Top Ten Ways to Kill a Deal
June 22, 2007
Negotiate your way to the top in your career and your life
Ever wish you were better at negotiating? Whether you're an upper-level manager, a sales rep or an assistant in an ad agency, you'll need superb negotiating skills to keep your career on the upswing.
Jim Camp, negotiating coach and author of NO: The Only Negotiating Strategy You Need for Work and Home presents his top ten deal killers and what to do instead so the next time you're involved in a negotiation—from nailing down a new client or lucrative contract to asking for a raise—you'll increase your odds of landing the best deal.
Camp's top ten deal killers:
1. Don't show emotions
Emotion—such as neediness, desperation, or excitement—are immediate turn-offs. Keep your body language and style of speaking emotionally neutral. Prepare your state of mind ahead of time. Repeat the mantra, "I don't need this, I don't need this," until you believe it.
2. Don't offer a compromise or reveal your position at the start.
Once you do this, you are signaling to your opponent that you are ready to give something up in order to get to an agreement—before you're even certain you have to.
3. Don't give presentations or dominate the dialogue.
A presentation is designed to tell the opponent what you think she wants to know. While you are presenting, she is forming opinions, making judgments and gaining valuable insight into you and your position. You should do almost no talking to maintain the advantage and ask questions that will get your opponent to spill the beans instead.
4. Don't waste your time dealing with "blockers."
Blockers are people who will do anything to keep you from meeting with the real leader or decision maker face-to-face. Be diplomatic when sidestepping blockers so you can speak with the person best able to deliver what you want.
5. Don't think about closing.
Despite everything you learned in business school, thinking about, hoping for or planning for the outcome of this deal will kill you every time at the negotiating table. Your opponent will sense your neediness and perceive it as a weakness. It's like spotting a lame animal in the herd and they'll move in for the kill.
6. Don't try to impress.
Name-dropping, sucking up, dressing to the nines and overstating your qualifications are common ways you might try to pump yourself up in front of an opponent. Such tactics have the opposite effect. Instead, make sure your opponent feels "more okay" than you, maybe even a bit superior. An opponent who does not feel threatened in any way is more likely to give up the goods.
7. Don't try to be friends.
The person sitting across the negotiating table from you is a respected opponent. Thinking about a long-term relationship or dwelling on whether or not he likes you is certain to cloud your decisions and disrupt your emotional neutrality. This keeps you from being in the present moment and from focusing, observing and collecting information.
8. Don't show up unprepared.
Whether it's a phone call, an email exchange or a face-to-face meeting, never communicate with your opponent without doing extensive research and preparation first. Find out everything there is to know about him, positions he's taken on similar deals, personal history, problems he and his company have and ways you might be able to solve them and anything else—even if it seems irrelevant.
9. Don't make assumptions.
The quickest way to achieve failure is by forming opinions and making judgments and assumptions about your opponent. If there's anything about the way your opponent looks or behaves that makes you jump to a conclusion, that's a red flag. Banish the thought from your mind. The way to find out whom you are really dealing with is to ask lots of questions. Get him talking. Make him reveal his biases, opinions, wants, needs and weaknesses. Take copious notes while he talks.
10. Don't focus on what you want.
In any successful negotiation, set your mission and purpose in the adversary's world—not in your own. This is a sure-fire way to win the best result for your side. Focus on how you can help him or her realize that offering XYZ to you will be beneficial to him.
Jim Camp is an international negotiation coach and trainer and author of NO: The Only Negotiating Strategy You Need for Work and Home (Crown), the revised and updated version of his critically acclaimed business book Start with No. As president and founder of The Camp Group, he has coached individuals, companies, and governments worldwide through hundreds of negotiations, including clients from Motorola, Texas Instruments, Merrill Lynch, IBM, and Prudential Insurance. Learn more about Camp at www.startwithno.com.
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