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You Want To Have A Lot Of Some And Less Of Other

Are you familiar with the “shell game”? You know, it’s the one that they show in the movies all the time where the street hustler sets up a table with three shells of some sort on it. He proceeds to put a pea under one of the shells, shuffles them, and then asks passers by to bet on which shell has the pea under it. Guess what – nobody can ever guess the correct shell. In sales negotiations we’ve got the same game that we play, but we call it the 80/20 rule.

The 80 Part

So it turns out that in your next sales negotiation, you are in control. You might not be able to control what the outcome of the negotiation is, but you sure can control how you get there.

The reality of life is that most of a negotiation is taken up with “other stuff”. There are the things that we talk about that really are not the key points that the deal revolves around – from your point of view.

As a smart part of the negotiations, you can use this to your own best advantage. It all comes down to making a decision before the negotiations start as to what you want to spend your time talking about.

Prior to starting a negotiation, you need to decide what topics you want to cover. Once you have this list, you need to make sure that during the discussion that these topics are the main focus of the negation. By being aware of what you want to talk about and driving the discussions to center on those topics, you’ll ensure that at the very least, those topics are covered.

The 20 Part

The flip side to knowing what you want to talk about is knowing what you don’t want to talk about. In every negotiation, there are a set of topics that you want to avoid spending much time on if it is at all possible.

Once again, it is vital that before the negotiations start that you spend the time needed to determine just exactly what specific issues you would prefer to stay away from during the negotiations. These can be issues that will decrease the value of what you are selling or perhaps issues that could reveal the true value of what you are trying to purchase.

Since every negotiation has a fixed amount of time in which it can be conducted, by steering the conversation towards the 80% of the issues that you want to spend time on, you’ll naturally limit the amount of time that is available to cover those topics that you would prefer to shy away from.

Remember, you are in control of the course that a negotiation takes. The topics that get covered during the negotiation are up to you to control. You have the ability to make sure that what’s important to you is front and center. Likewise, any topics that you don’t want to spend very much time on can be sent to the back.

What All Of This Means For You

What gets discussed during a sales negation is under your control. What this means is that you have the power to determine what topics get covered.

Assuming that everyone has limited time, you can choose to steer the conversations towards those topics that you want to cover. Likewise, you can keep the conversations away from those topics that you would prefer to not talk about.

Once the negotiations have run out of time, what was discussed will be what was discussed. If you’ve done your job correctly, the time was spent on what you wanted to talk about and not on what you wanted to avoid. See, the old shell game is still alive and doing well in the world of sales negotiations!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Negotiator Newsletter are now available. Learn how to close more deals — faster. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Question For You: What is the best way to restrict the amount of time that is available to conduct a negotiation?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Negotiator Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

What’s your most valuable resource? You might have said money, but I’m willing to bet that it’s really something else – time. You can always earn more money, but once you spend time on some task, it’s gone, gone, gone. That’s why when you are negotiating with someone it is critical that you quickly get an answer to the most important question: how much authority do they really have?

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Say Hello To A Negotiator's Biggest Problem

When you are getting ready for your next negotiation, you might want to spend some time thinking about the most important item that you need to make sure that is in order. I’m not talking about your notes, the location of the negotiations, or even the strategy that you’ve mapped out for the negotiations. What I’m talking about it the time of day at which the negotiations will be held. It turns out that this may be the single most important factor in determining how the negotiations turn out…

The Power Of When

Among all of the other things that you need to worry about, the question of what time of day the negotiations will be occurring at can easily get swept under the rug. One of the ways that this can happen is if you have to travel to the negotiations.

When we get on a plane and fly to another destination, we can easily travel through one or more time zones. What this means is that although the clock on the wall says that it’s one time, our bodies are telling us that it is a completely different time. Guess what – in these types of conflicts, our body always wins!

As humans, our bodies are set up to operate on a daily schedule. If we do something to change that schedule, it can throw our body off track and that will impair our thinking ability.

Studies have shown that we perform best during normal working hours: roughly 8am to 7pm. We perform at our worst during the times that we should all be sleeping, 2am to 6am.

What You Can Do To Make “When” Work For You

Unless you control the world (and who does?), you often don’t control when and where your next negotiating session will occur. This presents a dilemma because if you’re not careful, the negotiating environment will be set up so that you won’t be performing at your peak.

