Shopping the competition

Don’t hesitate to do your own research. Rather than read about what is happening in the marketplace, pound the pavement for the information. A firsthand look can be a real eye-opener. Suppose that you’re planning to purchase an apartment building. You may want to play the role of a prospective renter before ever offering to become an owner of the entire building. Walk through the neighborhood, visiting other apartment buildings. In an hour, you can become the world’s leading expert on the price and availability of apartments in that block or two. Talk with tenants in the building you’re planning to buy. That approach always produces more reliable information than talking with the owner or the owner’s representative.

Whether you are buying or selling, a shopping trip is one of the best ways to educate yourself about price, availability, and quality considerations. I’m not talking about buying — just shopping. Frankly, this is the only kind of shopping I really enjoy. The more we know, the better we feel. Don’t forget to make notes during your shopping expedition. You’ll be gathering a great deal of new information. You may remember most of it; but without good notes, you won’t remember where you got the different pieces of information.

Visiting the library

The library is one of the most underused negotiating resources in your community. Reintroducing yourself to this great institution can be a blast. The library has all sorts of resources you can use to find the value of various goods or services. Of course, the Internet has sharply decreased everyone’s visits to the library, but it remains a good source for hard-to-find periodicals and research materials.
When you go to the library, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Librarians are among the most helpful people in the world, and most city libraries designate a staff person to assist in research

Browse the Internet for Negotiation Preparation

Browsing the Internet is perhaps the easiest and fastest way to research the marketplace because the Internet is a giant warehouse of information on any topic you can imagine. The list of reliable search engines continues to grow and improve as technology evolves. If you visit the Web sites for search engines Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.com (to name just a few), or use Wikipedia to research various topics, you’ll discover that nearly any information you need is at your fingertips. Make it a habit to visit any or all of these Web sites before entering a negotiation. Remember, knowledge puts you a step ahead of the game.

But don’t believe everything you read on the Internet just because it’s sitting there in black and white. Anybody can put anything up on the Internet to be read by the world. Check your sources carefully. Information from the Internet is not like the information you find in a book from a reputable publisher in which editors have pored over every sentence for clarity and accuracy. Blogs in particular require scrutiny because most of them present the unabashed opinion of the author. Many sites are sponsored by commercial entities whose sole and undeniable aim is to change your mind about something or sell you something, and if the best way to do that is to leave out some essential facts, so be it. That being said, the Internet is a mighty awesome source of information.

But no one source is perfect for providing answers to everything. If the Internet doesn’t help you find the information that you need, the following sections discuss other resources that very well may.

Gathering Information: The One with the Most Knowledge Wins

Some people think that power comes from size, gruffness, or clout, but the easiest and most effective single thing you can do to increase your power is to prepare. You may be facing the greatest negotiator in the world, but if you’re prepared, and the greatest negotiator isn’t, you have the upper hand. Yet people routinely shortchange themselves when it comes to preparation. Even experienced negotiators often sacrifice solid preparation on the altar of self-confidence or a crushing time schedule. Some negotiators don’t fully appreciate the value of spending the extra time and effort on thorough preparation. To others, preparing just feels like drudge work.

Preparation doesn’t have to be dull. Preparing for a negotiation can trigger the same type of excitement experienced when preparing for a military scouting mission. Your palms may not sweat, but the rush is similar. You’re about to head into the unknown. The outcome is uncertain. Pulling together data is like girding your loins, checking your ammo, becoming secure, and getting ready. Prepare as though you are going into battle.

Preparing is essential, even if it’s someone you know

When it comes to gathering information about the other party, every day is different. Don’t assume that you can begin any negotiation without special preparation, no matter how well you know the person. When a seasoned purchasing agent sees a regular salesperson, the purchasing agent often opens the conversation by saying, “What’s going on with you these days?” Pleasantry or preparation?

A neighbor who’s about to ask you to stop parking in front of her house begins by saying, “Hi. How is the family doing today?” Pleasantry or preparation? After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, even the least skilled negotiator first asked how the person on the other side had fared in the storm. No one pressed for resolution of matters until housing and offices returned to some normalcy.

Even if such questions have been a pleasantry for you in the past, start making them part of your preparation and treating the person according to the answer. I have actually put off a negotiation if the person sounded stressed out or confessed to being under a deadline. It’s good manners. It’s good negotiating.

