Lessons

Lesson Info

Before the Negotiation - Assess Your Assets

Before the negotiation, I'm gonna remind us one more time with one more scientific study that proves this point, are good negotiators born or made? Now we know they can be made. If you believe you're a good negotiator, you are more likely to be one. This is the most important piece of prep that you can do. Knowing you can improve your negotiation ability helps you be a better negotiator and win more negotiations. By the way, this was one of like seven studies that I could have put in here, and I was like, should I put them in every five slides? And I was like no, that's a little bit much. So I want you to know that we can improve that skill and that knowledge is really important. This brings me to our second kind of foundational law, which is a foundation of growth. Every minute that you spend watching this course, I want you to think of it as an investment of getting your negotiation PQ up. Literally every minute that you spend, you're going to hone those skills better and better. So ...

if you think about it that way, it helps bring that growth happening really fast. Step number one, assess your assets. One of these negotiation mistakes, I'm gonna be having some negotiation mistakes throughout the course, is not fighting for your worth. Assuming that other people will tell you, you're worth more, I would like to pay you more, that does rarely happen, but very, very rarely. It's very hard to just assume that people will notice our hard work, and the problem is if that we don't ask for it, if we don't fight for it, if we don't say that up front, people assume that we're good, that we're okay. So we're going to be putting that out, a ask out, much stronger. The most important thing with your ask is that your confidence is contagious. If you believe in your ask, other people are more likely to believe that ask. So Dr. Barbara Wild and her associates found very quickly our emotions are contagious. Specifically, happiness, confidence, or sadness, or fear. So we catch people's emotions on the phone, in the room. If we're resentful, we breed resentment. If we're angry, we stoke anger. If we are confident, we create confidence. So we have to be really, really sure about what we're asking for so they pick that up from us. If we are a little bit unsure, it's like begging someone to negotiate with us, right. We ask our worth, they're much more likely to question it, 'cause we are asking it. So let's do a Worth Audit, that's what we're gonna start off with. So this is in your free bonuses, if you would like one, it's also in your workbook for you, so if you pull open that page in your workbook, if you skip ahead to the Worth Audit for me, my audience members, I'm actually gonna have you guys do this with me. So this should be, right in the, yeah, Assess Your Assets section of the workbook. So what we're gonna do is a Worth Audit. Now I do this Worth Audit before every single negotiation. Sometimes I do it written, like if it's a big negotiation, but sometimes I just do it in the car on the way there, I do it while I'm getting ready. It's meant to be a very quick way to supercharge your confidence. A little painkiller for confidence. What we're gonna do is I'm gonna give you a couple of prompts. You will have five seconds to write five answers. This is designed to get rid of your humility a little bit, right, to like come to the answer that's first at top of mind so you don't judge your answers. Are you ready? Okay, first one, at home, get out a piece of paper and a pen, or grab that free bonus for your Worth Audit. First one, you have five seconds to do five answers. What are five of your unique strengths? Alright, pens down, how many got five? (audience giggles) How many got four? How many got three? Three. Alright, that's good. Okay so we're gonna do this even faster, alright? As fast as you can, right. No one's reading it, no one's reading it. Home, did you get five, did you get five? Okay, ready for the next one? Now you know, right, you're like, oh wow, five seconds goes fast. Okay, alright, next one. Name five people you have helped. Pens down, who got five? Oh yes, okay, okay we're getting faster. Isn't it interesting, by the way, to list people you helped as opposed to inner innate strengths? It's amazing quickly, how different those feelings are. How many people got four? Three? Okay, alright, next one, are you ready? What can you do better than anyone else? Pens down, I know, hard. How many people got five? How many people got four? Three? Two? One? Okay, so. This question is incredibly important for you to know, because if people are paying you, so this is one for earning, if your clients want to hire you, they have to know why you are better than everyone else. They don't know why you're better than else if you don't know why you're better than everyone else, right. I don't mean better than, I mean like having a skill that is top-notch, that is above average. You should be able to know the answer to this question specifically directed at what you're asking for more on. You have to know what differentiates you, what makes you above average, 'cause that's gonna be the easiest part of trying to get your services and your worth up. Last one, so this one I want you to think about for your specific negotiation goal. So keep your negotiation goal in mind. At home, think about that, and let's try this one for five seconds. Why will this negotiation be a win-win? Imagine you're about to walk into the room. Why is it a win-win? Alright, pens down, five is hard on that one, I know, 'cause sentences are longer. Anyone got five? Four? Three? Two? One. Okay, so this one is a little bit different because now we're talking about worth and partnership, right. We're talking about how do we make sure that we're going into this thinking there is a way for us both to win, right. There is a way where we're both getting what we want. So this little Worth Audit, this series of four prompts, is what I do in my head while I'm in a waiting room, it's what I do while I'm in the car, it's what I do while I'm getting ready. There's a couple reasons for it. One, it keeps those rationales top of mind, right. So that when they ask you the hard question, and times you get the kind of question that's like, why are you better than your competitors? Right, right like that's usually a hard question. But if you've answered these, you know, right. So it keeps the answers top of mind. And second it immediately gets you confidently contagious, right. It makes you really contagious in that confident way 'cause it's like you know when athletes, before they go on, and their like coach like smacks them on the helmet, just imagine like this me doing that at your Worth Audit. (audience chuckles) I'm just like smacking you on the helmets, right. 