In order to counter the challenge of trying to negotiate in a time shifted environment, you need to take several steps to improve your odds of being successful. The first of these is to simply attempt to ensure that the negotiations will occur in your time zone.

This can be done by limiting the number of locations that you are willing to travel to and ensuring that they all operate on the same time that you do. If this is not possible, then it is now an option to do your negotiating over the phone, or even better via video conferencing. These are not ideal solutions; however, they will allow you to avoid the challenges of upsetting your body clock.

Finally, if you do have to travel to a location that is outside of your normal time zone then you need to be aware that you’re going to be doing this before the negotiations start. The people who research such things believe that you need a day per shifted time zone in order to fully adjust your body to the local time. Rarely do we get the luxury of so much time; however, ensuring that you have a least a day to adjust will ensure that you are in the best form possible when you start your next negotiating session.

What All Of This Means For You

No matter how good of a negotiator you are, you are still human. This means that your body has a natural rhythm to it. You need to account for this rhythm when you are planning your next negotiation.

Realizing that you have good times and bad times to negotiate are key to picking the best time to start a negotiation. You need to keep in mind that if you have had to travel to a different time zone in order to negotiate, you’re going to have to give yourself time to adjust to the local time.

History is littered with examples of negotiators who disregarded their own physical limits when agreeing to start a negotiation. Don’t allow your name to be added to this list – know when your best time to negotiate is.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Negotiator Newsletter are now available. Learn how to close more deals — faster. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Question For You: What should you do if a negotiation stretches out past your prime negotiating time?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Are you familiar with the “shell game”? You know, it’s the one that they show in the movies all the time where the street hustler sets up a table with three shells of some sort on it. He proceeds to put a pea under one of the shells, shuffles them, and then asks passers by to bet on which shell has the pea under it. Guess what – nobody can ever guess the correct shell. In sales negotiations we’ve got the same game that we play, but we call it the 80/20 rule.

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Negotiators Need To Get The Other Side To See Things Their Way

Have you ever changed something about your appearance that made you look dramatically different? How did that go over with your family, friends, and coworkers? I’m willing to bet that right off the bat there was some shock when they first encountered your new look. However, over time that faded and things got back to normal. What happened is that they eventually came around to seeing you the way that you see yourself. When you are negotiating a deal, this same concept can be a powerful factor in helping you to wrap up a negotiation…

The Concept Of Acceptance Time

New ideas take time to be accepted. This is true in real life as well as in negotiations. If you are the one bringing a new idea to a negotiation, such as a price increase, or a shorter time in which you need to receive a product, then you need to expect the other side of the table to push back on the idea when you present it.

Acceptance time is the time that it takes for one party in a negotiation to accept a new idea. This acceptance does not come quickly. Instead, people need time in order to become used to a new set of circumstances.

The reason that acceptance time is such an important part of every negotiation is because we all enter into a negotiation with a mental list of things that we want to get out of the negotiation. When the other side presents us with a demand that does not sit well with our list of desired outcomes, we struggle to reconcile what we want with what is being offered to us.

Our perception of reality is initially shaped by ourselves. As the other side of the table reshapes this perception, we need to adjust and this takes time. This is especially true if the new ideas that the other side is presenting are unpleasant to us.

As negotiators we need to realize that new ideas will become old ideas and ideas that were considered to be completely unacceptable when they were initially presented can become possible once they’ve been on the table long enough. Allowing the concept of acceptance time to work its magic can allow the other side of the table to come around to our way of seeing the world and will make it possible to reach a deal with them.

What All Of This Means For You

Ultimately a negotiation is all about presenting the other side of the table with new ideas. You should expect these new ideas to encounter a lot of resistance when they are first presented.

However, the powerful concept of acceptance time has the ability to transform the negotiation. What was once completely unacceptable when you first presented it, can become understandable and then acceptable if you allow enough time to pass.