Recognizing faults that can trip you up

People use three statements when a negotiation goes badly because they failed to find out something negative about the person whom they negotiated with.

• “Nobody told me!”
• “Who knew?”
• “I wish I woulda known!”

Never say those words again. When you use these phrases, you’re missing a good opportunity to learn an important lesson: Get to know the person you’re negotiating with before you make a deal with them. If a negotiation goes sour because you got into a deal with someone who was unethical or dishonest, you should say:

• “I screwed up. I didn’t investigate enough.”

or

• “I saw some signs and I ignored them.”

Failing to find out enough about the person with whom you’re negotiating is the most common mistake people make in the preparation phase of a negotiation. In fact, people repeat that oversight every day all across the country when making the largest purchase of their lives: the purchase of their own family home.

Focusing on the Negotiator’s Interests

When I talk about interests, I don’t mean things such as baseball (not that it’s a bad interest and can’t make a difference in a negotiating session once in a while). I’m talking about the person’s negotiating interests. You want to know what that person is interested in getting out of the negotiation. It’s almost always more than money. (If you’re buying a used car from an individual, money may be the only consideration, but that’s about the only time it is.) I can’t think of a negotiation of any importance that does not have issues other than money attached to it, and often these issues are more important than money, especially to the person across the table or to that person’s main client.

For example, if you find out that the negotiator had a bad experience with your company’s delivery, quality, or communication, you had better believe that these issues will be important in this negotiation, even though the person on the other side of the table may be reluctant to bring them up. You also need to be alert to the possibility that the interests of the person whom you’re negotiating with and the person whom he has to please are a bit different. The person you’re negotiating with may receive his bonus based on some cost-saving formula. His boss may be focused on timely delivery.

Be sure you find out all you can about the boss/client so you meet the needs of both the negotiator and his client

Making it personal

When you’re buying a used car from a neighbor, you may think that the neighbor doesn’t have a client in the sense that I’m using the word here. But your neighbor wants to make his wife proud of him when he goes home. In this example, the wife is your neighbor’s client, the person whom your opposite number has to please.

In other words, a very personal issue always lurks in the background of every negotiation. You and I and your business partners and your friends and everyone else in the world have someone whom we want to make proud, from whom we want a pat on the back, to whom we have to answer. When you know who that person is and something about him or her, you’re way ahead in helping the person on the other side of the table present the results of the negotiation in the best possible light. Many a time I have made a friend for life and preserved a favorable result by suggesting ways to present the results of our negotiation to that special person.

A quick aside: When negotiating with your teenager, many parents often are frustrated because the teenager truly believes that he or she shouldn’t have to answer to anybody. This attitude sets them temporarily adrift, without the social anchors that you worked so hard to lay all around them. You have no one to go to and nowhere to turn to find an ally because your teen is listening to no one, except perhaps some other teens whom you’re not all that enthusiastic about to begin with.

This lack of a “client” is one of the things that makes negotiating with teenagers so difficult. Forget about negotiating specifics when this happens. Lay your frustrations aside and try to tether that teen somewhere, anywhere, before he or she drifts out to sea. When you want to make an ally out of the person across the table, find out who the real client is and figure out how to make that person happy. Part of your job is to make your counterpart’s job easier. Do that, and you’ll come away with a better result and someone who actually may feel indebted to you.

Aiming to please

If you can figure out your opposite’s key client, you’ll be able to make a deal with this person much more easily because you can actually help your opposite move up in her organization. After you know the person or people whom your negotiating partner wants to please, you can study those people so you know what your opposite number is up against. You may also be able to put in a good word for her.

Let me walk you through an obvious situation. You’re negotiating with someone from an organization. Whom does this person (the negotiator) need to please? Who gives this person her annual performance review? The person your negotiator has to please may not be the person who has to approve this particular deal. He or she may not be the person with whom your opposite number has the most direct contact.

When I say client, I’m referring to the person whom your opposite number needs or wants to please. No matter how much power your opposite number has, negotiating with you is just the first step of the process. Your counterpart must take the result of the negotiation to somebody (as do you), and you both want that somebody to be pleased.

How to Determine the Negotiator’s Level of Authority?

Finding out how much authority the negotiator has is a critical piece of information to obtain very early in the process. The last thing you want to do is to make a deal, shake hands, and then have the person say, “I’ll get back to you in a week.” If you know ahead of time the limits of the negotiator’s authority, you can handle matters differently. For example:

• Present some of your information in writing so the person has a document to add to the presentation they will make to the ultimate decision maker. Then information they present is more in line with your presentation.
• Be willing to accept a slightly lesser deal within the authority of your opposite number rather than delay matters while higher approval is obtained.

