Successful Negotation Thoughts

In response to an appeal to lower my Real Estate taxes I got a call from a lawyer last night. He was representing the city of Brigantine. He was calling to tell me that the value of my house was assessed at $425,000.00, down from $515,000.00.

I asked him, "How did you come up with that number?"

He said, "We used the price that you paid for the house."

I said, "We bought the house in October 2007. Haven't prices come down since then.?"

He game me some miscellaneous BS answer that I can't remember.

I then said, "Let me ask you a question." Are you working for the city to try to get the most money for Brigantine or are you trying to be fair?"

After hesitating a moment he responded, "I do work for the city but I am trying to be fair."

I said, "I'm not sure you answered my question."

He then spent another few minutes trying to explain why his assessment was reasonable. It was a half decent effort.

I then told him very directly, "Look I feel my house is worth about $379,000 in today's market." I will agree to an assessment of $400,000.00 as a compromise."

He said, "I don't know if I can do that."

I said, "What do you mean you don't know. Can you or can't you.?"

He didn't say anything.

I said then, "I want you to be my advocate. I will agree to whatever you decide. The fair number if $400,000.00. Call me back with your decision. I will accept whatever you say. However, I want you to promise me that you will present my point to whomever makes this decision and not tell them that I will agree with whatever is decided."

He said, "OK"

He called me back later to tell me that the $400,000.00 was accepted.

One of the unfair things about life is that if you negotiate you get better deals than if you don't. And if you are a good negotiator you even get better deals. The question is what is the best way to negotiate.

I have studied this question about negotiation for many years. I started and sold a business whose primary purpose was negotiating lower prices for major corporations. I have read countless articles on the subject and have had many conversations with knowledgeable and successful negotiators.

The tricky part about this question is that a successful negotiation oftentimes is not what it seems to be. It is not always about getting the lowest price or getting your way. Many people think they are great negotiators because they are constantly haggling and hammering whoever they speak to about anything and everything include sex, money, control, and boundaries. What they don't realize is that the outcome of the negotiation is often not decided in the moment but unfolds over a longer period of time.

You can't beat the system. It might seem like there are those who get away with stuff, but over the long run I believe whatever you do has consequences. This is something that you can't accept on faith. You need to verify it for yourself. The way to successfully negotiate is:

1- Determine what you want. Be precise.

2- State what you want as clearly and directly as possible. Don't beat around the bush.

3- Listen carefully to the response for your offer. Don't accept BS responses. Point them out without irritation or annoyance.

4-Make a decision that you feel good about or walk away.

I keep practicing. I am getting better at it.

Having Productive Days

I spent the evening watching T.V. and playing poker. This is not unusual. I spent the day coaching a client, a 40 year old owner of a contracting company. One of the main themes that I tried to bring across was the importance of having productive days. I went into great detail about what it meant to have a productive business day and then I described what it meant to have a productive personal day.

I explained to him that a productive business day for him consisted of three main activities. 1-maximizing cash flow/make sure that everything that could be done to bring in money was being done. 2-new business development/getting new deals. 3-training his staff/ working with them on improving their knowledge of their jobs and improving their being or their ability to get done what they know they should be doing. Knowledge training has to do with transferring information. Training in being has to do with honesty, integrity, discipline, sensitivity, and compassion, those things that make you a better person.

I then explained that a productive personal day consisted of doing at least one thing to improve yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally. Mental improvement might involve reading, writing, or speaking with real purpose. Physical improvement consisted of conscious eating and exercise. Emotional work might include doing something kind or generous that was out of the ordinary or appreciating something beautiful.

While I was coaching my client I was convinced that what I was saying was definitely true and valuable. As soon as I got home my main focus was to eat something tasty, fix myself a glass of vodka, turn on the television, and start playing poker. I wonder whether or not I am being hypocritical.

