Tag: business relationships

Two crucial aspect of negotiations are doing necessary external research and doing the deep internal work. If your information is lacking and you aren’t basing your strategy off of a complete picture and, certainly, if you have not done your internal work, no amount of preparation otherwise can salvage your deal.

While the idea of fully fleshed out data informing your strategy and doing the internal work to own it are obviously important for any negotiation prep, they can have the most quantifiable impact when we’re in contract or price negotiations. If you’re talking price—whether you’re negotiating salary or rates for services provided—having a clearly defined price is essential for a successful negotiation.

Have you taken the time to identify and fully own your own value?

If not, doing so before your next price negotiation is imperative. Letting your price get established mid-negotiation is the fast-track to failure. You’re sacrificing your own authority, devaluing your own skills and services, and letting your counterpart establish terms that force you to be reactionary in the moment. Whatever strategy you thought you had will quickly go out the window as your ideal price point continues to dwindle and you lose control.

Take an inventory of the services you provide your clients. Understand the cost of your time and effort. Itemize the results you produce to create as strong of a picture of your value as possible. Then find a number that feels fair and that you can live with and own fully.

At my firm, we don’t negotiate fees. This isn’t because we are looking to be tough. It is because we have done the external research and internal work necessary when we set our fees for the upcoming year to be clear they are appropriate and we fully own them. If the scope of services changes our overall fees may change but not the rate we charge. Although, we won’t offer our clients fewer services than they need and we won’t make less effort than necessary under any circumstances—and we will always provide value that at least equal or exceeds our fees.. We are aware of and stay connected to our history of achieving our clients’ objectives and getting optimum results. Our rates are going to reflect that, we comfortably hold to them and we have no problem if clients who are looking for lower rates chose to go elsewhere – in fact, we encourage it.

That’s what it means to own your value. It has to work both ways, though. You can’t just set a number that feels right or sounds good. Your price needs to be an accurate representation of your value, you need to be able to effectively present that value and then you need to deliver on that promised value. If you can’t back it up you’ll never own that price and it won’t take your counterpart long to dismantle it. It will come off as a cheap tactic and your position will be completely compromised. Your credibility for the remainder of negotiation is lost.

If you find yourself needing to negotiate your rates, you know, in moments of honesty, that you haven’t set them right. If you set an inaccurate number that overstates your value (or the value you can own at that time), the inauthentic negotiator is going to get offended or cave due to feelings of fear or scarcity when the other party asks for a discount. This is when the table banging starts and you get defensive, so that your inaccurate pricing isn’t found out. You’ve positioned yourself in such a way that your entire strategy is built upon inaccurate, half-formed information. Once that load-bearing price beam starts to crack, all of your other prep work becomes irrelevant. You have no choice but to become over-invested in the outcome or to concede and lose credibility and trust.

If you’ve done a fair audit of your own value and you know you’re able to own it, you’ll achieve the same clarity that I have at my firm. You know that what you’re asking for is right and fair. If the other party feels that your asking price is too high, that is their problem. With a fully-informed price point, you can remain detached from the outcome and be confident enough to let that prospect walk away. There will be others, because you’ve identified and fully owned your value.

Becoming an authentic negotiator is a constant process. Even when you feel like you’ve mastered my principles, there’s always more work to be done and new ways to apply the authentic negotiating approach. If you’re open to learning and continually evolving as a negotiator, it might be time to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Take my Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz: http://www.coreykupfer.com/authentic-negotiating-success-quiz/

—

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Men and women are different. That’s a simple fact that we can’t deny. It would make sense then that men and women negotiate differently. Understanding these differences when doing your preparation work is vital for your success.

I had a great conversation with the wonderful Sylvie di Giusto, of Executive Image Consulting about this topic. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31n2wK9cuQ.

Before I elaborate any further, I’d like to clear up a few things. First, and most obvious, it’s misguided to ascribe specific traits to an entire gender and take it as an absolute, but my ideas are informed by over thirty years of negotiating with men and women. Second, I also acknowledge that that for some, gender is non-binary. I speak in these binary terms because the far majority of my experience is with clients who identify as male or female.

At the negotiating table, men who are not skilled negotiators often make the mistake of being the blustery over-confident-types, quick to anger and full of ego. These traits can be temporarily effective on smaller matters with unsophisticated negotiators on the other side, but they also make becoming an authentic negotiator a challenge, fail to build relationship and significantly increase the chance of a deal not working out over time.

Women on the other hand, while still susceptible to bluster and over-confidence, are much more frequently measured and less governed by ego. Women who struggle with negotiating very often have issues with owning their value. Due to ingrained societal paradigms and many related factors, women often severely undervalue themselves, under-sell themselves and are less likely to advocate for themselves much more frequently than men do. Conversely, men are often quick to anger if they feel their value is being challenged or slighted. While the reaction seems opposite to women’s, the male response is rooted in the same issue—the inability to own their value. If they are overvaluing themselves or their product/service, an extreme defense response is to be expected, because they know they can’t own their own valuation. It is important for both men and women to be realistic and honest about their value

Let’s consider an example of undervaluing ones self. If the market value of your work is $300/hour and you perceive that your value is only $150/hour, there is almost no chance that you can successfully negotiate that $300/hour.

Just because we feel like we’re being honest with ourselves doesn’t make something true. If your work on the market is going for $300/hour, that is your value, and that is the truth. Own it.

That’s easier said than done, right? Making a 100 percent jump like that ($150.00 to $300.00) if we haven’t done the prep work to get comfortable with that valuation can take you out of your comfort zone, make your fee quote seem flimsy or disingenuous and cause it be much less likely you will close the business. If you can’t get yourself all the way up to your market value, establish a rate slightly higher than your baseline, one that you still feel you can own, and negotiate for that. It might not mean you are fully owning your value, but it’s a start and it’s changing your mind-set, which is a huge step. The next time you negotiate, you’ll be coming from an even stronger value proposition, and eventually you will own your value. You will close business at exponentially higher rates if you only quote/negotiate for what you can own at that time and then the next step is to do the work to be able to own higher rates over time.

I’ll explore some work you can do to get there in part two.

Regardless of gender, the Authentic Negotiator maintains a quiet confidence and owns their value. Their worth isn’t in question and the goals are clear. Still, it takes work, regardless of your starting point. Authentic Negotiators aren’t born that way. What work do you have left to do? My Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz will show you.

—

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Linkedin