The easiest and most comfortable way to find out how much authority someone has is just to inquire at the top of the first negotiating session. “Do you have to check with anyone else in order to close this deal?” is a comfortable way of asking.

Some people like to hide the limits of their authority and act as though they have sole decision-making power when, in fact, they have to get the approval of a lot of other, more-important people before they can act. In large organizations, the limits of authority are generally pretty well spelled out, so you can find out pretty specifically what the other person’s authority is. But you have to ask. It’s worth the effort to keep probing on this subject until you know.

Keep in mind that the limits on authority can be about a lot of things other than just the dollar limit that can be negotiated. Limits on authority can cover any aspect of the deal. Anything that commits another department or an affiliated company almost always involves getting approval from that other department or company.

In a large corporation, even people with a great deal of authority to enter business agreements can’t alter the corporate policy on whether disputes are settled by arbitration or litigation. That decision is made in the legal department for the entire corporation. So you want to find out the limits to authority that are important to you and to closing the particular deal that you’re working on.

Identifying the Person Conducting the Negotiation

Usually, you already know the name of the individual with whom you’ll be negotiating. If you’re negotiating with a large company, however, you may not know the name of the particular person (or people) who will be in the room with you. Ask. Ask whomever you are dealing with. But ask. Ask before you get there. It’s good manners. It’s good negotiating. After you know the negotiator’s name, find out as much as you can about the individual or individuals who will be in the room.

You probably already have a good idea about how to research an individual — use the search engine Google (www.google.com). The results are usually awesome. But suppose that you’re dealing with someone who hasn’t risen to Google status. Not everyone has a bio on the Internet. Humpf. Right away you know that this person isn’t so scary after all. The corporation may be huge, but if you can’t find the individual person you’ll be negotiating with on the Internet, well, how scary can he or she be?

Don’t assume that the person won’t be a tough negotiator because he or she is far down the totem pole. Sometimes those at the bottom of the corporate ladder are the very toughest to deal with. They often have less flexibility than someone higher up and often are trying hard on every level to show the boss how worthy they are of a promotion.

Ask friends who have dealt with this person what they can tell you about him or her. Ask acquaintances. Ask the person who is setting up the meeting. Ask competitors with whom you have a relationship if they know anything about the person you’ll be negotiating with. Make a cold call if you have to, but ask. Find out all you can about the person. If you meet in their office, note the pictures, hobbies, interests, and art that are in the room. The more you know about the person, the smoother your talks with them will go.

Understanding the Opposition

The most common mistake made by folks who are getting ready to negotiate is failing to learn all they can about the person with whom they are negotiating. You may be negotiating with the largest corporation in the world, but you’ll be in a room (or on the phone or on the Internet) with an individual representative of that corporation. Find out all you can about that person.

Obviously, you want to know the name and title of that person. If you will be negotiating with more than one person, you’ll want to know the names and titles of everyone on the team. You can easily find out the negotiator’s name just by asking him or her, if no one has bothered to tell you. Usually, you will be handed a card. If not, I also say something like, “I want to put all your information in my address book. What is your correct title?” And from the negotiator’s name and title, you can tell a lot. For example:

• Position: A person’s title usually tells you a lot about where the person stands in the organization’s pecking order.
• Lifestyle: A person’s name, which you can look up in a number of sources, including your local phone book, can lead you to personal information, such as the
• Neighborhood the person lives in
• Church the person may attend
• Schools the person’s children attend
• Areas where the person may shop

These details can give you insights into the individual and certainly something to talk about — which doesn’t obligate you to talk about them. When you find out about sensitive material, exercise discretion. The exception would be if you discovered something which, if true, would cause you to pull out of the deal. In that case, you would want to clear the matter up early and discreetly, rather than waste a lot of time with someone with whom you aren’t going to do business anyway.

The amount of time and energy you put into this kind of preparation reflects how important the negotiation is to you. Or to the other side. If you find out that the person you’re negotiating with is the president of the company, you know right away that this negotiation is important to the other side, so you may be inclined to take it more seriously. Perhaps the president is looking you over for other business, or the ramifications of the deal are greater than you had initially thought.
But much more important than what you discover from the name and title, you want to know a few other things:

• What is the negotiator’s authority?
• Who is his or her client?
• What interests are driving this negotiation for the other side?

