If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Today I had the privilege of working with some fantastic year 10 pupils from Mayfield School in Portsmouth as part of a pre-work experience conference organised by Portsmouth Eductation Business Partnership (EBP) .

I was part of a speed networking event where various local employers and entrepreneurs spent 10 minutes each with several year groups,being grilled about the world of work. These students were about to go out and spend two weeks with local businesses to give them a taste of what the world of work was really like.

To be honest I was a bit nervous of the whole thing as modern teenagers get portrayed as inattentive troublemakers. These amazing young people proved that this is a gross generalisation. They were great and asked some searching questions.

What I particularly noticed, was how confident many of them were and how that were able to meet and hold my gaze as we conversed. I am a passionate believer in the importance of ones ability to make and hold eye contact in order to facilitate assertive communication and establish mutual respect. Well many of these students could have put a lot of much older people to shame.
They weren’t aggressive, they just wanted to be taken seriously and respected. By connecting with each other through eye contact, we were quickly able to establish mutual respect and effective communication.

I’m confident that they will enjoy their placements and learn much, not only about work but also about themselves. So take a leaf out of their book and make sure that you make and hold comfortable eye contact.

In this post I’d like to address the most common failure of inexperienced negotiators - a lack of preparation.

To be more successful in negotiations you really do need to do your homework. When I say this, a groan goes around the class and a whole raft of excuses come flooding out such as “I don’t have time” or “I’m too busy” or “I work best when I’m spontaneous”.

These are convenient rationalisations to explain why we don’t do something we know we should do. The problem is that the perceived “pain” of preparing is greater and more immediate, than the future pain of failure.

Isn’t this crazy! Think about it for a moment. What is the real cost of a failed negotiation? Well it depends on the context but it may include some or all of the following;

• lost revenue
• ruined relationships
• increased costs
• loss of personal reputation
• loss of respect
• decrease in self esteem

So next time to star to rationalise and put off doing your homework - take a moment to consider the consequences of this decision. How much pain are you creating for yourself?

Good, now I hope you are feeling guilty and are ready to swear that you will never, ever, ever put off doing your homework ever again - right!

So to get you started here are the questions I ask myself when I’m in negotiation preparation mode.

1. What do I want from this negotiation , how much do I want it, and why do I want it? (What’s my prioritised shopping list?)
2. What do I think the other part’s shopping list is (NB: This is an assumption I’ll need to check)
3. What’s my opening position? What am I going to ask for?
4. What’s the worst deal I’d be prepared to accept? I.e. What’s my “walk away” point?
5. What concessions would I prepared to give in return for movement from the other side.
6. What alternatives to negotiation do I have and which is the best one?

Now do your homework, get out there and create some fantastic happy-happy agreements.

Drunk Powerpoint Presentation
Uploaded by Berserk_Gattsu

Hi again,
I just discovered the following site which, if you are a PowerPoint user, you should bookmark.
It is a mine of information! http://pptfaq.com/index.html

Yes it’s true PowerPoint was first released in 1987 and was originally designed for the Apple Mac. 20 years later it’s still going strong yet it still gets most of the blame for the millions of boring business presentations that occur around the world every year.

When I was a child I was taught that “a good workman never blames his tools” and I believe that old adage still holds true today when it comes to presentations. The real cause of boring presentations is laziness on the part of the presenter.

Garbage in, garbage out applies to PowerPoint presentations in the same way that it applies to other computer programmes. Isn’t it time we took responsibility, held out hands up and said, we need to design better presentations.

1. We need to think about why we are giving the presentation in the first place. What’s our purpose and what do we want the audience to be doing as a result.
2. We need to put ourselves firmly in our audiences shoes as we prepare our presentation and ensure that we spell out the benefits to them of applying the information in our presentation - we need to make it relevant AND we need to make that relevance clear and obvious early on.
3. We need to craft a coherent story that takes our audience from where they are at the start to where they need to be by the end of the presentation.
4. We need clear simple memorable messages that are not buried amongst a sea of irrelevant and incomprehensible detail.
5. We need to design visual aids that support our story and have much fewer words and more images, diagrams and videos to support our verbal script.

It may sound like hard work but it;s not that difficult and, the results are so much better. Invest a little time in developing your presentation and it’ll pay you back many times over.

So let’s raise a glass to PowerPoint and commit to learning how to use it in better, more intelligent ways.

Last night I went to a public talk after work to hear a very interesting speaker talk on the importance of sunlight on health and well being. The speaker new his stuff, had an interesting voice and a good message. The only problem was that he had some irritating mannerisms which detracted from his talk.

To be specific, he was a purposeless pacer! Throughout his talk he paced three steps forwards and three steps back and after a few minutes this started to get on my nerves. As a result I had to work extra hard to focus on the content which was good. His impact and authority would have been much higher had he just learned to tame this one little habit.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of us will develop some irritating mannerisms, particularly when we first start to speak in public. We don’t need to be perfect, however we need to do something about it when those little habits start to affect the audience’s ability to pay attention to our content.

