If you were the coach of a football team, you wouldn’t go into your next game without a strategy for winning would you? Then why would you ever consider starting a sales negotiation without having a strategy for getting the deal that you want to get?

Issues = Strategy
Before you can even start to create a strategy for your next sales negotiation, you’re going to have do some homework first – sorry about that. Where you want to get to is defined by the issues that you need to deal with.

Not all issues are created the same and not all issues need to contribute to your strategy. This is a point that can confuse some negotiators. You’ll never get your way on everything so you need to prioritize the issues and determine which ones are key to where you want to go in the future. Issues bigger than just this negotiation should help you to make these types of decisions.

Rank ‘Em & Yank ‘Em
Knowing the issues is the starting point, but prioritizing them is the next step. As with all such things in life, it’s not a matter of “important” and “unimportant” issues.

Instead, negotiating issues can generally be classified into three groups: musts, gives, and don’t-cares. The musts are the ones that will form the basis of your sales negotiating strategy. The gives and the don’t-cares will be the tools that your strategy will use to get you to the deal that you are looking for.

Where To Start?
Knowing what the issues are and just how important each of them is to you is where you need to start. The next step that you need to take is to make a decision on what starting position you want to take on each issue.

It’s not so much how you feel about the issue that will guide you here, but rather how you feel that the other side of the table thinks about it. Your starting position should be either closer or farther from their position depending on just how much time you want to spend on the issue and how important it is to you.

Got A Fallback Plan?
One of the reasons that people are attracted to the world of sales negotiating is because by its very nature, it’s dynamic – things are always changing. This includes your strategy: it’s going to have to change during the negotiation.

Realizing this, you’re going to have to come up with one or more fallback plans. The fallback plan will come into play as you move from your starting position on the issues to where you want to end up. The path that you take may not always be the one that you expected and so a fallback plan is needed.

Seeing The Future
Any good sales negotiating strategy has to have an end game. You’ve got to shut your eyes and picture how you think that the future will turn out.

Of the issues that will be negotiated, which ones do you think that the other side will be willing to settle first? Which one will come next? How about after that?

As issues get resolved, the negotiations can become more difficult – you’ll have fewer cards left to play. Your negotiating strategy needs to have a plan for in which order you want the issues to be resolved so that you can walk away with the best deal possible for you.

What All Of This Means For You
To get to where you want to go, you need to have a strategy that tells you what you’ll do at each step along the way. The quality of the outcome of your next sales negotiation may very well rest on the quality of your negotiation strategy.

A good sales negotiation strategy starts with having a good understanding of the issues that will be negotiated. It then builds on this by prioritizing the issues, creating a starting position for each one along with a fallback plan, and finally determining in which order you want to resolve the issues.

Taking the time before your next sales negotiation starts to study the issues and create a solid strategy will pay huge dividends. Having a good strategy is what sets the great sales negotiators apart from everyone else.

As a seasoned public speaker of many venues, I can tell you there’s a big difference between giving a speech and giving a presentation. One cannot, of course, teach presentation skills without teaching basic speech skills, and vice versa. The two are closely related in terms of understanding how to use body language, voice, eye contact and other techniques. But while there are many similar and overlapping skills, the difference lies in the objective.

Let’s start with giving a Speech.

If you’ve taken any speech classes in college, you’ve probably heard there are three types of speeches: informative, persuasive and entertaining. While this is fairly accurate, it won’t help in discerning between speeches and presenting because many think they are one in the same. But they are not.

Primarily, the purpose of a speech is to simply deliver a message. Often, a speech does not require the use of visual aids because a good speech can actually stand on its own without support or explanation. At the end of an effective speech, an audience will be stirred into thinking in a way or doing something they may not have before hearing it.

But most of us of in everyday life will generally hear two kinds of speeches: the kind that entertain and the kind that aim to change thinking or attitudes. After-dinner speeches and wedding toasts are in the former camp, most others in the latter. The “change” speeches can still have entertaining elements, but their purpose goes beyond that. Consider eulogies, for example. A eulogy is, or should be, in honor of the deceased. It should therefore connect with, and hopefully uplift the hearts of the mourners. It’s a speech, not a presentation, and the intention is to generate affection and good feelings.