I have thought about this quite a bit. In my mind how you spend your time and what you do each day is the measure of a man's life. It does not make sense to judge yourself too harshly or drive yourself too hard. What does make sense is to be a student of life, especially of your own life. What is especially important is to know what it is that makes you happy and observe how you are spending your time in relation to this understanding. To not let days, weeks, months, or years go by without taking stock of what you want and whether or not you are doing what you want. It does not make sense to me to judge or compare. There are a few key rules that are important to follow in order for us to exist with each other in a safe environment. Other than that we should enjoy, experiment, explore, and relax.

I notice many people around me are struggling with many different issues. It seems that this is an especially difficult time. What is difficult is that some of the values that we had accepted as being important and that gave us our identity, such as success, money, retirement, security, control, and belief in our infallibility are being challenged. We are no longer sure that we know what the future holds. We never did. The only thing that we can do is try to live each day as best we can and think, without judgement, what it is that we are doing.

Tomorrow I will try to do better and have a productive day.

The Successful Consultant

I started this blog to build credibility for myself and my ideas so that I could market my seminars. I intended to write about esoteric and spiritual principles; how they could be applied to business situations. However, whenever I sat down at the computer I had other thoughts I wanted to express. Today, I am going to focus on business; I want to offer some of my secrets on how to be a successful consultant (SC).

I've been a successful consultant. Most consultants use consulting as a way to get a job, or as a bridge between jobs. I actually have worked as a consultant for forty years; during this time, I have worked with over two hundred different companies of all sizes. In most of my assignments I've worked directly with presidents or owners of small to medium sized businesses. Most chief executives have similar problems even though they feel they are unique; that they need someone experienced in their industry to understand what is required to help them.

The basic problems I have observed include the following:

1- Businesses do not present their offering clearly.

2- The owners have never considered what they really want from their business.

3- The employees are not clear what is expected of them. They fall into habitual patterns of activity; their results are not nearly what they could or should be but are enough so that they can keep their jobs.

4-The top executives are unsatisified with their employees; the employees feel the top executives don't listen.

5-When things are going well, owners attribute their success to their efforts and skills. When things are going bad, they attribute the downturn to forces beyond their control.

6-Change is nearly impossible because everyone in a company feels they don't have enough time to do their existing job, let alone add more or new responsibilities.

7-Appearances are given more value than substance so that the better looking, better liked and more confident employees are overvalued while the quieter, more reliable plodders are undervalued.

8-More emphasis is placed on seeing what's wrong with each department or employee than searching for hidden abilities and strengths.

9-An incredible amount of time and money is wasted in meetings, programs, projects, initiatives, conversations, and report. There is very little understanding of what is a productive activity. (an activity that actually results in more money being made.)

10-The importance of preserving physical, emotional, and intellectual energy is not understood. In the final analysis, results that can be controlled depend on the collective energy of employees. Lip service is given to physical and psychological health, but not enough effort is focused on maintaining or improving overall health and vitality.

I could go on indefinitely. There is no shortage of problems. Matter of fact, it is surprising to me that companies do as well as they do. The successful consultant learns to point out these problems directly and clearly in a way that doesn't alienate or offend the owners. The SC works shoulder to shoulder with the key individuals to make breakthroughs in their attitudes and behavior. The SC does not present long reports or detailed analyses. The SC does not give the appearance of working long and hard; the SC actually makes a difference. It is rare to find a SC. If you know anyone who needs one have them call me.

Accident or Wake Up Call

I was 24 years old. I was married with a three year old son. I was totally broke. My wife and I were living with her grandmother in Columbia, Pa. We had just returned from a four month adventure during which we had traveled across the country to California to visit my parents and then up the Pacific coast to Vancouver, B.C. We thought we would live in Canada and start a new life for ourselves. When we got to the border they would not let us into the country. It seemed my hair was too long and they viewed us as hippies escaping from America who could bring nothing positive to Canada.

We traveled back to Chicago. We split up there. My wife and son went back East. I went to California to see if I could make a little money. I was there for about six weeks and worked three or four different jobs including selling Fuller Brushes, pots and pans, and dating services. I couldn't make any money and missed my family so I came back to Pennsylvania to Grandma's house.

