« Older Entries

Negotiating – Smart V Stupid

Experience has shown that some of the typical approaches in negotiation are very smart… or just the opposite. Here are ten of the most common, starting with the smart ones.

Start Positively with Compliments

Smart negotiators realise that the atmosphere they create will impact in the other’s perception and behaviour. Make it clear that your intention is to find the best deal for both of you. Rather than positioning each other as competitors, see each other as partners working together to solve your mutual problem. Just like a mountaineer needs a partner to reach the highest peak, you need each other to achieve the best mutually beneficial agreement.

If you can include an appropriate compliment, it will not only fast-track your rapport-building, it will also introduce positive labelling. It has also been shown that by positively labelling someone, you can influence them to act more that way. So, if, for example, you were to compliment them on being so understanding, it might just cause them to try to be more understanding!

Make Them Aware of Your Preparation

Your preparation is often the most important work you do in a negotiation. Thorough preparation gives you the foundation to make your offer with confidence and the leverage to unsettle the other side.

If you know something that they don’t know you know, use it early. Some negotiators will hold back this information, saving it as ‘ammunition’ to use if the other party becomes difficult. You will get better results if you reveal this information early – before offers are put on the table. Doing this surprises the other side, causing them to doubt the quality of their preparation. If I can compromise your confidence in your preparation, I create doubt about the validity of your offer which was based on that preparation.

Ask Their Opinion Before Making Your Offer

Most negotiators can only ascertain the other side’s reaction to their offer after they have put it on the table. Once an offer is made, it cannot be retracted. Smart negotiators do all they can to test the other’s opinion before any offer is tabled. They create a conversation where neither side makes any commitments, they just share ideas and reactions to better understand each other’s interests and priorities. They might use a line like, “I’m not looking at any commitments yet, but how would you feel if we put this with this in a package that includes… “

Once either side puts an offer on the table bargaining starts – and information sharing stops. So, you need to get as much information as possible before you start bargaining.

Refer to the Authority and Influence of Others

It’s unrealistic to expect anyone in a negotiation to accept the other party’s figures, so you need to find an authoritative source you can both agree on.

If I try to change your thinking in a negotiation by confronting your ideas, it is likely you will just become more entrenched in your ideas as you argue against me. It has been shown that I can influence your thinking by pointing to the actions of others whom you see as similar to you. Identifying any such reference points is part of a smart negotiator’s preparation.

Tie-Together a Package with the Maximum Perceived Value

It is virtually impossible to negotiate a win-win outcome over a single issue. Use your preparation and your non-committal discussions with them at the opening of the negotiation to create an integrated package with the maximum perceived value; remembering that something that has high perceived value to them might actually cost you very little.

Conversely, there are many stupid negotiation behaviours.

Start Aggressively with Criticism

Some negotiators start out with the thought, “I’m going to show them what a tough negotiator I am.” Research has proven that when I perceive you as being competitive, I become more competitive, I am less likely to share information with you and I become less flexible with my offer(s). Not a smart way to start!

Table Your Offer Early

Moving too quickly into bargaining will limit the chances of finding the maximum possible value for a deal.

Undermine Their Offer and/or Authority

It’s okay to question their offer, but putting it or them down will only result in a negative response.

Play Your Cards Close to Your Chest

This is negotiation – not poker! Failure to share information (that could have in no way compromised either position) is one of the main reasons for poor agreements.

Irritate Them – To Get Them to Do or Say Something They’ll Regret

Only works with very inexperienced negotiators.

Demand Answers After You’ve Backed Them into a Corner

Okay, so you’ve out-negotiated them with you clever ‘traps’. Now you have someone who resents you and you have to work with them to make this deal generate value.

When negotiating, you have choices… choose the smart ones!

Tags:

Thought of the Day – Family Conflict (Part I): How the Past Affects The Present

Passover was a dreaded holiday for me as a teenager growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was a time when my uncle, who thought of himself as a “lay Rabbi,” rose at the head of the table and straightened himself out as if he was the Chief Rabbi in the grandest synagogue in Europe. He ceremoniously opened the Haggadah, the text recited at the Seder on the first two nights of the Jewish Passover.

