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“Genius, a power that dazzles humans, is oft but perserverence in disguise.” H. W. Austin. I would also add the word ‘preparation’ to that quote from one of Britain’s successful tennis players back in the 30s.

Often the difference between a successful presentation and an unsuccessful one is the level of preparation that comes before. So it is imperative you prepare, and indeed very important when attending an interview or presenting to a prospective client.

You may be familiar with the Dragon’s Den, the tv series which has entrepreneurs present their business plans and ideas to already highly successful business men and women who form a panel of judges deciding on whether to invest in the products/services being shown to them. Well, i had a thought about what was the main difference between those that got what they came for, which was the investment of cash into their business and those that did not do so well.

And you probably guessed, those that managed to get the cash they needed were those that had prepared thoroughly before coming onto the show, making sure they knew their business inside and out, numbers included. After all, if you are going to ask for an investment of £100,000 or more, it makes sense to prepare in advance.

There is no difference when attending a job interview or when making a speech in front of an audience, the differentiating factor is the preparation. You must do your research, find out about the customer, as I have said in the past you are the product, a solution to their problem, and so how can you solve their issues if you do not know what it is. How would you react if you went to see a doctor, and he/she without asking you or knowing your problem or at least attempting to identify the problem the doctor just by sheer looking at you suddenly gives you a written prescription! Would you be doubtful of such act? Of course you would.

Any interviewer is not going to be impressed and is going to have doubt in you if you have not done your research about them, if you do not have an idea about their business, their problem, their issues, what they do etc etc…You see, as we use to say a few years ago when i worked in the financial markets industry, my boss back then would say, stoploss, stoploss, stoploss as this was important for investors to take heed if they did not want to lose their shirts trading in the risky business of the stock market. And so, I will coin something similar, you may have heard this before, but success in an interview or any presentation is down to 3 things: research, research, research. Nothing more, nothing less.

I myself have noticed the difference in my presentations, in the early days when I made a speech to an audience i did not prepare as perhaps I should have done, and my performances in my opinion have not been up to what I would have liked. But since I have begun to put more work and preparation into my research and presentation I feel I have got more confident, amazing how this works, and there is another tip for you, confidence comes from preparation.

So when next you have to make a presentation of any kind, make sure you have done your research beforehand and you too will soon notice the marked improvements in your new found confidence.

Presenting seems to be an area that worries many people. It has been claimed that people fear presenting more than death. Presentations can be challenging but incredibly motivating when done successfully. So what can you do to transform your presentation skills?

Plan and prepare

You would not set out to cook a meal, take a vacation or trip or build something without planning and preparing. Presenting is no different. You need to plan and prepare thoroughly. Many people launch straight into writing. Start first by getting clear on the outcome you want for you and your audience. Start to sketch out some outlines. I have found mind maps to be extremely powerful during the design phase. Do some research about the presentation topic. You can do a search on Google, read a books or magazines, ask those that you are presenting for their input and research your audience.

Practice

You might be comfortable that you understand the topic on which you are presenting but you need to practice your presentation. By practice I mean presenting out loud. Start doing it alone, then get some colleagues or friends together who will give you honest and constructive feedback and if you can, try and do a run through in the specific venue where you will present.

Use Your Nervous Energy Positively

Just about everyone is nervous before they give a presentation and nerves are perfectly normal. You have two choices at this time. You can choose to allow the nerves to get in the way of you delivering a great presentation. Alternatively, you can use this nervous energy positively to deliver a great presentation. Doing some deep breathing just before a presentation can go a long way to transforming how you deliver your presentation.

Ask for Feedback

If you want to continually improve your presentation skills, ask for feedback. The feedback that you receive will help pinpoint areas where you are performing strongly and areas where you can be even more effective. When receiving feedback, remember not to fall into the common trap of giving all the focus to those areas where you need to be more effective. You want to make sure that you are exploiting your strengths to the maximum so that you get better and better.

Transformation does not happen overnight in any area but by following these simple steps, you can take your presentation skills to the next level.

By now you’ve been more aware of the times when you are in a negotiation with someone, whether it be a customer, co-worker, vendor, or someone at home. You’ve no doubt had one or two outcomes that were very different than what was available to you before the win/win training. You also probably had many negotiations that didn’t result in win/wins, that went as they have in the past, or perhaps worse than usual as you tried new things. Remember, to be a successful win/win negotiator, you must:

A. Have the knowledge, which you now have and can reinforce and strengthen by review of the training materials in your manual and in the book, Getting to Yes.

B. Have the desire to be a great negotiator. This includes seeing yourself as a businessperson, providing leadership for others and not simply focusing on tasks alone.

C. You must practice. Each unsuccessful negotiation or failed attempt to create a spirit of collaboration can be used and learned from. Rather than take the position that what you are doing doesn’t work or some other defeatist attitude, look at what you learned from your success and failures, what you could have done to have a different outcome, and begin experimenting and trying different things. Negotiations, like many skills, require practice daily. Let’s review:

Separate the people from the issues. You must be soft on the people but tough on the issues. This means also creating a spirit of collaboration and not saying things that could be taken as offensive. For example: I feel pressure rather than you are pressuring me. Set the tone of collaboration early on in the discussion!

Uncover interests. Positions are solutions. Interest are the needs behind those solutions, not only being aware of your interest but also asking questions to uncover the other party’s interests.

Creating options. When working with customers, you may need to create some commitment. For example, “We certainly want to see, Mrs. Jones, that whatever we do meets with your needs and requirements. Here are a few options of ways we may go about doing that…” Do not try to rush this part of the process. Often times you can create solutions that are better than either party would have dreamt of.

BATNA. Remember to have a backup, an alternative to negotiated settlement. This is not your bottom line in negotiation, rather it is what you can do without the other party if you cannot reach a negotiated agreement with them.

Use objective criteria or an objective process for reaching a decision. The classic example here is if your car is stolen, what should the insurance company pay you. Is it wholesale, retail, is it what’s remaining on the financing, is it what’s in the paper on Sunday on similar vehicles, etc. You will want to forward the objective criteria that helps persuade the other party and that creates a foundation of fairness for both parties.

Relationship. One of the truest tests of the successful win/win negotiation is that the parties will want to negotiate again. There may be some upsets along the way during the negotiation, but the primary results of the negotiation in terms of the value provided for each party, and the state of the relationship at that point, is what really counts.

Commitments. What are all the factors to be included in a negotiated agreement. Never make a negotiation about one issue because then it becomes a battle of wills. Rather than have inflexible criteria for the ending of the negotiation, this part of the process involves you in thinking about all the things that need to be considered for an agreement to be complete and to be followed through by each party successfully.