Skilled negotiators realize that this is a natural process that can be a part of every negotiation. Using this knowledge they both present new ideas early on in the process and then allow enough time to pass so that the other side can become comfortable with the new ideas. Use the power of acceptance time to allow a deal to be reached no matter how new your proposals are.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Negotiator Newsletter are now available. Learn how to close more deals — faster. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Question For You: At what time in a negotiation do you think that you should present your new proposals that you know will cause pushback?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you are getting ready for your next negotiation, you might want to spend some time thinking about the most important item that you need to make sure that is in order. I’m not talking about your notes, the location of the negotiations, or even the strategy that you’ve mapped out for the negotiations. What I’m talking about it the time of day at which the negotiations will be held. It turns out that this may be the single most important factor in determining how the negotiations turn out…

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Long Negotiating Sessions Can Yield Fantastic Results (Sometimes)

The goal of every sales negotiation is to reach a deal that is agreeable to both sides. The question is just how much time should you take in order to get there? The classic question that all sales negotiators are always trying to answer is if it is better to negotiate in short sessions with long breaks or in long sessions with short breaks?

The Power Of Long Negotiating Sessions

Not all sales negotiating sessions are created equal. If you had to, you could probably divide them up into two main buckets: those that get done quickly, and those that take much longer.

Life is full of many distractions. When we are working on a deal that has a lot of different moving parts, we tend to work on it for a bit, get distracted and do other things, and then return, try to remember where things were, and then start to work on it again.

Although this technique does work, and in fact it is a necessary way of handling many of the longer negotiating tasks that seem to come our way, it is not the right solution for the really big negotiations.

These are the deals where there has been a lot of posturing done by both sides prior to the start of negotiations. The working-on-a-deal-for-a-little-bit-every-so-often approach won’t work in this case. Instead, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and sit down with the other side of the table and see if it’s going to be possible to hash out a deal – no matter how long it takes.

The magic of long negotiating sessions is that the parties that are participating in it change as the session wears on. The gruff, impersonal exteriors that everyone displays to each other at the start of the session gradually start to crumble as the hours drag on. The human side of every participant starts to come out and it’s this side of the participants that will allow a deal to be reached.

Ultimately sales negotiations allow people to reach deals. When you put these people together for a long, focused period of time what happens is that more often than not they find a way to work together in order to make a deal happen.

The Dangers Of Long Negotiating Sessions

Although a long negotiating session can be a very powerful tool in getting two sides of deal to come together, it is not without it’s own set of risks. There is never any guarantee that the two sides are going to be able to reach a deal and a long negotiating session may just drive this point home!

Additionally, if both sides truly dislike each other before the negotiations start, then forcing them to be together for an extended period of time isn’t going to improve their opinion of each other. In fact, it’s probably going to confirm that they really don’t have a lot in common.

In order to prevent a long negotiating session from either yielding nothing or, even worse, blowing up on you, there are three conditions that must be met prior to starting one of these sessions:

1. Both Sides Want A Deal: if even before a negotiating session starts, both sides are inclined to strike a deal, then a long negotiating session might be just what you need. Sitting negotiators down around a table and removing the outside influences that can distract people from reaching a deal can work wonders.
2. No New Information: when a point in time has been reached where there is no new information to be discovered about what is to be negotiated, then a long negotiating session may be in order. When both sides have started to repeat themselves when talking about the potential deal, this is the time to finally sit down and see if a deal can be reached.
3. Respect Exists: ultimately this is the most important condition that must be in place before serious negotiations can start. Both sides must respect each other and feel that the other side truly wants to reach a deal. If this condition is in place, then you are already half-way towards reaching a deal even before the negotiations start.

What All Of This Means For You

There is an almost magical quality to very long sales negotiating sessions. Under the right circumstances, two parties can enter the negotiations and then emerge at the other side with an agreement that nobody thought would be possible.

In order for this to happen there are several conditions that must be met before the negotiations start. These include a predisposition on both sides to reach an agreement, the lack of new information regarding the deal to be struck, and respect on both sides for each other.

