Negotiation Tips No. 95 Offers and Counter Offers At some stage in a negotiation an offer is put on the table. At that moment the receiving party has to react. An obvious reaction is to reject the offer and offer an alternative. I believe that this is half right. Certainly you should have an alternative ready to put forward but it is important to remember how best to do this. The script should go: Thats a very interesting offer and it certainly has real merit. I wonder if we could think about it for a moment and come back with a reaction. Weve given it some thought and what wed like to offer is a slightly amended version….. The McEnroe response: You cannot be serious… only causes deadlock and creates bad feelings. Accept offers warmly and then amend them slightly. Of course amending slightly often means ripping them up and starting again but done sensitively it shouldnt become a major issue. © Tom Beasor 2001

Sales Tips No. 76 Internet Tenders Sellers learn to live with failure. You cant win every pitch you make and your strike rate bears this out. What really upsets sellers is when they hear that a contract has been placed and a deal done that they did not know about. The advent of the internet has made tender searches even more important and much easier. Many organisations now only offer their tenders via the internet so if youre not surfing their websites regularly you may miss the opportunity to bid for some valuable work. The internet will always give you extra information about any organisation but in this specific case you may find that theres business to be done as well. Keep a list of the major players in your market, especially those in the public sector because they are the people most likely to use this system. In Europe OJEC is the means of hunting out EC based business. There will be similar publications around the globe. You may have got used to seeing the advertisements in the papers but also ensure that you know where to look on line and that you do it every week. © Tom Beasor 2001

Management Tips No 24 Praise the Lord Ive mentioned that I believe feedback is a powerful medium for improving performance. I do believe that it is mostly underused because managers forget that it has two sides to it: praise for getting it right and guidance when getting something wrong. Most people do not object to be given corrective feedback when things go awry providing that they get equal praise when doing things right. Far too often getting it right is seen as the norm and attracts no comment. No wonder that people feel bruised if the only comments they receive are always negative ones. Try to catch people doing things right and let them know about it. Praise and congratulations given sincerely will mean that developmental feedback in difficult times will be much more likely to be positively accepted. © Tom Beasor 2001