play the other party. Afterward, you can watch the debriefing video to find out if you were able to negotiate the best outcome.

The instructor is also a huge plus. She’s clearly enthusiastic and passionate about what she’s teaching, and she uses examples to make the principles easier to understand.

However, the instructor’s presentation skills are also the course’s biggest negative. While she gets her points across well, she also tends to stumble over her words sometimes, and she frequently looks down or off-camera. These slight presentation missteps don’t severely hamper the learning experience, but at least a couple of videos could’ve used another take.

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9. Negotiating Your Salary

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Why we like it

This course covers a particularly nerve-racking negotiation topic: salary. You’ll learn how to put your fears of salary negotiations to rest and successfully ask for a fair pay rate.

Negotiating salary is an essential skill for many professionals from new college graduates trying to improve their initial pay rate to workers with years or decades of experience seeking a raise. It’s also a negotiation topic that seems to set many people on edge. This course will help calm those nerves and teach you to be more prepared and more confident to request a higher salary.

The best aspect of this course is how comprehensively it covers its topic. You’ll find out what to do before, during, and after a salary negotiation. You’ll also learn how to handle unique situations in salary negotiations, like when you’re working outside of your home country, as well as how to leave your old job after the negotiation and start your new one. Thankfully, the instructor shows you an example of salary negotiation so you can see some of her teachings in practice.

The only serious negative regarding this course is that it only covers one type of negotiation. It gives great advice, and negotiating salary is a situation many professionals will find themselves in at some point. However, if you want more general instruction on negotiation, consider other courses.

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10. Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate a New Job Offer (Pro)

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Why we like it

It’s always exciting when you get a job offer, but what if you want to sweeten the deal for yourself? This course shows you how to land better pay and benefits to make that nice new job offer even better.

Job offer negotiations can seem like a risky proposition to many people. After all, the last thing you want to do is start off on the wrong foot with your new employer or, worse, have them revoke your offer entirely. However, this course shows you how you can successfully negotiate for better pay and benefits.

The course starts by teaching you how to determine the salary you deserve. You’ll then learn how to maximize your chances of getting an interview and sidestep any application questions about your salary expectations. Next, the course shows you the main event: how to negotiate a better salary and benefits.

Once you’ve finished the instructional part of the course, you can practice your new skills in the included roleplaying exercise. Finally, you can watch the concluding series of case study videos and interviews, which show you real-world examples of job candidates successfully using the course’s methods to negotiate better job offers.

If this course has any downsides, it’s that some salary negotiation scenarios aren’t covered, including how soon-to-be graduates should negotiate their first post-college job offer and how someone should pursue a raise or promotion in their present job. The instructor has other courses covering these topics, but they come with their own fees. This course covers its subject matter thoroughly, but it’s only discussing one specific salary negotiation scenario.

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11. Negotiation and Conflict Management – A Freelancer’s Guide

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Why we like it

Are you a freelance worker who struggles to negotiate reasonable contracts with your clients? This course shows you how to reach agreements you won’t regret and handle problems with your clients as they arise.

Freelance workers often have to seek new work if their clients don’t consistently give them projects. That’s why some freelancers may find themselves frequently negotiating with employers, and this course is meant to help them secure favorable working terms and handle any problems with their clients that may occur.

The instructor is a 10-year freelancer, so he knows the difficulties that this type of work can entail. He delivers his advice concisely and honestly as he wants to help others who work the way he does. At the end of the course, the instructor will ask you to complete a 4-part project to help you prepare your negotiation strategy, identify your criteria for accepting and working with clients, and preemptively resolve issues caused by problematic clients.

The only serious drawback with this course, aside from its niche appeal, is that the instructor doesn’t give you any resources you can use to practice what he teaches. He suggests that you find a local organization and try to get them to commission you or renegotiate a contract with a current client who’s giving you grief. Obviously, these options are either inconvenient or risky, so you might be better off just applying the course’s techniques when you’re negotiating with a promising client.

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FAQ

Now we’ve seen the best courses available, here is some further insight into why negotiation is a useful skill to have, how to use these skills when negotiating virtually, and the best ways to keep improving your skillset.

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