The Negotiators Secrets

Greetings Negotiators!

My Master Mind took a little break in our schedule recently for various wonderful reasons including my 13th Wedding Anniversary. Last night we picked back up and nothing is as amazing as revving up your creative process as joining others to realize your unlimited power. The daily grind has a way of mesmerizing you to the beat of your own routine. Master Mind is a group of unique beats and rhythms all designed to release your creative passion and inspire you to right action which of course allows you to negotiate to your own best good!

What’s really great about Master Mind is that each person in the group is in their own “place” in the world of creating abundance and mastering the law of attraction. That allows each of us to look at the others and either remember resourceful patterns we’ve already discovered and might have set aside or discover new resources and patterns that truly allow you to spring to the next level.

The group I belong to is my first group. I’m so grateful that it’s a strong and focused group. All the details that seem to go into forming and maintaining a Master Mind can be overwhelming in the beginning. All I can say to any of you who haven’t tried it is that first hour of Master Mind will be so strong and so inspiring that the lure of repeating the experience will easily become a resourceful habit.

Thank you Bill Hibbler for demonstrating Master Mind at Unseminar 3. I know we break a few rules that Joe Vitale and Bill Hibbler lay out in Meet and Grow Rich. Our general attitude toward Master Mind is to rock until we drop. Since we don’t meet but every two weeks - we give and receive all that we have for that night (and sometimes the next morning) to each other.

If you are interested in Master Mind or you are already a member of one please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question.  You can also leave comments or ask questions at justask@yourownbestgood.com.  If you’d like to receive my free Negotiator Primer or Join my free Apprenticeship just sign up on the right hand side of this page.  What will you do to Negotiate toYour Own Best Good Today?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

If you’ve been reading and listening to my material this concept Every Form of Communication IS a Negotiation isn’t new to you. If you are joining for the first time then now you’ve heard it.

I often say it to clients as a form of training - giving them a reference for how to focus on Negotiation. However I’ve not spent much time demonstrating how my theorem is true and how to recognize it. Two elements of the world of communication come dramatically into my mind: Spin Doctoring and Arguments.

Recently Paris Hilton has been making the news about her overly-significant driving with a suspended license. She’s demonstrating her resourcefulness by having an online petition placed online to urge The Terminator’s own Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to “pardon” her.

I’m sure each of you have your thoughts or lack thereof about this topic - what I wish to point out is how this “maneuver” is a negotiation. One simple way of understanding any negotiation is to think of it in terms of Agreement. Before I go into that however I want to point out some resourceful aspects of the Paris Petition:

1)By writing the petition she requires people to consider her position however strong or weak as opposed to her position being disregarded or even unheard of.

2)In regards to agreement every person that signs the petition publically agrees with Paris. Public Agreement is a very strong form of leverage.

3)The Paris Petition is an interactive focal point that can be discussed, blogged about, bantered about on TV, Radio, You Tube, etc. Without the petition such talk or interest would be unfocused and gather a considerably reduced negotiating position.

4)The Paris Petition requires others to “take” a position themselves. Arnold’s press corp has already issued a statement. People who “take positions” are the easiest to negotiate with. It’s the ambiguous or indifferent person that provides the greatest challenge in a negotiation.

5)By publishing the Paris Petition online Paris has taken a public position. Once you take a position you can begin to adjust it (that is one way of understanding what a negotiation is).

I’ve revealed some of the resourceful aspects of the Paris Petition. Now lets return to the topic of Agreement. One mis-perception about the result of agreement is that a person agrees because what is being presented is what they believe is true or viable or completely acceptable.

One cultural belief that challenges the new negotiator is that of compromise. How often have you heard the words “You need to compromise.” or “You must find a compromise!”? As a professional Negotiator I simply wish to remind you that the concept of compromise is to make you vulnerable or reduce or weaken your position - whatever the topic.  Agreements are often achieved even when your negotiating complement is not attaining what they believe is true, completely acceptable or viable.

Arguments are also another form of negotiation.  Often times in an argument the leverage in the argument is intense emotions stemming from a difference of position or perceived position.  Think back to your childhood when a parent might have said “Don’t take that tone with me young lady (or young man).”  What was that parent really communicating?  You aren’t permitted to take a position of “indignation”, “anger”, “frustration”, “impatience”, “disbelief” and so on.

They key to using Negotiating Excellence in an Argument is to negotiate toward the root of the argument. Another way of appreciate an argument in light of negotiating is to think of it as a previous agreement that at least one party believes has been violated or broken.  There are really only two approaches to resolving an arguemet like this: 1)change your negotiating compliment’s mind about the broken agreement (ie prove you didn’t break the agreement) or 2) re-negotiate the original agreement.