As payment for rent Grandma gave me some chores. I had never done any chores growing up in the projects of Brooklyn to a doting Jewish mother who required nothing of me.
Grandma made me mow the lawn. It was the size of a large postage stamp but I was proud of being able to do it. I was growing up and needed to learn these things. Even though I was married I had never taken work or responsibility seriously. My mind was on philosophy and religion and what I considered to be more important things.

I desperately needed a job. I applied for thirty-nine jobs in a two month period and was rejected for every one. I was either over qualified or under qualified or second best or something else was wrong with me. I didn't know what to do. Finally I was hired by Combined Insurance Company to sell accident and health insurance to businesses door to door. They hired anyone who breathed and they promised me fifteen dollars a day for food money during a weeks training session. I figured I could get by on five or six and send the rest back to my wife.

The training was an interesting experience. I roomed with a mormon who told me he had tried every religion and teaching until he had finally found the one true religion in Mormonism. This set the stage for my later inquiry into the Mormon religion.

I also met a full blooded American Indian who could out fight, out fuck, and out sell any man he met, or so he said. He was a gentle soul actually and introduced me to spiritualism. He was a true believer in our ability to communicate with the dead and his wife was a medium who had been Cleopatra in a previous life. I took him seriously and spent five eventful years investigating the Spiritualist religion. That's a long story for another blog or two.

On the business front the week was devoted to memorizing a presentation, word for word, intonation for intonation. Everything had to be said exactly as they taught ,if we were to qualify to sell their insurance. We also learned the philosophy of W. Clement Stone the founder of the company and one of the earliest sales and motivational thinkers. His basic philosophy was that success consisted of three elements. 1- activity knowledge 2-know-how through experience and 3-PMA or positive mental attitude. We could all make millions like he did by applying these principles.

After a week of intense brainwashing and motivation I was psyched to get out and sell. I was also deeply depressed that my life had come to this point. My first assignment was in northwestern Pa., in a small town called Warren. It was the middle of winter. I had to drive there with Benny, my spiritualist Indian friend, in my volkwagon on a Sunday, in a blizzard, to begin my first day of work on Monday.

We were told that a sales manager would be sent from the home office to work with us on our first day and that we would receive the commission from whatever was sold. It could amount to a couple of hundred dollars. I needed the money. My sales manager, however, did not arrive until late in the day on Monday. I was a little discouraged as we did not hit the road until it was dark. On our way to our first presentation my volkswagon was broadsided. I woke up in the hospital with an anesthesiologist staring down at me. He had a kind face and told me that I would live. I had my spleen removed, kidney damage, and some other internal injuries. I spent three weeks in the hospital, most of it in intensive care. This was a turning point in my life. I realized that I could not let myself get into this situation again. This was not an accident. It was a wake up call. I had to now consider what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

Motorcycles, bicyles, and balance

When I was 23 I was selling motorcycles parts to motorcycle gangs. I actually was a marketing consultant for International Motorcycles Incorporated whose main customers were Warlocks and Pagans. IMI was selling chrome parts, front end extensions, fancy sissy bars, comfortable leather seats--anything that was needed to convert an ordinary motorcycle into a chopper. IMI was a profitable business; the company only started to have problems when the government cracked down on what they considered unsafe vehicles. Choppers disappeared; so did our business.

The owners of the business were a psychiatrist and his son. The father had financed the business to keep his son out of trouble, which was nearly impossible under any circumstances, but especially difficult since our primary customer base were some of the leading suppliers of illegal drugs on the East Coast. Interestingly, the other leading suppliers were some of the people from my old neighborhood in Brooklyn.

When the motorcycle parts business tanked we made a decision to go into the bicycle business. We did a little marketing research to see whether or not conventional motorcycle dealers, (Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Yamaha) might be interested in adding bicycles to their product line, especially for the Christmas season. I went out into the field and in a month sold thirty or so dealers over a thousand bicycles. This impressive performance convinced the owner that we could make money selling bicycles; we placed orders for nearly 10,000 bicycles to be imported from Sweden, France, Japan, and Columbia, S.A.