There are no guarantees that a deal will be reached as a result of any sales negotiation. However, sales negotiators who ensure that the correct preconditions are met can use the very long negotiation format to improve their odds of successfully reaching a deal with the other side.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What are the key signs that a very long negotiation is not going to result in a successful deal and should be stopped?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

All too often when we see negotiators in the movies, they are portrayed as slick, fast talking folks who always seem to effortlessly get their way. The first thing that we need to realize that this is the movies and so it in no way represents real life. The second thing that we need to realize is that when we see negotiators portrayed this way, we’re being taught the wrong lesson. For you see, in negotiations, speed kills…

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Time Plays A Critical Role In Every Sales Negotiation

Professional sales negotiators know that time plays a role in every sales negotiation. In this case we’re not talking about how much time a given negotiation takes, but rather when you start a negotiation and just exactly what that is going to lead to…

Why Time Matters

So what’s the big deal about time? As sales negotiators we’ve all been taught that how long we spend negotiating with the other side of the table is a key strategic issue – strange things can start to happen the longer you go on talking. However, one thing that is never discussed is just how important WHEN you start to negotiate is.

What this really gets down to is the simple fact that there is both a right time and a wrong time to start a negotiation. Good sales negotiators are always aware of this and realize that effectively time has a way of communicating all of its own that you need to know how to understand and speak.

A good example of the power of time is when you realize that there are certain calendar dates such as the arrival of the Christmas holidays, the end of the calendar year, and even the day that we have to pay taxes (April 15 in the United States). The proximity of the negotiations to one of these dates can help a deal to be reached much quicker.

Taking the idea of time to the next level, you need to realize that there will be times when a seller has a large inventory of products, there are times when a vendor is either very busy or very slow, there are also times when new products are being prepared to be introduced and so vendors may be eager to deal on their existing inventory.

How You Can Make Time Work For You

Professional sales negotiators realize that time is an important part of any sales negotiation and they work it into their strategy for reaching a successful deal. One part of this planning is to never let the other side dictate what time a negotiation starts. Consider when they want to start and then suggest a time that works better for you.

Once a negotiation has started, you must realize that keeping an awareness of time is still important. Just as when you started the negotiation was important, so too is when you decide to make an offer to the other side.

Concessions will always be made during a sales negotiation. However, you control when those concessions will be made. If you make a concession too early in a negotiation, then you’ll potentially be sending a signal to the other side of the table that you’re going to be willing to make a lot more concessions during the negotiations.

To take this consideration of time during a negotiation one step further, making an offer to the other side to early on or rejecting their offer and presenting a counteroffer too quickly may send a signal of desperation to the other side. Taking the time to allow enough discussion to occur before making (or rejecting) such offers places you in a much stronger position.

What All Of This Means For You

It turns out that time really does matter. Professional sales negotiators know that time can control the outcome of a negotiation. The time that the clock shows can control when or even if a decision is going to be made.

Sales negotiators know to take a look at not only where a negotiation is going to occur, but also when. Being aware of the time of day, week, month, and year as well as what this may mean for the other side is the key to making time work for you.

Everything matters when you are negotiating. Time is one such thing. Negotiators who are aware of what time it is and what this may mean to the other side of the table are the ones who always seem to reach the best deals…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: When do you think would be the wrong time to start a sales negotiation?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The goal of every sales negotiation is to reach a deal that is agreeable to both sides. The question is just how much time should you take in order to get there? The classic question that all sales negotiators are always trying to answer is if it is better to negotiate in short sessions with long breaks or in long sessions with short breaks?

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Negotiator, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affects results, factor, have I picked the right time, made too quickly, quick concession, the right time to negotiate, time, timing of an offer

If You Control Time, Then You Control The Negotiation

When I work with clients to improve their negotiating skills, one of the first things that we do is to sit down and review their past experiences with negotiating situations. This generally produces a list of both good and bad experiences. The reason that I take the time to do this is because it shows me where things have gone wrong in the past and where my customers need to spend the most time developing their negotiating skills.

Time after time the same weakness shows up in my clients. No matter how confident they may feel about a negotiation or how much research they’ve done going in, the issue of available time seems to trip them up over and over again.

How The Japanese Used Time To Their Advantage

In the early 1980′s U.S. businesses “rediscovered” Japan and almost every business wanted to strike a deal with a Japanese business in order to get access to high quality, low cost goods. What this meant is that a lot of U.S. business men (and women) got on planes and flew over to Japan to do some sales negotiating.

It quickly became apparent that the Japanese were excellent negotiators. The Americans were coming home with signed business deals that were ok, but nothing close to what they had originally been hoping for.

It turns out that the Japanese were not only good negotiators, but they also knew how to read an airline’s flight schedule. The Japanese would find out when the Americans were scheduled to fly home and they would stall during the negotiations until it got close to the time for the Americans to leave for the airport.