Speeches are often, but not always, written out word for word and are given by individuals who normally don’t speak to crowds, or at least don’t regularly engage in public speaking (presidential speeches are an obvious exception). This is why a person giving a speech can and is usually expected to read the speech from paper or a teleprompter. An experienced speech giver, however, will still attempt to make the reading sound like he or she is actually talking to the audience at a personal level rather than just reading to no one in particular.

Many speeches also tend to be formal in nature. Consider how graduation speeches or State of the Union Addresses are delivered. Because of the formality, the speech would sound very similar from one audience and situation to another. But while it’s true that from some speeches there have been spontaneous outpourings of impromptu words and passion, most stay within the script.

Now let’s talk about Presenting.

A presentation needs a proposition and typically, a call to the audience for decisive action afterward. A good presenter understands that he or she is putting on a performance to a degree. Presenting is a form of art, a direct connection with an audience that engages people on intellectual and emotional levels. It should be designed to give an audience an experience, not just information. Presentations involve more entertainment, more senses and more activity from both the speaker and audience. An effective presentation is an orchestration of many pieces of many things to enhance the message.

Presentations tend to be less formal and the material should not be delivered by means of reading from a script. In fact, they should never be written word for word, or even memorized word for word. A seasoned presenter knows how to use notes with just key or “trigger” words to remind him or her of what to say. Also, presentations will often employ storytelling that the presenter can do off the cuff and from the heart.

The beauty of a presentation is that the presenter can be spontaneous and add, modify, or eliminate material according to the audience’s reaction or things like distractions or time constraints. This is why the same presentation can be delivered in vastly differently ways depending on the crowd and venue. And unlike speeches, presentations often will involve the use of visual aids to stir emotion or drive a point. At the end of a presentation, if the presenter has been effective, audience members will not only be moved to do something afterwards, they will also have some new knowledge in their mental arsenal to take away.

Finally, another purpose of presentations is to make a sale. A presentation geared toward selling is an emotionally compelling one designed to create a perceived need to buy the product, whatever it may be. Everything the presenter does and shows will be engineered to create and feed that need. Such a speaker will usually have books or DVDs or sign-up sheets waiting in the back.

In summary, if you’re going to be a speaker at some engagement and trying to decide what format to use, a good question to ask is: What is the purpose of my talk? The answer to that question will help you decide what you’re there to do for your audience, what they expect, and how you’re going to deliver it.

The art of persuasion and negotiation is a much-coveted skill. For hundreds of years, humankind has been using these skills to survive. The ancient Greeks negotiated with their neighboring lands all the time. Leaders of different nations always send ambassadors to settle peace negotiations. Traders of both the old and the new world use their powers of persuasion to sweeten their deals.

If you look at today’s environment, the art of persuasion and negotiation has only become more relevant. The most successful people in the world know this all too well. By reading this article, you, too, can learn how to channel their powers of persuasion and negotiation.

1) Knowledge is power.

In the art of persuasion and negotiation, knowledge is very crucial. How much you know determines the extent of your power over the other. Before attempting a negotiation, you have to know everything there is to know about the people you’ll be speaking with.

Find out what their weaknesses are, what they want, how much they are willing to put out, etc. Knowing all these can help you come up with better points for arguments and negotiations. You’ll have an easier time persuading people to see things your way as well.

2) Establish common goals.

When dabbling in the art of persuasion and negotiation, you must remember that both parties should benefit from the deal. As much as possible, make the deal a win-win situation for everyone.

One way to cinch such collaborations is by establishing common goals – goals that are in line with you and your prospect’s plan. Doing this gives the client a sense of solidarity, which will make them more agreeable to whatever it is you’re cooking up.

3) Try the grassroots approach.

Gone are the days when you don’t care about the person you’re negotiating with over the phone. The grassroots strategy is once again earning popularity.

Instead of treating your clients like cash cows, try to develop a certain relationship with them. Ask about their family or their dreams every once in a while. The grassroots approach requires you to relate with the people you’re trying to persuade or negotiate with. Drop your high and mighty attitude and start knocking on doors.

The art of persuasion and negotiation has long been practiced. Anybody can try the different strategies one step at a time. Try it on your parents, your friends or the local shopkeepers in your town.