How to avoid weakening a negotiation

When negotiating, "Focus on your strongest positions," advises negotiating consultant Jack Kaine. "Raising weaker points, instead of focusing on the most persuasive point, tends to dilute the strength of your position. In school, we were taught that the more reasons we advance to a position, the stronger our argument. However, one cast-iron reason that cannot be challenged will stand up to scrutiny. When it is combined with weak reasons, the weaker reasons will be challenged."

Jack says when the other party offers a reason, the skilled negotiator will ask, somewhat skeptically, "Is that your only reason?" the person is tempted to say, "No, no…" and offer a half dozen more supporting reasons. When the negotiator hears one reason that sounds weak, he or she will say "Now, just a minute, let's examine that last thing you said."

"We undo our own strong cases because we talk too much in a negotiation," according to Jack. "The more you talk in support of your position in a negotiation, the weaker it becomes."

How to deal with backstabbers

In the article Set up ground rules to deal with backstabbers, Bill Repp explains that healthy people have enough confidence in themselves to go directly to a person who disagrees with them and try to clarify or resolve the issue politely. Backstabbers can't do that because they are often deeply insecure and lack confidence. Though they may appear to be supportive, they often withhold information you may need.

So how do you deal with them? Bill advises that in a nonthreatening manner ask: "I'd like us to agree that any reaction we have to each other's ideas or actions will be discussed personally with each other before they're discussed with anyone else. Could we agree to that?"

If the person claims ignorance on why you're asking this, say: "I'm concerned that other people may have been included in discussions other than the two of us. I'd like to think that you and I can handle situations involving us. In the future, when there are things you don't agree with completely, here's how I'd appreciate your bringing them to my attention..." In other words, never accuse, but continue to restate your need.

How to calculate lifetime value of a customer

AffiliateTips offers lots of free spreadsheet calculators such as the Breakeven Analysis Spreadsheet and the Customer Lifetime Value Calculator Spreadsheet.

7 ways to incorporate persuasion into your sales tactics

In the article, Mastering the Psychology of Persuasion, Russell Riendeau, Ph.D., said: "Every decision you make is a result of some form of persuasion infiltrating your emotions to influence your behaviors and thinking. The more elements of persuasion you become familiar with, the better you'll be able to judge which approach is the right one for the selling situation."

Here are 7 ways to incorporate persuasion into your sales tactics:

1. Brochures and Website material. Use words and images that elicit stronger emotional appeals, in addition to the practicality of your product or service. Value is critical, and an emotional appeal to the real cause of the pain the customer would feel by not buying your product is the true target of your sales pitch.
2. Provide the data. Saying "We care about our customers" is weak. Everybody says that. Give facts: 85.3 percent of our customers are from referrals! Now that's compelling. Show how much people save, earn, smile, laugh, or relax when they buy from you.
3. Dates don't matter. "We've been serving customers for 54 years!" So what? Longevity in business doesn't carry the same weight it used to. Yahoo! and Google, for example are less than 15 years old, but are as well-known companies as GE and Microsoft. Persuade with a compelling advantage.
4. Match marketing materials with your sales team's ability. A great-looking, emotionally charged brochure must fit the salesperson making the presentation, or else it'll flop. If your salespeople can't say the words that are hard to speak, then the message is lost and sales falter. Train your team to present the data, the emotion, and the benefits in a way that is assertive, close to the heart, and rewards them to make the sale.
5. Train your sales team to avoid the very tactics of persuasion they're being trained to embrace. The fear of job loss and stress of customers saying "no" in a recessionary climate is both stressful and demotivating. Contract with a proven trainer to teach your team to learn how to modify their internal and external behaviors in order to build resilience to the negativity. A better-than-industry average commission plan and measurable goals with benchmarks aren't bad ideas, either.
6. Explore ways to imbed your product or service into the typical habits and behavior patterns of your potential customers. Example: If you sell Website development, send examples/data to show how others are updating their sites to capture new sales with new technology. Bankers love data and low risk; focus your pitch to show less risk when buying your service.
7. Tie your sale into a common theme that month, year or decade to enhance recall, retention, and common ground. People join and are part of associations to feel part of the tribe'--to gain access to special knowledge. Your ability to allow them the "secrets" is a powerful tool.

