Your Negotiating Skills and Closing Your First Deal

Summary: While having a negotiation you should be courteous, polite and pleasant. Use of words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in your behavior helps you a lot. You should be aware of your impoliteness and try to fulfill your client’s expectations. If needed work hard to achieve this. You must live up to all your promises made.

Some Closing Thoughts



With a self directed career so well planned, first steps taken, new work space well equipped and made comfortable, finances and other priorities in order, your schedule under control, head on straight and body in shape, you're ready for the real world.

Yet all of this brings you only to the brink of being in business in terms of closing that first deal. So I want to spend a few moments encouraging you to consider the importance of negotiating well, in whatever line of business you've chosen. Despite all your expertise and preparation, your business doesn't really exist at all until you've "closed" with your first customer. And while your business will undoubtedly have to endure an occasional bad deal, you can't afford to make a habit of it. At the moment of truth, you have to be able to optimize the value of your product or service, or else all your other work will be diminished.

Paul A. Hawkinson, editor and publisher of The Fordyce Letter in St. Louis, a newsletter targeting for the recruitment industry, spoke recently on this subject with a great deal of in sight. Negotiating skills are highly transferable from business to business, and although he's a specialist in the kinds of deals that bring talent to organizations, what Paul says will apply well to your business. Some highlights:

1. We have come to believe the most negotiations are adverse in nature, because those are the ones brought to our attention through the media. But it really isn't so.
2. Don't negotiate if you're uncomfortable doing so in a particular situation, if negotiating won't meet your needs, and if the expenditure of time and psychic energy is more than the benefits that will be received as a result of the encounter.
3. If you truly believe you're engaged in an honorable and useful profession, you'll win, because you inherently possess power, the ultimate key to negotiating success.
4. The more information you have about the financial situation, priorities, deadlines, costs, real needs and organizational pressures, the better you can bargain.
5. An excellent way to elicit information is the "I need your help" maneuver. "Help me to understand how we can better serve you" is a great strategy to use. People love to help. You don't play stupid, but you don't come off as a know it all either. The "help me" process leads the client to believe he has the power position, but as a benevolently helpful person, he weakens his position with every bit of information he imparts.
   
   This approach ultimately leads the two of you to the same side of the fictitious bargaining table, jointly trying to solve the problem rather than adversarial trying to decide who'll get the best of whom. It's hard for collaborators to squabble over insignificant items (such as fees, guarantees, etc.) because you're in this thing together, exactly where you ought to be.
6. Almost anything that's the product of a negotiation has to be negotiable, including the terms of most of these agreements. Don't buy into the nonsensical rebuttal that, "Our legal people won't approve of any changes." I used to tell people who use this tawdry terminology that our agreement with the Federal Trade Commission precluded us from making any changes in our pre-approved fee schedule. That, of course, was a lie, but then so is what you're being told by the other side.
7. Negotiating requires a certain amount of risk taking and you must be willing to accept the risks, including the risk that you may have to walk away. But also recognize that the world is full of bargain hunters. Still others will throw roadblocks in your way to see how you handle them.
8. Indicate that you care, but not enough to lower your standards. That's a powerful negotiation tool.

I'm going to close with a bit of advice from Jan Yager, a leading Connecticut based writer on the subject of business behavior. These thoughts are borrowed from her book, Business Protocol (New York: John Wiley, 1991). As we know, the way you act with people which is where the all important negotiating process really begins is your most important business development tool of all.

1. Being courteous, polite and pleasant will take you far in the business world, just as being critical, negative or maudlin will hamper your success.
2. Saying "please" and "thank you" should be part of your everyday behavior in the business world unless it's a life or death situation, such as a physician saying "Get me another pint of blood."
3. Avoid criticizing anyone subordinate, co worker, superior, client or customer especially in the presence of others.
4. You're judged by the following up of your actions, not just your initial contacts. If you call someone, follow up to see if whatever you talked about has been accomplished. If someone writes to you, follow up with an answer. And always return phone calls.
5. Beware of being silent merely because you feel uncomfortable rejecting someone. You're rejecting the project or situation, not the person. Remember that the person you're afraid to say "no" to today, who now sees you as impolite, might be the person you want to say "yes" to next month, or in 10 years. People never forget impoliteness.
6. Consider including a note or letter with everything you send. Even a simple "For your information" will often suffice.
7. Don't assume that because someone calls you through a referral that your services are pre-sold. You still have to work hard, perhaps even harder, to live up to their expectations.
8. Keep all of your promises.