These are three key questions that you need to answer in order to know about the person who will be sitting across the negotiating table from you. Answering these questions is an essential step to success in the negotiation. Negotiators who fail to ask these questions are so common that, when you pursue the answers yourself, you will not only be more successful in the negotiation, but you will often leave the negotiation having made yourself a friend of the negotiator sitting on the other side of the table.

How to plan a negotiation place?

If your company is building a new space, get involved in planning the room where most of the negotiating occurs. Fight hard to make it the right size, near the restrooms, and near some areas that can be used for break-out sessions. Everyone has a tendency — during these days when money is hemorrhaging all over the place — to cut back on the negotiating space because “we don’t use it that much” or “we can make do with less.”

All this is true. However, if you consider how important selling is to your company, or negotiating major deals to your law firm, or closing a transaction to your bank or real estate business, you cannot overrate the value of this space. This location is where you really make money. It is where the deals are made that are at the heart of your business. Don’t “do with less” in your negotiating space unless you are willing to “do with less” in your negotiation. Scale down offices if you have to, but don’t scale down your negotiation space.

The next time your company designs new office space, look around at great negotiating spaces. You don’t need a huge budget, but you do need to keep in mind some basic needs. A good negotiating space is more than a huge conference table with marble top. In fact, the marble top can be a bit formal for most negotiations. In my law office, we have break-out rooms nearby, great cross ventilation, and a work station that can be turned toward the conference area. Everything is at our fingertips. The area was designed by Marni Belsome, who took into consideration these tips about good negotiating space.

How seating affect your negotiation?

Seating arrangements may seem like a silly subject to you if you’ve never thought about it before. Sometimes the importance of seating can be overemphasized — but not often. Definitely do not leave seating to chance, in spite of the number of people who seem willing to do so. Where you sit during a negotiation can have a big impact on how well you function during a negotiation.
Here are some seating tips:

• Sit next to the person with whom you need to consult quickly and privately. This person is your confidant. You don’t want that person sitting across the table and off-center, where you will need to use hand signals and glances to communicate.
• Sit opposite the person with whom you have the most conflict. For example, if you are the leader of your negotiating team, sit opposite the leader of the other negotiating team. If you want to soften the confrontational effect, you can be off-center by a chair or two. If the shape of the table or room gives you the opportunity to be on an adjacent, rather than opposite, side to your opponent, you can lessen the confrontational approach.
• Consider who should be closest to the door and who should be closest to the phone. If you expect to use a speaker phone or to have people huddling outside the negotiating room, these positions can be positions of power. The person nearest the phone generally controls its use. The person nearest the door can control physical access to the room.
• Windows and the angle of the sun are important considerations, especially if the situation generates heat or glare. Again, stay within your comfort zone. If the room feels physically uncomfortable, kindly suggest a different room. Now about the negotiation of prime interest to most readers: asking for a raise. Usually that conversation takes place in your boss’s office. Avoid the seat where you normally sit to receive assignments. If your boss has a conversation area, try to move there for the discussion about your raise. Sofas are the great equalizers. If your boss is firmly planted behind the desk, do two things:
• Stay standing for a beat or two at the beginning of your presentation, but not after you are invited to sit down. Speaking on your feet is a display of uncompromised self-confidence.
• When you sit down, move your chair to the side of the desk — or at least out of its regular position. You want to make the statement that this is a different conversation than the normal routine of your boss assigning you a task.

Try to avoid being lower than your boss when you talk about your compensation. Whenever you can, try be on the same eye level with the person you are negotiating with, even if you normally take direction from that person.

How to handle negotiation on your home turf?

Your own office often provides a powerful advantage because it is your home turf. It’s your operational base. You have all the information needed at your hands. You have a support staff, should you need their expertise or assistance. Your comfort level is going to be at its highest in that environment. The home turf is so important to the Grundig Pump Company of Fresno, California, that it built a series of guestrooms right at its factory and hired a staff to look after visitors. You can see the plant, negotiate the deal, and never worry about accommodations, meals, or anything else while you are in town. Grundig set up an ideal negotiating environment. The visitor is freed from the shackles of travel arrangements and home office interruptions. This setup represents the epitome of the oft-stated rule “always negotiate on your home turf.”

Beware! Negotiating on your home turf is not always best. Often you are better off in the other person’s office. The more time you spend on the other skills covered in this blog, the less important it is whether you are in your office or someone else’s. Sometimes meeting in the other party’s office is actually better for you. If your opponent in a negotiation always claims to be missing some document back at the office, meeting there could avoid that particular evasion. Sometimes bulky, hard-to-transport documents are critical to a negotiation. In that event, the best site for negotiation is wherever those documents happen to be.

Visiting the other person’s office always gives you a lot of information about that person. A quick glance around the office tells you a lot about the person’s interests, usually something about his family situation, whether she is neat or messy, what his taste is in furnishings, and often, just how busy she really is. You usually can tell something about the person’s place in the pecking order of the business. Is her office close to the more-powerful people in the organization or a fur piece away? How much of the coveted window space does he have?

The information you glean from visiting the other person’s office allows you to know the person better. And the better you know and understand the other person, the easier it is for you to relate to them. You can never know too much about the person you are facing in a negotiation. The most important consideration is to be in a place, physically and mentally, where you can listen. Be emphatic on this issue — both for your sake and for the sake of the person with whom you negotiate. If you cannot concentrate on what the other person is saying, you cannot negotiate. It’s impossible.

How to define space for your negotiation?

People often spend very little time considering the best environment for negotiating, or they rely on rules that make arranging a time and place difficult. For example, when both sides consider it necessary to negotiate in their own office, getting things started is impossible. If your position is low on the corporate ladder and you feel you have no control over the details of the negotiating environment, giving this issue some consideration is even more important. For example, you may think that the location in which you negotiate for a raise may already be set. Read on. The material covered in this section can help you make even your boss’s office a more-receptive negotiating environment.

Walking through the door

No matter how sleep-deprived, harried, or down-in-the-dumps you may be, always enter the negotiating room with assertiveness. Establish confidence and control from the opening moment. That moment sets a tone for the entire meeting. This fact is true even if you are not officially in charge of the meeting. These guidelines can vault the most junior person at a meeting to MVP status almost immediately.

Never forget the pleasantries. If the last negotiating session ended on a bad note, clear that away first. Otherwise, you run the risk that unrelated matters may ignite the controversy all over again. If you can resolve the situation up front, you can move forward unfettered. Ignoring such a situation just leaves the ill-will hovering over the negotiating table. I call it the “elephant in the room.” The bad feelings creep into and influence every conversation. The negativity taints all the proceedings until it has been cleared away. As your hand is on the door of the negotiating room or as you dial the phone number of your counterpart, put on your attitude.

Take a beat and lift yourself up to the occasion. Grandmother was right — “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Toss your head back — literally. Smile, inside and out. Focus on your immediate purposes. Have your right hand free to shake hands with whoever is there. If the meeting requires you to wear one of those awful name badges, be sure to write your name in large letters and place the badge high on your right side so people can easily read it. Improving your attitude just before the session begins can be one of the most valuable moments you spend in a negotiation.
Here are some tips in case you are in charge of the meeting:

• Make sure that all participants are present and ready to listen. If someone is missing, you face the first dilemma of a meeting leader: to start or not to start the meeting. Follow your gut and the culture in which you are operating. If you are always prompt and you have a roomful of folks whose time is valuable (whose isn’t?), proceed and educate the laggard later. If the missing person is the boss, well, again, the culture is important. Some bosses would be annoyed that you held the meeting for them.
• State your purpose for having the meeting. This is like the opening paragraph of a term paper. If there is not a written agenda, outline the important points you will discuss. Knowing what is going to happen helps keep everyone focused.
• If there is a written agenda, be sure everyone has one and take a
• moment to review it. Put time restraints on each agenda item. Doing so keeps you from lingering on a subject longer than expected and not giving enough time to others.
• Make a clear request for agreement on the agenda and procedure.
• Gauge how the other party feels about your agenda. This is an important step on the road to closing a deal. This is your chance to build empathy and start things off with something on which everyone is in agreement.
• Acknowledge the participants’ attitudes and feelings as they relate toyour purpose. Your objective is to close the deal. To do this, you need to establish empathy from the beginning of the meeting.
• Begin according to the agenda. If you deviate from your plan at the beginning of the meeting, you will have a very hard time gaining control later on You’ve opened the meeting and presented your agenda. You’ve taken the first step into the negotiation process. Breathe.