6 traits of the "right people"

BusinessWeek shares some research from Jim Collin's book, How The Mighty Fall, in which Collins explains the "... six important traits that identify 'the right people'":

1. The right people fit the company's core values
Great companies build cultures in which those who don't share the institution's values are surrounded by anti-bodies and ejected like viruses. People ask: "How do we get people to share our core values?" The answer: Hire people already predisposed to them--and keep them.

2. The right people don't need to be tightly managed
When you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you may have made a hiring mistake. You need not spend a lot of time "motivating" or "managing" the right people. It's in their DNA to be productively neurotic, self-motivated, self-disciplined, and compulsively driven to excel.

3. The right people understand that they do not have "jobs"--they have responsibilities
They grasp the difference between their task list and their true responsibilities. The right people can complete the statement, "I am the one person ultimately responsible for…".

4. The right people fulfill their commitments
In a culture of discipline, people view commitments as sacred--they do what they say they'll do, without complaint. Equally, this means that they take great care in saying what they will do, careful never to overcommit or to promise what they cannot deliver.

5. The right people are passionate about the company and its work
Nothing great happens without passion. The right people display remarkable intensity.

6. The right people display window-and-mirror maturity
When things go well, the right people point out the window, giving credit to factors other than themselves; they shine a light on others who contributed. Yet when things go awry, they do not blame circumstances or other people; they look in the mirror and say: "I'm responsible."

6 reasons why you should get a free phone number from Google Voice

6 reasons why you should get a free phone number from Google Voice:

1. You get portability and consistency of a single phone number. For example, when someone calls your Google Voice phone number, you can have the call forwarded to your cell phone. If you lose your cell phone, all you have to do is redirect calls to your new cell phone number. You can forward calls to any number such as work or home.
   
2. You get privacy. Use your Google Voice phone number as your public number. The caller never sees your home or cell phone numbers that Google Voice forwards calls to.
3. You get security. You can block calls from unwanted numbers. In addition, a feature called ListenIn lets you listen to the message a person is leaving before you commit to taking his or her call.
   
4. You get call notification control. You can have calls forwarded directly to a designated phone number. Or you can be notified of calls by text messages or email.
5. You get conference calling. You can have up to four people call your Google Voice number at a predetermined time in order to have a conference call.
   
6. You get transcribed voicemail messages. When someone leaves you a voicemail, you can go online to your Google Voice account and either listen to the message or read the transcribed version. Once a message is transcribed, you can search on the text in the message.

Go here for even more on Google Voice features.

How to attach multiple emails in Outlook

Microsoft Outlook lets you attach multiple email messages to a single email so you can forward them to someone else. For example, we advertised for an IT specialist position at my association. We received lots of resumes by email. Well, another department in our association would also like to review the resumes for a position they have available. So instead of forwarding each email resume one by one, here's how you can attach them all to one email all at once:

First, create a new email message.

Next, click on the Attach Item button. When the Insert Item window opens, locate and select the emails you want to attach. Hold down the Shift key to select multiple emails.



When you're through, this is how the attached emails look.

The motivational impact of stories

Charles Jacobs explains the motivational impact of stories in his article A Mind for Selling:

Because a story is not an argument, it doesn’t summon up reason in defense. Stories ask only that we entertain them, and when we do, we rehearse the view of the world they embody. If we find it more attractive or a better fit with our experience, we adopt it. Because stories are experiences, they address both the intellect and emotions that drive our decision-making....

The burning question for most managers is how do I get people to do what I need them to do. The real lesson of brain science is to forget about using reason, reward, or punishment to motivate people, and to focus on using ideas conveyed through a story to change the way they think. When we tell a story that’s good for ourselves and in the best interests of others, people will be motivated to support us.

How to improve your sales pitch

Joey Asher at Talking Points blog says "Business people deliver presentations without presenting solutions or telling success stories. In a sense, they’re expecting people to make big decisions on solutions for their business without any sense of what the solution is or whether the team can execute."

He says imagine wanting to buy diamond earrings, and the jeweler holding an unopened box of earrings, says "I'll only show them to you if you buy them from me."

"Yet that happens in presentations every day," says Joey. "Business people deliver presentations without presenting solutions or telling success stories...they’re expecting people to make big decisions...without any sense of what the solution is or whether the team can execute."

So don't be surprised if a buyer doesn't "plunk down money for unseen diamonds." But if you describe a proposed solution coupled with a story about how the same solution has worked elsewhere, you are helping the prospect see what they’re buying.