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.