As he began reciting in Hebrew the narrative of the Jewish exodus from Egypt, my aunt looked adoringly at him. At the other end of the table, my mother rolled her eyes, my father grumbled curses under his breath, and I pretended the conflict and anger I saw didn’t exist. In this week’s three-part series, I’ll share some of my thoughts on the nature of family conflicts occurring at holiday gatherings.

Family Conflict and Reduced Inhibition and Expectations

Family gatherings during holidays are supposed to be happy events where we shove personal issues to the side, forgive past wrongs, and the “good” of the family is most important. The expectation is what happened in the past is irrelevant now, and the joy of the moment; Passover, Easter, or other holidays will sooth over unskillful behaviors as warm milk does to an upset stomach. Neither anecdotes are always successful.

Our Present is Based on Our Past

We don’t live in a vacuum where our lives were immaculately conceived. You don’t need to believe in Freudian psychology to understand what a person does in the present carries with them their past.

I’m sure my uncle’s love of the family during the Passover Seder was genuine. For a brief time, he was able to reinterpret or ignore how his past behaviors hurt the family. Unfortunately, those on the receiving end couldn’t forget. Regardless of how genuine his love, my parents couldn’t go beyond his past.

Upcoming Holidays

We would like to think the joy of a holiday or it’s greater meaning will overshadow “petty” disagreements. In the 1960′s many sociologists wrote about the role of rising expectations in social turmoil. They believed inequities and injustices weren’t as important in creating conflicts as was the belief things could be changed.

It may be prudent as you approach the new holiday season to adjust your expectations of what’s possible during your family gathering. You may not have a “want to-be” Rabbi in your family, but don’t expect your cousin’s irksome behaviors that irritated you forever to vanish because you wish they will.

In the next part of this three-part series, I’ll talk about why family truths are always relative. In the final part, I’ll suggest some attitudinal adjustments that worked in my counseling and coaching of families dealing with crises.

Tags:

Internet Marketing – The Importance of Presentation

One of the most important aspects of internet marketing has to be presentation. Your website must at all times look professional. As must all your correspondence with your clients. This is the image and impression you must seek to convey to all who visit your site and join your list.

It must be appropriate for your target market. If it is aimed at teenage girls, think pink, If it is aimed at the black magic market, Black, strangely enough. If your market is self improvement consider something calming like blue.

Colours and graphics are a major part of any website and go a long way to determining if someone will stay on the site or just click away. They should not be too bright or garish to the point where they hurt your eyes. Use animated gif files sparingly they can be a distraction. If you want to use them consider putting them on a page after your squeeze page, once you have acquired the prospects email address.

Text needs to be clear and easily read and understood. Consider which is the smallest text size you should use for ease of reading. Don’t change styles and fonts at every opportunity. Your text colour should be coordinated with the background colour to ensure good readability by the viewer. Remember there are numerous people out there that do not have 20/20 vision and you don’t want them struggling to read your words through lots of colours. And there are of course many people out there who suffer from colour blindness. This does not necessarily mean that they cannot see colours but that they have difficulty differentiating between similar colour tones and hues.

Your text needs to also be well laid out. Crammed together text screams the word “cheap” and should be avoided at all costs. You need to put plenty of white space in between lines. Strangely enough space sells! When anything written is not spaced correctly and sits there like a lump of letters on the page it looks sometimes as almost unassailable to the reader and they are very likely to click away and onto someone else’s web page. Try and cater for all the types and ages of readership that might be interested in your site from the young to the senior citizens, who, are becoming more internet wise as time goes by.

Finally, use pictures and graphics to illustrate points that you are trying to convey in the text. They must be appropriate to the text and improve on peoples understanding of what you are trying to relate on your web page. Ensure that the text and picture are positioned in such a way as not to cause confusion between one image and another. There is a saying that “a picture can paint a thousand words.” With today’s photo editing software you can probably get them to paint double that.

Tags: