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Before the Negotiation - Prep Purposefully

Last step, prep purposefully, not perfectly. The reason why I add this is so my high content, just my perfectionists in the room, like me, my fellow perfectionists, we have this really bad tendency to over prepare, where we feel like we have to prep perfectly. The point of me giving you this sheet is not because I want it perfectly filled out. I just want it filled out. So, don't spend too much time procrastinating while researching. Researching and procrastinating is a very fine line. Fine line mix. So let's say if you're cold pitching, right if you're cold pitching, you feel like you have to have it perfect? It's purposefully, not perfectly. A couple of things to think about when you're prepping. When, when is the best time to do it? A couple of ideas, this is not something you should take for granted. When does the car salesman need to hit their numbers by the end of the month? When is their slowest day of the month? Is your boss up against a tight deadline? Is their a client deadli...

ne, or do they have performance reviews on a certain day? It would not be good to review budget with them on those days. Or, is there a financial schedule or a budget schedule that you want to get in for the next round, before they get their budget in for the next year? Does your client just hire someone new, or pay for a big purchase? If you know that you want your client to re-up, and they just spent on a big website redesign, it would not be a good idea to pitch them, right after they outlaid for that budget. So, timing when you know that they're gonna have more budget on hand. Money is an interesting thing. We often think of it in the short term, not the long term. So, if we'd just spent $5000 on a wedding vendor, the idea of spending another $5000 on a photographer in the very same week is terrifying. Maybe three or four seeks later, or on an installment plan it doesn't feel so bad. So, that timing of when you ask is really important, and when do budgets get approved, when are people out of cash, so in big companies, you always want to know financial budgets. Usually that's online, especially for public companies. When I'm negotiating to be a speaker, I always know when they're approving their next year's speaker budget, always. I know that's when they're asking for more or less. And that's when I want to get in to make sure that they know what my budget will be for 2018. A couple of little research points for you here. There actually is science on when it is best to negotiate. So, according to the research, of course, pleasant weather conditions influenced positive social relationships and improved moods. Always better to go in on a sunny day, especially for cars or homes. People tend to lie less in the mornings. We tend to have a morality effect that happens. D & R Riley did some amazing research on when and how we lie. People are much more honest in the morning, So I almost always have breakfast meetings. We feel more affinity with someone if we break bread with them. So, if you can bring a snack or if you can go over lunch or you can have it in a cafe, I usually will bring some kind of food. I have a lot of breakfast meetings, a lot of negotiations are done over breakfast. Who? This is not necessarily who you/re negotiating with, 'cause usually we don't have much control over that, it's who you bring with you. Yes, there is an option for you to bring someone with you. This is a great secret back pocket tactic. The first person that you want to think about is an expertise booster. Do you want to bring a lawyer with you? Do you want to bring a highly technical person? Do you want to bring the person who referred you? Can you bring someone who's going to boost the expertise or the knowledge in the room? Is there a confidence booster? If you're meeting with someone and you're a little bit nervous, who can you bring that's just going to make you feel better, that's gonna give you that nice extra boost of confidence? A spouse, a friend, a host. So, it's so funny. For creative Live, we always talk about, do I need a host? And creative was like, you don't need a host, you're great. But the host, for me, is a confidence booster, because, when I'm like, what's the sign up button, like where do they ask a question? That's not my expertise. I'm technically dumb. I'm terrible with technology, so I can be like, Chris, where do they go, and Chris can go do it. So that helps. It also gives me a break for water. It gives me a break to be like (breathes) Deep breath. So he, Chris, thank you host, is my confidence booster. So you can also think about who is your support system in the room, or right outside the room. Lastly, strength booster. So, specifically, is there someone who can help you with a certain aspect of the negotiation that you don't feel so great about. Like maybe you're very good about talking about one thing, but you're not so good about talking about the other. So, I have frequently brought a team member into negotiations. Lauren is now joining me on all of my pre calls for talks. So when I have talks for companies, when I'm gonna speak, I now have Lauren join every single one of those calls. She's a great confidence booster, she knows my schedule better than me. She has all the AV requirements, she takes notes for me, and it shows that we're showing up as a team. That already adds value there. So bringing an assistant or bringing a colleague in with you can really help. Even bringing a coach in, you have a coach with you, bringing them, or if you're shopping for a car or a home, bringing a car person, bringing someone who's handy, bringing someone who can open a cabinet and say, oh, this will be really hard to replace, right, 'cause you don't know. So that can also really help with that. So who are you going in with? Where? Your office? Their office? A neutral location? Should you do it in person, on phone or email? This is actually something not to take lightly. There's some science here. Science has found that there is a home field advantage. We do feel better in our space. This makes sense from a confidence perspective. We feel at home, we know our area, we have our proposals, we have our water, we feel more confident. However, you don't always have the option to do a home field advantage. The good news is, researchers were able to reverse the effect when they told visitors who went to someone else's office or space, that they had above average negotiation skills, highly qualified, even though they were totally randomly selected. So, this course is your confidence booster in a certain