Feedback Form
Home Features Mastermind Videos About Advertise Blog Network Contact
   

Have A Suggestion?
Toronto Salsa Classes / Toronto Salsa Lessons Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
Have A Suggestion?

Featured Ebook


ebook Famous Entrepreneurs - Modern Empire Builders


Featured Ebook

More Evan Carmichael
Have A Suggestion?

Sales Lessons From Starbucks And Dell

Learn To Negotiate Successfully In Business



Learn To Negotiate Successfully In Business
   

We all negotiate so let's learn how to do it ethically, sensitively and to the best of our ability.

We’ll start with a story:
I remember when a company I worked for introduced an employee evaluation cum review scheme one year. You were given a pretty standard form and answered the questions as they applied to your individual role in the company and rated yourself on a score of 1 to 5 on each.

You then arranged a meeting with your immediate boss who would go through the completed form and discuss each point with you and award his or her own rating to each one.

The sting in the tail was at the end of the form (which ran to several pages) where you stated the salary you felt you deserved. In my case all was going swimmingly with the CEO, who had rated me higher than I had done myself on several points, until we reached this part. But boy, had I really gone for the moon on that salary! His jaw literally did open, just slightly, and he said he’d need to talk to his co-director and come back to me.

A week later I met again with the CEO and the Finance Director and we came to a very amicable agreement. It was actually precisely the conclusion I was after but I’d never have achieved it if I’d gone in at that figure in the first place.

The CEO then told me that, no matter how much of a good job he thought I was doing in future, he’d never ever tell me again to my face…!

Background to the story:
In the preceding story the stratagem of getting the employees to write their desired salaries on the form was based on the belief that the average person will only go for a maximum of 10% more than they are currently earning.

As the company had had a good year, what the directors had in mind to offer me was roughly a 12½% raise, so they were quietly confident that I would gratefully accept it and think them generous.

What they’d failed to take into account was that all three of us (the MD, the FD and I) knew that I was underpaid in relation to my value to the company and my unique position at that time within it. So where we differed was in how much money we believed was required to put that anomaly right. In addition, as I said earlier, having worked with these people for two years by then, I knew that I’d have to aim for more than I could reasonably expect to get in order to allow them to ‘talk me down’ and let both sides save face.

So what I went for was a 33% raise and what we settled on, ultimately happily on both sides, was 20% and additional company benefits.

6 rules of negotiations:
The story illustrates, to my mind, the importance of six crucial rules that govern successful business negotiations:

1) Do your homework in advance, know and be able to justify your value.

2) Know as much about both sides of the situation and the mentality of the people you are dealing with as possible.

3) Know what you want to achieve, what is reasonable to achieve, and be prepared to stick to your guns.

4) Ensure that all parties are happy with the outcome – nobody should feel that he or she has lost - I won’t pretend that my knees weren’t knocking when I went into that meeting with the two guys, or that it hadn’t gone through my mind several times in the intervening week "What do I do if they tell me to take a hike?" But as it happens, I gained a lot of respect from both directors and was subsequently treated somewhat differently, being co-opted onto think tanks, committees and new business presentations that I’d never been part of before. So there’s a fifth rule:

5) When you negotiate successfully it usually results in enhanced respect for you, and the value of the service you provide to your employer or client. What if the directors had dug their heels in and declined to improve on the original offer? I would have had no option but to have thanked them and resign. To do otherwise would have resulted in me losing face and respect, and my position in the company would have been untenable.

Interestingly, some years later, and in greatly altered circumstances, I needed to negotiate a rate of pay with that same CEO. This time I outlined my case, my reasons and why I believed the rate was fair, and went for exactly what I wanted – and got it with no argument. By then there was no need for posturing on either side so we completely did away with it.

But this brings me to the sixth issue with regard to negotiation:

6) If you can’t get what you believe to be a fair deal – be prepared to walk away – if you’re not, the other party will sense it and you will lose.

I wish you success in your negotiations.

This article is a condensed extract from the module on The Art of Negotiation, part of our Comfort Zone Gold course from http://www.sellingforbusiness.com


Learn To Negotiate Successfully In Business - To learn more about this author, visit Linda Mattacks's Website.

Like this article? Share it with your friends
[Get Copyright Permissions] E-Mail | Print | More  


Related Articles Related Articles
Not Getting Enough Profitable Business?
  As a Sales and Marketing Coach it’s my job be able to recognise, treat and cure sales and marketing pains. So let’s split out: Not Getting a) Enough Business and b) Profitable Business and help you with a couple of ...
Negotiating the Terms of Your Franchise Agreement
  It is of course up to the franchisor to decide whether one not its franchisees can negotiate the terms of a franchise agreement. Unsurprisingly, the majority of large, established franchisors will not allow franchis...
Dont NOgotiate Negotiate Master the science of good negotiating
  Closing a sale doesn’t always happen as easy as we hope. It’s great when it does, but there are times when the prospect wants to negotiate. Sometimes, they need to negotiate because they have a true requirement that...
Powerful Negotiation Tips From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  Each day we face some opportunity for negotiation. Let’s face it, negotiation is a part of our every day life and dare I say that almost everything is negotiable? So being able to acquire powerful negotiation skil...
People Still Love to Negotiate
  Learn to negotiate like a pro

Related Forum Posts Related Forum Posts
Guerrilla Financing - How to Finance Any Small Business Guerrilla Financing - How to Finance Any Small Business
My entry My entry
NEW "Hot Business Topic" Contest! NEW "Hot Business Topic" Contest!
Lisa Shepherd Story Lisa Shepherd Story
Re: Congrats Shri! Re: Congrats Shri!
Exclusive: Interview with Results Exclusive: Interview with Results
Re: Teaching kids financial literacy Re: Teaching kids financial literacy
Book Sales Book Sales

 
About the Author


Linda Mattacks
(Visit Linda's Website)
"Linda Mattacks is one of those rare professionals who combine deep strategy-awareness with a thoroughly practical approach to business marketing. What's more, she is as much a hard-nosed and sales-driven results seeker as she is an intuitive people person who understands what makes everyone tick. She has built a wealth of experience in sales training, business research, marketing campaign planning and project management. Linda has helped organisations of all types and sizes in the UK and Europe to learn more about their customers and markets, and turn that knowledge into revenue. Her mature and human manner has won her both business partners' and colleagues' complete trust, which has opened many new opportunities for all involved.” - Jaakko Alanko - MD McCann-Erickson, Business Division, London, England ... Linda Mattacks M IDM (the Institute of Direct Marketing) is a trainer and mentor. She has developed Selling For Business, a course that combines the sales, research and contact marketing skills that enable individual entrepreneurs and small businesses to compete successfully with large organisations. Please visit www.sel lingforbusiness.com for more details
Have A Suggestion?

View Author's Blog
Become An Author

View Author's Video
Become An Author

Free Downloads


Linda Mattacks's

Complete
List Of
Sales
Articles

First Name
Last Name
Email
 
If you enjoyed this article, get Linda Mattacks's Complete List of Sales Articles For FREE!

More Linda Mattacks
10 Tips On How To Create a Positive Image In Person
Find out what your customers REALLY want
Do Your Customers Pay On Time 5 Check Points For Upfront Ease Of Payment
Not Getting Enough Profitable Business
Grow your business
43 of business is initiated by a telephone call
Prospecting For Business
Telemarketing and you Disastrous failure or dramatic success
6 steps to meet the challenge of objections
Know How Your Market Buys Or Forever Negotiate On Price
Become An Author