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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 .

As a business consultant and BNI Director I get to help lots of business professional make the most of their word of mouth marketing efforts. Most often I am asked to evaluate their elevator speeches. You know their “60 second infomercials’” or “Sales Manager Minutes” as they are called in “BNI”. Over the years I have discovered over 2 dozen things that a person can do wrong when presenting their sales manager minutes.

This article is the first installment of a four part series on common mistakes made during 60 second presentations. In this segment I will discuss the first 5 of these 2 dozen or so common mistakes that I seen. These 4 articles will give you the cure for these all so common aliments so that your 60 second presentations will produce result and make you more money. Eliminate a few and you will see real results. Eliminate them all and the referrals will come rolling in. So let’s get started.

Common Mistake #1. “No Hook”. It is important that your last statement be a memorable one (hopefully a positive one too). People are more likely to remember the first thing and last thing you say and your hook can help “brand” you as the go to person for your particular product or service. Make your hook different, but easy to remember. Keep it simple. Using your companies’ slogan is ok, as is rhyme for effect. Keep in mind that you want to be remembered in a positive way so don’t make it too funny or off the wall.

Common Mistake #2. “Selling to your audience”, (i.e. you BNI partners) in stead of through your audience, (i.e. referral partners). People join referral network to get referral not be sold to. Make sure you remove or change the words “you and yours” when ever possible to something else. Don’t use phrases like “everyone in this room can use this”! Change the sentence from you need to buy this to; “so when you customers does xyz, tell them about me and my service/product”. Sell to their customer not to them.

Common Mistake #3. “Not saying your Name”. It is important that you always say your name when presenting. I often hear members of various net working organization say things like, “You All know me” at the beginning of their sales manager minutes. Although this may be true, often times there are people in the room who don’t know you. These “visitors” to your net work meeting are clueless to who you are. They could very well need your product or service and with out your name in hand, they may have to leave with out being able to connect with you. Get use to saying your name every time you present and you will never miss an opportunity with a visitor.

Common Mistake #4. “Going to short!” It is important that you use every second of your time when doing a 60 second presentation. You did pay for that time didn’t you? Would you go to a radio station and pay for a 60 second commercial and be happy when you only get 30 second of air time? No way! Create 60 second presentation, (or what ever time frame you are given). Use the whole amount of time allotted. So remember this. If you meet 50 times a year you only get 50 minutes a year for this type of advertising. If you’re in a BNI chapter don’t waste these precious moments. If you’re in any other networking organization the same goes for you!

Common Mistake #5.” Going too long!” If your sales manager minute goes too long, you quickly start to lose credibility with your audience. “Going to long”, is being disrespectful of the other time. It also makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Rehearse and time your 60 second presentations. Take advantage of the spot light you’re given.

In my next segment I will discuss 5 more common mistakes made during 60 second presentations. Each segment will cover 5 or 6 topics. All of these common mistakes affect you’re ability to get qualified referrals from the people you meet. Eliminating these common mistakes will greatly increase your result and land you that dream referral you’ve been looking for. Until then, work on these and let me know how it’s helping you. If you would like to know more about this subject, visit my free blog to read several other articles covering word of mouth marketing.

Have you observed the cost you incur when negotiating with difficult people? Negotiating with such people can be weird from several perspectives.

First, there’s the mental anguish of interacting with them. Next, there’s the physical anxiety that manifest itself in the form of stress. Then, there’s the ‘time wasted’ factor due to the mental agility they subject you to.

Depending on the relationship you have with such people, if you deal with them efficiently you can expedite the negotiation process and get back to normalcy.

The following is a simplistic formula for negotiating with difficult people.

Determine the value of the difficult person:

• Some people are difficult to negotiate with because of the way they see themselves. They have the mindset of someone that wants to be catered to because of their perceived status, or for whatever reason they deem the need to elevate themselves. With this mindset, they may take a, ‘I win/you lose’ approach to the negotiation. When dealing with such a person, acknowledge the perceived self-status they possess. Only do so to the degree that you don’t put yourself in a compromising position that’s difficult to recover from. Part of your assessment lies in determining the value they have of you, your organization, etc. Once you make your determination, move to the next step.

Assess what to do to/with them:

• After you’ve determined their value, create several options that might be feasible to alter the negotiation’s path. This can be from kowtowing to being extremely rude (i.e. sometimes standing up to such a person is all that’s needed to bring them back in line). Depending on the thoughts you’ve generated to address the situation, the solution will lay somewhere between the boundaries. I’d suggest you not implement your softest or harshest option, because that would not leave you room to move past that point in either direction. Plus, you want to give nonverbal signals as to the negotiation direction which you’re prepared to move, based on the response the difficult person displays (i.e. if they begin to move in the ‘right’ direction, you can be nicer). Keep in mind that you can reflect their behavior, too. Some difficult people may not realize the behavior they’re displaying until they see it mirrored back. Once they sense it from you, they may soften their demeanor.

Get difficult people out of your environment/life:

• Once you have them under control, seek to reach the end of the negotiation as quickly as possible. Get them out of your environment. One reason you want to expedite them is due to the fact that in a negotiation some difficult people will use a harsh demeanor as a way to test your pressure points to see how you’ll react to their omnipotence. Then, they’ll soften their position, only to apply that negative demeanor at another time. In essence, they’ll be playing a version of ‘good cop, bad cop’ with themselves in both roles. You won’t know if it’s Jekyll or Hyde that you’re dealing with until they display their real demeanor, which may only be that demeanor for the time it takes them to shift characters again.

While you may have to make several attempts to bring a difficult person in line, once you effectively deal with them, you’ll feel better at the outcome of the negotiation… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!