If you’ve been challenged by spin or arguments and would like to ask a question or leave a comment - please comment below this post or write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com

How can you Negotiate to Your Own Best Good Today?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

The beauty of Negotiating is that it’s not a skill set that you have to ‘wait’ to apply. You don’t have to be in a certain situation or with a certain person or clocked in…to use it. Once you start using it for all the benefits it will bring you at some point you just don’t want to put it down. Negotiating to Your Own Best Good benefits everyone - even people you might never know personally.

Today I was multi-tasking more than my male-hunter genetic programing typically allows. I wrapped up one thing and decided to catch up with a friend who I sometimes help in business. This friend has a great “need” to be heard and has mastered a technique I like to call “talking over people”. I’m sure no one needs an explanation of that phrase. My standard response for people I deal with regularly for this behavior is to ask a resourceful question. “Did you hear what I said about blah blah blah?” - they will often times admit they did not (probably because they know I will ask more questions if they ‘pretend’). When they admit this I will make a very clear commit that it is because they were talking over me.

Before I get to the punchline of this post - I will go ahead and share the moral of my story. Sometimes the most effective form of negotiation is silence. Sometimes that silence can be coupled with time to enhance it’s impact. Being silent through time requires your negotiating complement to consider the various impacts of his or her words and to slow down enough to change course for the next round.

So, my friend became belligerent and started a rant full of explicatives. In this particular instance he took offense to me calling him on his behavior. As we entered into sentence two of his rant - I hung up the phone, left my office and had dinner with my family then watched a movie with my wife. Hours later when I returned to my phone I saw that he had left a message. I reluctantly listened to the message but only for a moment - when he began to apologize and make fun of himself and take responsibility for his outburst. He had time to cool off and think about what he would offer next. He offered an apology.

Personally, I think the second highest form of respect you can ever show yourself or anyone else is ownership. Ownership is the opposite of blame. If you are wondering what the highest form of respect is (in my mind) then it is offering someone a choice.

I accepted my friends apology and even raised the bar of his character in my opinion that he took ownership.

I’m off to my family’s country estate to visit my Dad. I’m setting him up with some countrified broadband internet - so I’ll be blogging from the boonies as well! If you know someone who talks over others and have any negotiating questions for me, feel free to leave a comment or email me at justask@yourownbestgood.com. How can you Negotiate to Your Own Best Good?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

Greetings Negotiators!

Do you know anyone who tries so hard to be “liked” personally or in business that they finish someone’s sentences or extrapolate what the “other” person is thinking or feeling based on just a few words?  Have you ever met a person in business that treated you this way and they were way off the mark?  Did they seem confident and self-assured that what they “thought” you were thinking was accurate?  Have you ever dealt with someone who had never seen your specific situation, had no information about your details but seemed to have it “all figured out” as soon as they arrived or even before they arrived?

If so then you’ve experienced someone mind reading first hand.  Perhaps you have done some of these things yourself.  “What does mind reading have to do with Negotiating?” you might be asking.  I’m glad you asked (pun intended)!

Mind reading is the communication opposite of asking resourceful questions!  If you are my negotiating complement and I look over at you and ask (myself) “I wonder if they need a service contract to go along with this bid?” then I mind read –> “Of course they do!  This is an ideal place for a service contract.  I’m sure they can afford it and it will make it that much easier to close them.  I’m glad I had this discussion (with myself).”  And then I say “So are we going to sign you up with a 2 year service contract or a 5 year service contract?” (thinking that is a resourceful question) And you have that business feeling that is like being drowned by a huge octopus…

Negotiating with someone who mind reads is like riding in a car with someone who’s not paying attention to the road as they drive.  A mind reader is so busy trying to impress you or himself that he’s not demonstrating any sensory acuity(see #8 ).  Mind readers are either the easiest people to close or the hardest.  They are essentially negotiating with themselves.

The way to manage a mind reader is to consistently ask him or her questions that don’t relate to what they are saying.  You need to interrupt their script.  This will cause them to actually think about your position and question their own self-contained negotiation.

If you are a mind reader then the cure for this personal challenge is to spend your days asking people really simple questions and forcing yourself to listen as closely to their answer (both verbal and non-verbal) then form strategies of how to interact.  Being a mind reader usually means that you have a far greater need to be listened to than to actually listen.

If you know anyone who mind reads and would like to share a story please feel free to comment on this post or you can write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com.  Just tell me what I can do to help you Negotiate to Your Own Best Good!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!