Dressing for success

During the 1980s, two books had considerable impact on what people wore in order to get power and respect. These books, geared toward the professional, have a much wider application if you read between the lines. The first book, Dress for Success by John T. Molloy, chauvinistically addressed only men. The book’s popularity led to a sequel, The Woman’s Dress for Success Book. Both are valuable, if dated, aids for young executives.

The theory of both books is to look at the boss in order to look like the boss. The startling response to Molloy’s books was that, all through the 1980s, droves of young female professionals began wearing dark blue suits, white silk blouses, and big red bows at the neck. Perhaps they were helping themselves up the ladder of success, but the necessity (or perceived necessity) for ambitious young women to transform their appearance to break into the good old boys’ club is distressing.

Today, dress styles in the workplace vary widely depending on the type of business. In the entertainment industry, for instance, dress styles tend to be more casual. Visit any animation studio and you will see folks dressed as if they were attending an afternoon barbeque. But there is always a time and place for everything. Clothing styles for the workplace continue to evolve. Some companies still require business attire, others don’t.

The point is to dress for the occasion. If you’re attending an important meeting, you obviously want to look your best to be taken seriously and be respected. I once met with a writer who came into my office to pitch a story idea. He wore a T-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. My immediate impression was one of laziness. I assumed that his pitch would be as jumbled as his attire. I was right. The pitch wasn’t well thought out. It was carefree and meandering. This is not the impression you want to give the next time you approach the negotiation table.

When I give a lecture or workshop, I always wear a tie. Even in places like super-hot Singapore or super-casual Cannes, France, I wear a tie. I also always wear lace shoes. Neither one of these is a requirement. It’s what I do to make myself feel comfortable and confident. Probably nobody would notice if I wore loafers. But I would know. I would feel that I had been disrespectful to my audience.

Here is a less restrictive and simpler recommendation: Don’t dress to distract. You are in a negotiation. You want people to listen, and you need their eyes as well as their ears. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Women, you pull the eye away from your face if you wear dangling earrings or expose any cleavage.
• Men, you improve no business environment anywhere with gold chains or a sport shirt open to reveal massive amounts of that remarkable chest. Although this attire may get you attention wherever you like to stop off after work, it doesn’t contribute one bit to your negotiating position while you are at work.

If a particular type of outfit works for you on vacation or at a party, more power to you. But don’t confuse those casual social environments (which may include a bit of negotiating in the course of an evening) with the negotiating environment of the business world.

Of course, every rule has an exception. See the film Erin Brockovich for such an example. In the film, Erin, played by Julia Roberts, is hired as a secretary at a small law firm. She dresses in short skirts, revealing blouses, and stiletto heels. Her co-workers don’t take her seriously. Little do they know Erin is extremely driven and smart. Her wardrobe becomes second nature as the film progresses. She begins to investigate a suspicious real estate case involving Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which leads her to become the point person in one of the biggest class action lawsuits in American history against a multibillion dollar corporation. All this despite her risqué wardrobe.

Mirror your environment as you prepare yourself for your first negotiating session. For example, don’t wear a three-piece suit to a place where all the employees, including the executives, wear jeans and polo shirts to work. Respectfully absorb that which is around you. Sink into the surroundings.
Become a part of them.

Some negotiators take this tip beyond the way they dress. For instance, some negotiators even adapt to the pace of the speech. In New York, where people tend to talk fast, good negotiators speed up their pace a bit; in the South, where people tend to talk slowly, good negotiators slow it down a few notches. Above all, know that good manners are different from place to place.

A is for Alert

To negotiate at your best, you must be well rested and alert. If the negotiation is early in the morning, make sure you eat breakfast. If you feel stressed, do an early-morning workout or meditate. A well-rested and stress-free mind is an alert mind. And when you are alert

• Your concentration and ability to listen improve.
• You’re more likely to be quick-witted and able to respond to questions or attacks.
• You won’t rush to tie things up so you can get home or get to bed.

Your performance at any negotiation is aided by a good night’s sleep. Sometimes getting that sleep is easier said than done. If you find yourself thinking about a negotiation just when you want to go to sleep, try this trick:

Pull out a pad and jot down your thoughts. Keep going until you have cleaned out your mind. More often than not, this simple exercise enables you to doze off and secure some much-needed sleep. If you still can’t get to sleep after writing down your thoughts, at least you have a crib sheet to help your sleep-deprived mind get through the negotiating session.