The Americans would be desperate to close a deal and would end up giving too much away just to be able to make their flight. After this had been going on for awhile, one American took the time to step back and study how negotiations were going with the Japanese. He quickly discovered what they were doing and how they were doing it.

The next time that he was scheduled to negotiate in Japan with the Japanese, he found out when the Japanese that he would be negotiating with were scheduled to take the train home. He went ahead and made two flight reservations – one before their train left, and one afterwards. Once the negotiations started, he stalled and the Japanese couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t getting worried about missing his flight. After he had missed the window to leave the negotiations for his flight, he started to get serious about negotiating. Now it was time for the Japanese to start to get nervous , they were worried about missing their train back to Tokyo. In the end, they ended up making too many concessions.

Seven Ideas To Build Your Time Power

One of the fundamental lessons that I include in all of my training sessions with my clients is that time is a crucial element when it comes to bargaining power. What it all comes down to is one simple rule: the more time that I have, and the less time that you have, then the more negotiating power I will have.

Now of course, the key to making sure that you have more time during a negotiation is to take action to ensure that you have the time that you need. Here are seven ways that you can ensure that you’ll have the time that you need:

• Leave time to shop around , You may be negotiating with the wrong people sitting on the other side of the table. You may decide to go searching for someone else to do a deal with. If this happens, it’s going to take some time and so you’re going to need to have enough time to do that search.

• Be on time for the meeting , This seems like a silly thing to say, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t do it. If you show up for a negotiation late, then you are going to be running behind during the entire discussion. Being there on time will help you get started in a relaxed way.

• Give yourself time to think , Don’t let the other side push you into making a decision that might be the wrong decision for you. Instead, call for periodic breaks and give yourself some thinking time in order to reassess where things stand and what your next steps should be.

• Avoid marathon talks , Death marches will only end up killing you. No matter how “cool” it might be to tell your boss that you were in negotiations for 8, 10, 12 hours straight the sad reality is that your performance drops off over time. The one exception to this rule is that if you are pleased with where things currently stand and you’d like to push on to the end in order to wrap things up.

• Pick the best time to negotiate , They always say that there is a time for everything and negotiating is no exception to this rule. Are you a morning person or an evening person? Know your preference and schedule your negotiating sessions accordingly.

• Leave time for things to go wrong , This one is huge. Things will never go according to your plan. You need to anticipate that things that you could never have counted on will happen, points that you though both sides agreed to before discussions stared will turn out to be significant issues, etc. Leave time to work all of these things out.

• Leave enough time to plan , So often my clients will think that planning is something that you only do before you start a negotiation. It turns out that you do do it before, but you also do it during the negotiation in order to adjust to events that unfold during the negotiation.

• Leave enough time to negotiate with your second choice – If things don’t go the way that you want them to with the other side of the table, make sure that you’ll still have enough time to negotiate with another partner. There is no worse feeling than knowing that you have to stick with a bad negotiation because you don’t have any other alternatives.

Final Thoughts

All too often time starts to cause you to make hurried decisions because you have a real or an imagined deadline looming. When that happens, stop, take a deep breath and then ask yourself the following three questions in order to find ways to relieve the pressure of that deadline:

1. What self-imposed or organization-imposed deadlines am I under?
2. Are the deadlines that I’m under real?
3. What deadlines are putting pressure on the other side?

One of the most important points to remember about time and deadlines in a negotiation is that you may not the only one under pressure, the other side may be under greater pressure than you.

If you can learn to make time work for you during your next negotiation, then you will be able to close better deals and close them quicker.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

What is the secret for walking away from your next sales negotiation feeling satisfied? We all wish that there was some magic “silver bullet” technique that if we knew what it was we could use it every time we negotiate in order to be able to walk away feeling like our negotiating time was well spent. It turns out that there is such a technique, and it’s called doing your homework.

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Negotiator, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: art of negotiation, buyer concessions, collaborative problem solving, effective negotiation, how to negotiation, Japanese, negotiating a job, negotiating sales, negotiating skills, negotiating strategies, negotiation process, negotiation strategies, negotiation style, negotiation tactics, negotiation techniques, plane schedule, power negotiating, sales negotiations, seller concessions, team negotiation, time, train schedule