The good news is that there is a simple and powerful solution. I call it “suck it in and pump it out!” because that’s the metaphor we need to develop.

First, think of those nervous, irritating movements as evidence that your energy is “leaking out” through the periphery and as a result diminishing the power of your delivery.

Now, when you notice yourself doing these “leaky behaviours” all you need to do is imagine you could suck up that energy from your hands and feet and pump it out in your voice, expression, gestures and eye contact in a way that will energise your content and enthrall your audience.

It really is as simple as that so what are you waiting for? Next time you start to leak remember to “suck it up and pump it out!”

Selling doesn’t need to be complicated, indeed the simpler you make it the more successful you’ll be. Often people ask me how to handle objections and how to close the sale. Now there are thousands of books out there with 10001 sales closing and objection handling techniques but my favourite is really simple.

Use the question “What has to happen…” and you’ll be amazed at the effect it can have.

In closing -

• “What has to happen for you to trial the product?”
• “What has to happen for you to place an order?”
• “What has to happen for you to recommend it to your clients?”

In objection handling.

• “You’re more expensive!” “Yes we are in terms of up front cost, and what would have to happen for you to be convinced that we could save you money in the long term?”
• “You don’t have experience in our sector” “Yes that’s true and what would need to happen for you to be convinced that we could deliver for you despite that one shortcoming?”

Warning: Don’t confuse this question with its more familiar but much less effective cousin “What do I have to do to….”

The question is deliberately worded to uncover what needs to happen for the client to be convinced or to take action. This could be something you need to do such as present more information, but it could also be an action that the client needs to take such as talk to their boss or simply place the order.

I shared this with an experienced salesman once who was having a problem with a client whom he saw on a regular basis, had great rapport with but who never placed an order. When he finally got round to asking the question he was stunned by the customers response!

“Well you better fill out an order. I’ve been waiting for you to ask for it for the last three months!”

Today I was reading an article about human rights abuses and it reminded me that these things also apply much closer to home too. When a person behaves assertively they are affirming that they have rights and so do those they are dealing with.

Contrast this with the two alternative behavioural styles. When people behave aggressively they are giving themselves rights but denying those rights to others. When somebody behaves non-assertively, they are giving rights to others that they don’t give to themselves.

Hold on! What sort of rights are we actually entitled to?
In their excellent book Assertiveness at Work, Ken and Kate Back propose the following list. Take a moment now to consider each in turn and to give yourself a score between 1 and 10 as to how comfortable you are with each right:

• The right to hold your own opinions
• The right to a fair hearing for those opinions
• The right to need and want things that may differ from other peoples needs and wants
• The right to ask (not demand) that others respond to your needs and wants
• The right to refuse a request without feeling guilt or selfish
• The right to have feelings and to express them assertively if you want to
• The right to be wrong sometimes
• The right to have others respect your rights.

Now imagine that you chose to fully embrace these rights and also to recognise that everyone else has the same rights too. How would you act? How strong and confident would you feel?

So next time to read about human rights abuses in the news, ask yourself how fair you are being with yourself and those around you. Are you abusing your own rights? Are you short changing yourself by giving rights to others that you don’t give to yourself?

It happens to the best of us. We know what we mean to say but somehow the words that come out of our mouth aren’t what we really wanted to say. Here’s one of mine which I thought might raise a smile.

I was giving a workshop on renewal rituals, tips and tricks for coping with stress and pressure. one section was about getting a good nights sleep and I suggested that delegates should keep a pad an pen handy, and, just before they went to sleep, should jot down all the issues that were worrying them or that they needed to remember. I called this a brain dump before bed.

So far so good, but in my summary I said, before I could stop myself. “so remember that it’s a great idea to do a dump before going to bed.”

The group exploded with laughter and I went a little red. Oh well, it they certainly remembered that tip when it came to the final review and thankfully nobody was offended.

Quote - “If you can laugh at yourself, you well never be short of something to smile about.”

Rapport is the master skill of all communicators, and when you apply it to any type of negotiation the results can be magical.

I define rapport as the art of cooperative communication, the mutual feeling of trust, respect and comfort that underpins all successful negotiations.

As an NLP practitioner and experienced negotiator, I know first hand how powerful some simple rapport building techniques can be so here are my top three tips for creating rapport fast!

1. Mirror/match a few non-verbal characteristics of the other person such as sitting or standing posture, head tilt, facial expression or hand gestures. This will do two things - firstly it will put them at their ease without them knowing why.
   - secondly it will allow you to have better empathy and so a deeper understanding of
   their position.
2. Match their vocal delivery, particulalry their speed of delivery, volume and vocal energy levels.
3. Listen to their choice of words and reflect back the key phrases using their workds rather than your own.

These simple techniques can be easily learned and will accelerate the development of rapport dramatically. Once you have the rapport you can then use it to lead the other person to the state you need them to be in to get the best deal. Have a go and see for yourself.