Negotiation in business is a critical aspect to getting more accomplished and generating more valuable sales. Negotiation is founded upon principles but it could be argued that it is more art than science. The best negotiators are often brilliant strategists and gifted technicians but their perhaps most unsung trait is the mastery of the true art of negotiation. Let’s explore this a little more.

The basic fundamentals of negotiation call for careful planning and, in most cases, pursuit of a solution that leaves all parties better off than they were before. While these basic principles can guide and govern many negotiating scenarios, there is certainly more to it.

What is the art of negotiation? The art behind this critical business skill comes from the intangible ability to simply get the job done. For example, perhaps you have experienced a negotiation where you followed your plan to the letter and felt like you tactically handled it perfectly. The end result: the negotiations failed and you were left scratching your head as to how this could have happened.

Now consider a scenario where a negotiator also follows their plan, but only almost according to plan. Their tactics are sound but there seem to be some key elements missing. The end result: the negotiation is a dramatic success and, despite the negotiator’s apparent missteps, everything seemed to work out great. What was the difference?

As you may be gathering, the answer to what differed between these two scenarios may not be readily apparent. The negotiator who seemed to do everything perfectly failed and the one who seemed to stray away from the original plan had more success. What gives? The answer lies in the intangible nuances of human nature.

Chances are, the successful negotiator from our example probably sensed the need to change his or her course during the negotiation. This could have been based upon a specific response from the other party, body language, or just an instinctual feel for how things were proceeding. They adjusted their plan, perhaps stopping short of seeking all the objectives they originally set out to achieve. They may have even offered an additional incentive to the opposite party.

While this approach may not immediately make sense, it is highly effective. Sure, we all have an agenda when it comes to negotiations. However, asking for too much puts the entire agenda at risk, while knowing when to say when may eliminate a single objective but leave the rest intact and still satisfy all parties when the day is done. The ability to recognize the need for this and know when to change the plan is an art that the best negotiators have mastered. Even they may not know exactly how they do it; it’s just a feel for the process that makes them great.

This feel for negotiation comes from two key things: experience and attentiveness to the other party in the negotiation. The take home message is to pay attention and be involved in as many negotiations as you possibly can. These elements will make you better and will help hone your feel for the process that will make you better over time.

In summary, you can call it a sixth sense, a gut instinct, or whatever you wish, but the art of negotiation comes not from a textbook, but from within each of us. Knowing when to say when, when to not press for that extra benefit you would like to have, is what sets the best negotiators apart from the rest of the world. It is their artistry that can inspire all of us to reach new heights in business.

Most business people face the inevitability of having to deliver a presentation at some point. Of course, there are several ways in which you can accomplish that; however, at some point, you will probably use PowerPoint, which can be a really good thing. You need to find a way to really engage your audience and to keep them in the palm of your hand.

The most effective tools to use in your presentation–leveraging PowerPoint

When it comes to delivering a presentation, your goal is to engage your audience members and to get them to participate in a discussion with you and with other audience members. Your presentation is only the launching-off point. After that, your hope is that the people with whom you interacted at your presentation will want to continue to interact with you in some form indefinitely after that.

If the people who originally attended your presentation want to continue interacting with all of you (or just you), that will give you your opportunity to work on relationship with the other people and your ultimate goal, once you relationship has developed and become very solid (after building trust, credibility, positioning yourself as a subject matter expert, and building trustworthiness) is to be in a position of selling your offerings.

When it comes to your relying on PowerPoint to help you deliver your presentation effectively, there are ways to use it that will yield very positive results.

