Prepare for Negotiating with Precedents

Fail to prepare and prepare to fail.

Remember when your moms and dads told you this before your UPSR and PMR? Remember the hours of study time you put in as a result? Chances are your level of success was proportionate to the amount of time you put in.

Diligent preparation for big challenges pays off in the long run and this holds true today, even though you’re not in school anymore. What are some of the challenges you face on your job that require preparation? That do-or-die sales presentation for a potential customer? Your annual review with your supervisor? How about negotiations with your suppliers?

Among the challenges you face on your job, few pay off as well for adequate preparation as negotiation does. So let's discuss how preparation can help you negotiate better and with more confidence.

Let’s begin with precedents. Precedents are outcomes that have happened before in similar negotiating contexts. Knowing how events turned out in the past can benchmark how you want them to turn out in the present. And in Malaysia, where customs, traditions and long-standing practices are honored, invoking precedents as examples or justification can carry weight in your negotiations.

So do some research. Be prepared with your previous numbers and theirs, if you can access them. For example, if your counterparts are asking for discounts that you can’t provide, be prepared to show them that all of your customers always get equally fair prices.

If you find you have no precedents with the counterpart you’re currently negotiating with, market value is often a good substitute. When you’re planning to negotiate for a used car, for example, reading through the classified ads and knowing how much the car you want is worth will help you ensure that you get a good deal.

Precedents aren’t limited to numbers. You can also find precedents for terms. When the Ford Foundation negotiated to begin operations in Sudan, for example, the Sudanese hesitated when the Ford Foundation’s representatives asked for tax and customs exemption. They eased up immediately, however, when they were told that the Foundation’s agreement with Egypt contained similar exemptions.

The power of the past can give you leverage in negotiations, so spend some time studying your history. Just like for your PMR, the more time you put in, the greater the payoff will be.

You vs PowerPoint: Who Speaks for Whom?

If you were born before 1980, you probably remember how much trouble it used to be to prepare a business presentation. It took hours to print your transparencies and real muscle to cart around those bulky overhead projectors. Today, however, with presentation software programs like PowerPoint, you can carry hundreds of digital presentations on a thumb drive, which plugs directly into a projector smaller than a tissue box controlled with a hand-held remote. Easy.

In fact, maybe a little too easy.

PowerPoint presentations are intended to be visual support for you, the presenter. Slides enhance your spoken message, illustrate your trends and comparisons, and create a picture of what you have to say.

When used effectively, PowerPoint helps your audience follow you. It shows them where you are and indicates transitions between ideas. It helps you to introduce new information and builds a sense of anticipation for your audience.

Studies conducted by 3M, the people who make your Post-It notes, have indicated that PowerPoint makes presentations more interesting, more entertaining, more impactful, and more persuasive. How much more? Up to 43% more.

In short, PowerPoint’s job is to make your presentation visual. Many presenters, however, use PowerPoint to do everything.

PowerPoint slides should not speak for you. You are there to speak for them. Wordy, overly-detailed slides are designed to help you remember everything you have to say, but these take the audience’s attention away from you. If you need an outline to help you remember your details, got in on a separate piece of paper and get it off your slides. Design your slides for your audience’s benefit, not for yours.

Also, when you close your presentation, saying ‘thank you’ is your job, not PowerPoint’s. When you reach your last slide, turn PowerPoint off with your remote or by pressing the letter “B” on your keyboard. Face your audience and tell them, ‘thank you.’ Wait for the applause to die down, then politely invite them to ask their questions. If you have a ‘thank you’ slide and a ‘Q&A’ slide, get them out of your presentation. ‘Thank you’ is much more sincere if it comes from you.

Remember, your business presentations are not about PowerPoint, they’re about you. And if your audience likes you, they’ll love your presentation.

Cut Back on Words

Imagine this scenario.

It’s Thursday afternoon, 3pm. Your boss comes to your desk, obviously panicked. He explains that a small group of senior managers from headquarters in Sydney will be at your office tomorrow morning for a sales update. Everyone needs to prepare. Your job, he explains, will be to deliver a 20-minute presentation explaining how the recent economic downturn caused sales to go flat, and to make positive projections for the coming year. “Drop everything and get to work on it now,” he says. “You’re on at 9:30 tomorrow morning.”

As he leaves, your head falls into your hands. A 20-minute presentation? Tomorrow morning? What am I going to say?

So, you call up PowerPoint on your laptop and begin filling your slides with words, words, words so you don’t forget what you want to say.

You’ve seen PowerPoint presentations like this yourself, I’m sure. From beginning to end, each slide is up to 150 words worth of nothing but text. As a result, the presenter stands in front facing the screen reading each word to you. How long can you listen to this attentively?

If you are delivering a presentation using text, remember, less is more. Rather than designing slides with full sentences and even paragraphs, stick with short bullet points for each main idea. Read the bullet point to the audience, and elaborate spontaneously with the details. If you need help remembering details, use an outline on a separate piece of paper in your hand or, better, on the table in front of you and glance at it when you need to.

The main advantage of using few words is that your audience will remember your main ideas more easily. Show them a slide filled with 150 words and they’ll remember nothing when you move on. Show them a few clear bullets representing your main ideas, however, and these will stick with them, especially if you present them effectively.

How many words can you get away with? Use this as a design guideline: No more than five bullet points per slide and no more than five words per bullet. Twenty-five words. That’s about the most your audience can handle.

Keep this in mind: The more you read, the more they know. The more they know, the more they forget. The more they forget, the less they know. So don’t read.

Be Purposeful with Your Animation

Some of the most basic elements of PowerPoint slide design can help you get the greatest impact from your business presentations. Choosing the correct font, for example, makes your slides more readable. Using a high percentage of graphic slides rather than a lot of text helps your audience focus better and allows you to speak more spontaneously rather than reading your slides word for word.

A third element of slide design that you can use effectively is animation.

When designing your slides, you can animate your textual bullet points and you can animate your graphics.

Bullet points are animated when you display them one at a time rather than showing them all at once when you change your slides. If your audience sees just one bullet at a time, it’s clear to them exactly which idea you’re speaking about, and they can’t read ahead, which might result in their losing focus.

When you animate your bullet points, use the same effect for each one that you display. You may think that a variety of effects, such as fly-ins, fade-ins and crawl-ins, make your presentation more interesting, but actually, using the same effect each time develops consistency in your presentation and makes your animation less distracting.

The best effects you can use for your bullet points are fly-ins and wipes from left to right. This is because your audience reads them from left to right. Using these effects, therefore, helps your audience absorb the textual information more quickly.

In addition to bullet points, you can also animate your graphics. Graphics are animated just like your bullet points, and you can choose from a variety of effects to bring them onto your screen. Like your bullet points, however, consistency is key. Using the same effects for each graphic helps develop the consistency your audience needs to follow you better.

Some of the clip art graphics available are already animated, meaning that they move. While these are useful for illustrating some of your points, they can be distracting. Leave them on your screen for just a short time to make an impact, and remove them when you move on to another idea. Your audience will focus on you if they’re not watching your animated clip art.

Animation is effective for both bullet points and graphics, but be careful not to over-animate. Too much, and in addition to losing your impact, your business presentation begins to look like a cartoon. For each animation you choose, make sure you have a clear purpose for using it.