Easy to absorb. Gone without practice.
I'm Andriy Zhylenko, the founder of Train To Negotiate. I started as a software developer, co-founded PortaOne, a telecom software company, and worked my way up to CEO. For twenty-five years we have built billing and VoIP software for telecom operators in over 90 countries, without venture money. Over those years we trained hundreds of people to become support engineers, customer success managers, pre-sales and sales staff, project managers and business analysts.
Along the way I learned that what goes wrong in business usually goes wrong between people, not in the code or in the engineering knowledge.
What I saw in Andrey's training room.
Over the years I organized many negotiation trainings for my colleagues, the management and the sales team, run by Andrey Yatsenko himself on his own methodology.
Andrey is a negotiator, business trainer and consultant with more than 25 years in sales and negotiations. He leads negotiations in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the EU, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, on deals from $45,000 to $60 million. In the last 15 years more than 12,000 people have trained with him, from top managers and business owners to sales teams, at companies among the top 10 in FMCG, agribusiness, commodities, pharma and IT. He holds master's degrees in psychology and in medicine, wrote Negotiator 2.0, his program for training negotiators, and developed methods for reading a negotiator's non-verbal profile.
The heart of his method is sparring, not lectures. Two people get a case, and each knows something the other doesn't. They negotiate while a third person watches as the referee, then everybody rotates. From the observer's chair you see every mistake. Five minutes later you sit down at the table and make the same mistakes yourself, because now you are involved and your instincts take over.
I saw how well it worked. I also saw its limit: there is only so much a person can absorb in a few days of training. Back at work, with nobody to spar with, the skills faded a little more every month.
I have practiced aikido for about fifteen years, every week. Nobody on the mat trains once a year: skip the practice, and the skill goes. So I kept asking how people could keep training between the courses, whenever they have a moment. Train To Negotiate is my answer: Andrey's sparring, with an AI opponent that is always ready, a referee that keeps the rules, and a coach that debriefs you after every match.
2019
“It will never work.”
This is not my first try. In 2019 I made the first attempt: an online platform where people practiced negotiation with each other over video calls. When I pitched it, most people gave me the same answer:
No, it will never work. Serious negotiations happen face to face. Nobody will trust a video call, and nobody will want to take part.
Six months later, COVID arrived. The important meetings, the hard negotiations, the million-dollar deals: all of them moved to video calls.
Today you spar with an AI, so you can practice at any hour. Live video sparring with other people, the idea from 2019, is coming next.
More about me, PortaOne and the founders I mentor: zhylenko.info.
Free to start. The mat is waiting.
Free plan. No card, no obligations.