'Cause we like getting ourselves pumped up. It's the fastest, easiest way to do it. Next thing that we're gonna look at, we're gonna be spending a lot of time on this is your Negotiation Cheat Sheet. So this is a looseleaf for you if you want to download it. It's also, oh perfect, you guys have it in your workbooks. I also have it loose 'cause we're gonna be referring to it pretty much every section from now going on. This sheet of paper, this little Negotiation Cheat Sheet, I have one of these for every single negotiation I have ever done. I have them printed out, sometimes I just draw them. It's really easy to draw it in my notebook. Sometimes if I didn't realize I was going into negotiation, I will do it after the fact, just to sort of rehash in that postmortem. This is your guiding light. It's kind of like your touchstone. I think is one of the most important things that we can bring into negotiation, we're gonna be talking about it a lot. The very first section on this sheet, the very top left column, is your Assets. So your Assets column is the very first thing you want to do. You actually want to do it as your Worth Audit. You can kind of put your bullets into this column. What goes in this column are all of the benefits that you provide. They're all the wins that you deliver, right. And we have to think about this more broadly. You're not just a landscape center, you're not just a wedding photographer, you provide a lot more benefits than we think. So I want you to start thinking about your benefits in lots of different ways. Material benefit, financial benefit, emotional benefit, right. What are you bringing to the table? That's everything that goes into this column. And if you have trouble filling it out, I would do that Worth Audit for this column. And we're gonna go through specific examples as well. Let's go through a very specific example, and I think we have wedding photographers in the audience, which is great. So I'm gonna use wedding photographer 'cause it's a really easy one for us to use. So let me give an example of how a wedding photographer would fill out his or her Negotiation Cheat Sheet before going into a meeting with a client. The obvious ones are first, right. So a thousand plus, she usually takes over a thousand photos per wedding. That's a lot of photos per wedding. That's a nice quantifiable way to talk about worth. She provides an engagement shoot with her services. She also brings a second shooter with her so there's two shooters that go in. She does really amazing editing. Her job is not done at the wedding, that editing process is a really important thing. And lastly, she just upgraded all of her gear, right, so she has the latest lights and camera equipment. Some other things you might not think of, these are fairly obvious, right, these are listed. Some other things. Your history, your knowledge is also an asset, right. She's shot over 100 weddings, she has 15 years experience. Every single time she's been at a wedding, she has learned something about a moment, or capturing the light, or getting a special, you know, framing. All of those things are part of her assets. That knowledge is an asset. So I want you to also think about what knowledge do you bring to the table. Another kind of hidden bucket, the emotional part. She's very calm and she knows that she provides calm to her bride, her brides. She makes sure that she has that nice stable feeling when she walks into any room that she's at. She's also very good at finding hidden moments. She has testimonials that say, wow, she captured this moment that I never even thought about getting, she captured it. That's a skill that you can have. And lastly, she prides herself in removing stress, right. So seeing a potentially kind of sticky situation, when all the in-laws are here and going, you know what, we're gonna do this photo later, no worries. But that emotional intelligence is an asset, being able to remove that stress. So these are a lot of assets, right, just right off the bat, that I think come out in that Worth Audit. I want you to think about what are some of your assets? And I want you to give me some non-obvious ones. So I'm gonna ask the audience now. What are some non-obvious assets that you bring to the table? And you can pass the mics around. Yes, Erica. Oops, thank you. I'm really good at knowing when to bring the masculine energy with a client, and knowing when to bring the feminine, to help them be accountable, and then also empathetic with 'em. Heard as well as pushed. Right. Right, love it. Yeah, someone else had their hand up? Yes, and say hi and introduce yourself, too, as well. Hi, my name is Melissa Dinwiddie. I run a creative consultancy. I am an input person so when there's something that I'm really interested in, I just soak up information like a sponge. And so someone will ask something like, that seems really esoteric, and I'll say, oh I have information about that and I'll just spew out tons of information, and they'll say like, how do you know all that? Yeah, wide breadth of knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. Huge, I mean being able to kind of very quickly identify things for clients that they didn't even realize was a thing, or didn't, that didn't even need to be knowed, need to be known. (audience chuckles) Need to be known. There you go. Someone else, one more for me. Oh mic, mic, mic, yes, yes. Noelia, say hi. Hi, my name's Noelia and I work with people developing their personal brands to expand their thought leadership. So I also have a background in technology and design, so I've often been told that I'm a really good left-right brain thinker, so I'm able to look at the strategy end of things, but then also help people with the visual side of things. So Noelia's a longtime friend, she's actually a Science People Body Language Trainer, so she does body language training for us as well, so I was so happy that you're in the audience. We're gonna be talking about training, and speaking, and coaching a little bit later, so thank you for coming. Alright, so this is the perfect example of a couple of non-obvious assets. So I want you to think in terms of emotional buckets, in terms of knowledge, in terms of what clients have said to you in the past of like, wow, you do X so well, or I'm so surprised that you also do X. Those things should be in your asset column, there's a reason why they are in the upper left-hand part of your cheat sheet. Why, we read from left to right, so they are the first thing where if you're feeling a little anxious, or a little nervous, or a question is difficult, that is the first thing you look at on your cheat sheet to sort of anchor you like, yes, like, I'm offering a lot here, like there's a lot of wins that I can provide. That is your anchor. Second step, second column, diagnose their pain. And this is probably one of the most important aspects of the course. For your partner, your worth equals how many of their problems you can solve. This is where I think we get stopped up, right. People qualify how much they're willing to pay you based on how many pain points and problems you fix for them. That's a very different way to think about worth than all the wins you provide. We have to look at both at the same time.