sense. You already now have above average negotiation skills, so if you have to go into someone else's office, you're good, don't worry. But I do prefer, the research prefers you try to do it in a space that you're comfortable with. Ah, this is your confidence boost, and this is where your swords come in, so any time you need, you can leave your sword by your desk, you can just grip it and have at will confidence to you. Those are those moments where you get that little confidence boost, and by the way, I want you to keep in mind, when you add this course to your library, and you have just a few minutes to watch something, you can watch the "before" lecture while you're doing the sheet. So you can just watch that before lecture. We're gonna break it up into different videos, and so you're welcome to just watch that one before lecture to boost up your confidence as well, to remind you, to refresh you all the strategic thinking you have to think about, and you can, of course, do your work audit, to boost up that confidence. What? So, if you have a hard time talking about value, this is really important. So, if you're really nervous about seeding your number in the room, or quoting your rates, these props are really important, which we talked about a little bit earlier. Props, gifts, proposals, and proof. You should be ready to bring these in with you. And here are all the different ways that we do that. The biggest mistake that we have is hoping that your hard work will be noticed. I want you to be prepared to share about your successes, both verbally, non verbally, and physically, all right. So we want to actually be like the multi broadcast of our successes, verbal, nonverbal, and sharing. Some proof ideas for you. We'll start with proof, they're the easiest ones. Curated testimonials. So you must, need to have testimonials for your work if you want to earn. So, if you're offering prices, you want to have as many testimonials as possible. The big thing here is curating them for each individual client. For example, I mentioned that wedding photographer who had a Great Gatsby wedding. She'd be very well served to pull out one of her testimonials from the bride who had a Great Gatsby wedding, or, if you have a testimonial from someone that said, you know, I had a huge wedding party, and this wedding photographer was so great, she coordinated everyone, we had the most beautiful pictures. That would be testimonial that I would want right up top. So going through in that research process and figuring out what are the perfect testimonials, and going to get testimonials that specifically speak to your pay points. So, if you need to go back to old clients, or old referrals, especially if you're applying for a job, and you know that, for example, this company is going through acquisition, you could call up that referral and say, hey, this company is also going through acquisition. When they call you as a referral, would you mind speaking to my experience going through that, and how I really took charge of the team during that time. So curating those testimonials is one of the secret ways that people go ... That's, I think, the difference between someone who says, I have three wedding photographers, or have three job candidates, or three consultants. Which do I pick? Who are you gonna pick the one that has testimonial right up top that speak to your pain points. Those are those differentiators that pushes you over the mark. Relevant samples of work. A lot of the time, you're going in your brain, proposals or samples or examples, pick the ones that are going to resonate most with that person. So, for example, if I'm going into a pitch to pitch a small group of managers, I'm not gonna have a proposal filled with pictures of me speaking in front of 500 people. That's a totally different skill set, hosting a small group versus a big group. So, I will specifically pull out of pictures of me in front of little, small circles, and put those in my slide deck. 'Cause then they go, that's like my group, as opposed to, I don't know if she can do a small group, that's not as intimate as that picture. So, making sure that your pictures and your evidence is relevant to them. Pay scale numbers, if you can bring in some numbers or some competitor numbers. Referrals at the ready, this is a really important one. Most of the time, your referrals will not be called, even for job interviews, even for clients. Whenever you are pitching a new client, you should have referrals on hand. A lot of times just saying, I have five people who would be happy to talk about the expertise of my work, here's someone who had a Great Gatsby wedding, here's someone who I did a big wedding party, here's someone ... having them at the ready is all they need. Really, they're probably not gonna call those people, but they see, wow, there's social proof right there. Other offers, so this is another one that you can think about. A really powerful negotiation tactic is showing a little bit of scarcity. Right, so we talked a little bit about fear of missing out. So that scarcity factor can really hype up someone's desire. For example, my sister Courtney, I put this on the slide 'cause I really didn't want to forget, my sister Courtney just bought a car, and she said that she not only printed out really good lease offers online, she actually went to every competitor in the neighborhood, got a brochure, brought it to the place she actually wanted, she really wanted a certain car, but she held the brochures in her hand so he could see, like Mazda and Ford, Toyota, they were all there, so he could see she had literally been shopping all day. And she could easily, she had their card stapled to the top of it. That was a very subtle way of saying, I have other offers here. And she said, you're my favorite, I saved you for last 'cause I really want this car, but I do have some really good offers from other places. All right, so it might be bringing in physical proof, other offers. You'll notice that on Shark Tank, I don't know if you've ever seen this. I love the show Shark Tank. It's always really powerful when they say, "How much money have you made? What are your sales?" and they say, "Oh, we have 102 thousand dollars in sales." And, a purchase order. Have you ever seen them do that? They hold up a piece of paper. I've like zoomed in before, and been like what is whatever. Like I don't really even think sometimes it is actually an order. But having that piece of paper to show them, it's a purchasing order, makes it feel really real. So, printing out some of your offers, printing out postcards of competitors, those are all great props to bring in.