• Get your audience members to engage with each other and with you: As you are presenting your material, it is very important for you to encourage the members of your audience to interact. If you manage to make that happen, using PowerPoint becomes much less of a crutch. Instead, it becomes a nice tool to help you along. However, the real catalyst in that situation is the actual discussion itself. You should use your slides as discussion points. They will help you to keep your thoughts organized and it will drive your discussion in an organized fashion.
• Asking thought-provoking questions is an effective approach: Your questions (as long as they are interesting) will be a starter for your discussion. Everyone likes to feel as though their opinion matters to other people and that is exactly how you make them feel if you ask a question and make it clear that you value whatever they share with you in response. In fact, on the opposite side of the coin, there is nothing worse than asking a question, hoping to engage people and get them to respond to what you are saying, and they say nothing at all. It makes you feel as though they have absolutely no interest in what you are doing and in what you are sharing with them. It makes you feel as though they don’t value you and your business.
• Use PowerPoint in your Web-based presentation: It is certainly not uncommon for you to give a presentation in a WebEx or some other Web-based meeting. In that case, you can make your meeting interactive, just like you would have an interactive meeting if you were in the same room (physically) with your audience. However, the one limitation that you will have in that particular environment is that because you can’t see your audience in person, it may be more difficult to figure out how they are feeling (and thus, reacting) to whatever you are saying. That is about the body language. It is totally acceptable in that situation to recognize and work around the limitation of your audience not actually being in front of you in person. It is probably best not to wait until the end of your presentation to ask your audience if they have any questions or comments.
• Make use of PowerPoint’s interactive capabilities: Just because when you use PowerPoint, you present slides to your audience does not mean that it has absolutely no interactive capabilities. In fact, what you can do is embed links that lead to other information from your LinkedIn presentation. That is extremely easy to do and you can get a great deal of mileage from using back links to other valuable content. If you can manage to establish an interactive relationship and build that aspect into your presentations, you will be able to solidify your relationships and you will see positive results before too long.

Conclusion

Delivering presentations is an important and necessary part of your business (at least, in most cases). It is important that you recognize the significance of your presentations being compelling and engaging. Your short-term goal is to engage people. Make sure that your sincerity and your genuineness comes through every time and that you give your audience a clear idea of what they will gain by attending your presentation. It is a wonderful incentive for them. Your long-term goal is to eventually sell your offerings to those people with whom you have been able to establish a connection.

Sometimes when we are called on to give a presentation, we sit down to create the presentation only to find that our creative juices have somehow run dry. Oh, oh – this can be a big challenge. What always just seemed to “be there” can go missing just when we really need to draw upon it. What’s a presenter to do?

Despair not fellow presenters! This situation has happened to me and other presenters and we have a fairly simple solution that will get you out of this pickle: read a book.

Katherine Meeks is a New York City based speech consultant and language coach. She’s spent a lot of time with speechwriters and has made a not-so-amazing discovery: those of us who read a lot seem to have the best thoughts, the best style, and the most precise ways of using our vocabulary to make our presentations memorable.

I can hear you now: “Hey, I have a subscription to People magazine – I’m well read!” Umm, nope that’s just not going to cut it.

How often do you work on expanding your vocabulary? Probably not all that often. It turns out that once we are out of school, the size of our vocabulary stops growing as fast as it once did. Reading turns out to be one of the most effective ways that as adults we can continue to grow our vocabulary. Once again, a word-of-the-day desk calendar is not going to get you to where you want to be.

If you want to become a great presenter, then you have to become a great reader. In order for this to happen, you need to discover interesting books. The best way to do this is to simply ask other people that you know what they are reading. The key here is to find a way to filter the unending stream of books that are produced every year into a manageable trickle that you can have a chance of reading.

Other good ways to fette possible books for you to read include seeing movies and then reading the book. I was touched by the movie “Pursuit of Happyness” and just had to follow this up by getting and reading Chris Gardner’s book that the movie was based on. Wow – the book was much different from the movie, I was very glad that I read it. Another way to pick out the books that you might want to read is to spend some time with the book review section of your local newspaper – this can be a great way to spot stinkers.

Once you’ve created a list of books / authors that you’d like to read in order to have your presentations become inspired, the next thing that you need to do is to get your hands on some books. This is actually quite easy to do, but you’ve got to remember that you’ve got a lot of choices. Remember when you used to go to the library as a kid? Well guess what – the library is still there. When was the last time that you went?

Other sources for books include your local used book store (why pay full price?), the local Borders / Barnes & Nobel, and your on-line friend – Amazon. It really doesn’t matter where you get your books from, just make sure that you get them and that you read them! Your audiences will thank you…