Executive Blog

Poor Negotiation Skills: Lose Your Shirt in 7 Days

I’ve seen intelligent folks negotiated out of a great bargain, denied of a critical bank loan, flunk at an IPO road show and even kicked out of their houses by their spouses.
Just for one reason.

They simply can’t meet halfway. The negotiation starts with both parties neither yielding nor accomodating. Each one is simply preoccuppied with getting the most out of the negotiation encounter.

Poor negotiation skills lead to misunderstanding, then suspicion, then ultimately withdrawal. It’s the fastest way to lose not just your shirt - but your associates and friends.
I’ve discovered three top negotiation skills that can make your next negotiation encounter a more satisfying one.

1. Never open with your position. Ask the other side, “So what would your offer be?” This way you keep your needs private and could bargain up or down based on what your negotiation sparring partners disclose.

2. Always come to the table with a focused outcome. If you know exactly what you want, you’ll know how to drive the negotiation within those parameters. Unfortunately, many folks come to the table not even having an inkling as to what they desire. So they get frustrated each time an off-the-hat suggestion gets rebuffed.

3. Learn to elicit critieria and to match that criteria. In NLP, if you can find the other side’s heirarchy of values by asking “What’s important to you about xxx”” at least thrice, you can find the underlying reasons for their proposals. Discover this, then you can easily and naturally tailor fit your suggestions to what they truly want.

Superb negotiation skills are built on this foundation. Develop them and you’ll happily discover more fulfilling outcomes.

More of Joseph Plazo's killer articles: Art of Unstoppable Persuasion, Sneaky Negotiation Techniques, and finding Jobs in the Philippines
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joey_Plazo

posted by Michael Anders @ Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments links to this post   

Changing Direction

After operating Broadgate for what has almost been a year, I have faced many different challenges yet encountered many new opportunities. Reflecting over the past year, I see that Broadgate is not the company that I orginally envisioned or planned. In fact though, it is much better.

Orginally, the plan was to serve smaller start-up businesses with revenues and assets well below a million dollars. However, smaller deals were harder to source and the market competition for them was much more than my company was ready to handle. Instead, I took a counter-intuitive approach and went after larger companies in the middle-market sector. With this approach, we have actually had more success because the revenue upside from these larger clients is much greater.

Right now, our goals are to continue to build our marketing reach within the middle-market sector. We target companies in oil & gas, manufacturing, technology, and finance. These 4 niches have presented the most opportunities for us.

posted by Michael Anders @ Thursday, July 12, 2007 0 comments links to this post