Putting your plan into action

After you are clear about your vision and you take steps to achieve that vision, create your action plan. Your action plan includes the specific tasks you need to do, whom you need to help you do them, and when you need to get each step done. Action plans make you more efficient and effective. They enable you to anticipate needs, potential problems, and the time necessary for each step. The process of creating an action plan brings to light any potential obstacles that you may encounter in completing the steps. Then you can be clear about what you need to do to overcome these obstacles.
Here’s a recommendation for creating your action plan:

1. Prioritize each of your goals. Think of your action plan like a meeting agenda. Some goals will carry more weight than others. For instance, maybe buying a house and adopting a pet are part of your three-year plan. Buying a house will probably require more planning and longer discussion than adopting a pet, so finding your new home would take a higher priority.
2. List the action steps required for you to accomplish each goal. After you’ve prioritized your goals, determine what you need to do to carefully execute each goal. Include as many details as you can think of. Identify people you need to support you to achieve each action step. If it’s a family-oriented goal, such as moving homes, you probably want to involve the whole family. In a business-related goal, involve those who will be an asset to the process. When taking steps to achieve a goal, time is of the essence. Don’t let someone with a hidden agenda stifle your plan.
3. Identify potential obstacles to each of the action steps. Pause when you identify an obstacle and figure out the best way to overcome it. Solving a problem early in the process saves you the time and hassle of dealing with a potential disaster down the road.
4. Estimate the completion date for each of the action steps. Creating a timeline helps you methodically complete tasks by certain dates. Trying to achieve too much at once can often muddle the goalsetting process.

The three-year plan

To negotiate effectively, you need to know why you are engaged in the negotiation in the first place. Three-year plans are an excellent tool for planning your personal and professional life. They are brief enough to follow through on, and they are specific enough to move you toward meeting your vision. Maybe three years from now you won’t achieve everything you planned for, but if you don’t give any thought to what you want to accomplish over the next three years, you don’t stand a chance of attaining much of anything. Most people who aren’t happy with their lives and what they accomplished during the last five or ten years never bothered to look forward and develop a plan for that time period. Don’t let that happen to you. Make a three-year plan and then make sure that your negotiations contribute to achieving that plan.

Think big
Step one in achieving great results is to think big. In every aspect of a specific negotiation and in planning your life, think big. You can always scale back later. This is your life. When the next year goes by, it will be gone. You don’t get to do it over again. So take off the ball and chain; don’t let your life be shackled by small thoughts. You can never get more out of life than you choose to.

Think bold
In addition to thinking big, you need to think bold. When your vision seems very distant — when the road seems all uphill — you have to be very creative.
Try tackling the problem in a different way to reach a solution. The problem of figuring out how to make your vision become a reality is really an opportunity.
For all the horrible “B” films that director Edward D. Wood Jr. produced, his bravado is worth noting. Watch Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp as the infamous director. Wood is consistently voted the worst director of all time. Burton’s film traces Wood’s undying optimism to get the films made. Studios refused to finance or distribute his films, but Wood persevered. He thought bold. He rounded up every resource possible and got his films made, despite their minuscule budgets. Ed Wood carried out his vision and transformed his goal into a reality.

Think in sound bites
Refrain from using catch words and phrases during life planning. A life plan ought to be more tailored and personal, and some phrases act as strong guideposts. I use these phrases to help explain some complicated concepts in my seminars and lectures. Here are a few of my favorite tips for life planning. These phrases are offered after people have established their vision statements and before action plans are designed.

• The tyranny of “or”: As people make life plans, they often ask themselves whether they want this or that. Try to use the word and. The word or is limiting. The word and is expansive. Frequently, finances require that people choose between desired purchases. When you make a life plan, however, include everything you want in life. You only get one chance to live this life. Live it free of the tyranny of or.
• The banishment of “just”: Whatever you do in life, do it well and with pride. Never again say, “I am just a housewife” or “I am just a baker” or “I am just . . .” Banish the word just as an adjective to describe you or your life’s work. After you have established your vision, never diminish it with a just.
• The law of parsimony: Although you have times when you want to lend a helping hand to the whole world, you have limited time in your life. You can’t help everybody. Only help the people who can use your help. Those are not necessarily people who need your help. Needy people sometimes distract you from your life purpose. Your job is to keep a steely eye on those goals you want to achieve for yourself and your family.