This was in the early seventies when gas prices were booming and ten speeds were gaining popularity. The bicycle business was booming, too, and I became somewhat of a legend in the business by selling thousands of bicycles to dealers throughout the East. However, as I later learned, bicycles are a cyclical business. When they're hot, they're hot, when they're not they're not. The business dropped off quickly.

What added to our problems was the government was suspicious of our business. First of all, we had been involved with some of the sleaziest degenerates in the motorcycle business. Secondly, we were importing products from Columbia. The government actually seized one of our shipments, about two thousand bikes, broke into the boxes looking for drugs they thought we might be smuggling. They found nothing but claimed no responsibility for the damage they caused to our product.

We were stuck with thousands of bicycles in a declining market and many of them were damaged and unusable. The owner was under some serious pressure. He had invested hundreds of thousands to keep his son out of trouble and now the investment was very shaky. He announced he needed to get away and think about what to do. On a Friday night he left on a vacation to Tahiti. On Saturday, the next day, our warehouse with thousands of bicycles burned down. Not one bicycle was left.

No one, including me, was the least bit suspicious of this. We hired an insurance adjuster who did an incredible job of marketing the loss, getting the owner most of his investment back. Watching this insurance adjuster operate was an eye-opening experience. He led the insurance company's claims adjuster to value the loss in such a way that the maximum possible amount of money was paid out.

The thing that motivated me to write this blog and tell this little story was that I was thinking about whether or not a life of balance made more sense than a life of fanaticism.

Balance is boring; fanaticism is exciting.

While I was working at IMI, I was also pursuing my spiritual interests. I began an ongoing conversation with Norwood McTootle. They called him Woody. I was studying Indian philosophy at the time. Woody listened to my explanations and said very little. Finally he said he was going to tell me the secret of life. He said it could be summed up in one word. He would tell me the word when he thought I was ready. Finally after the warehouse burned down and the owner returned from Tahiti, Woody told me the secret. The word was BALANCE. I never forgot that.

excessive talking

I was on the phone today for five hours discussing various business situations. It cut into my tv and poker time and I'm not sure whether any of the conversations moved me closer to making money. There is always more talk than action in business and most of it is wasted. I'm usually good at limiting talk and cutting to the heart of matters. I find though that most people need to talk more than necessary because they're lonely, insecure, bored, or addicted to hearing themselves speak.

I talk a lot myself at times, and theoretically there is nothing wrong with talking if you are expressing yourself clearly and accomplishing something with your words. Useless and excessive talking are problematic though. They waste your time and the time of those who are listening and even more importantly drain energy from you and your audience.

Anyone who is interested in personal development should be aware of their talking and its effects on those with whom they are communicating. When you talk too much or talk without consideration for the feeling of your listener, it is harmful to your business and personal relationships. Developing your communication skills requires real honesty with yourself and the ability to objectively assess your impact on those around you.

Becoming a good or great communicator begins with being a good listener. Being a good listener requires the ability to pay attention, to be in the moment, and to look beyond the words to get at the real intent of the one who is speaking. Women are usually better at this than men, although it doesn't have to be this way.

Most of us feel that we are the way we are and there is not much we can do about it. If this was true there would be little hope for improving our personal situations, our family lives, and our world. We can be better communicators. We can listen with more intention, with more effort, and a desire to truly understand. We can speak with more sincerity, which is at the heart of all successful talking. Real sincerity comes from a commitment to being open and expressing how we really feel and what we really want. Sincerity combined with clarity and directness is very powerful.

To have real conversations with real people to explore important questions in a spirit of caring and sharing is what I want in my life. I always envisioned myself sitting in a cafe with Socrates and his friends discussing the meaning and purpose of life as the ideal way to spend my time. Until I can find out how to achieve this I guess I'll have to settle for tv and internet.

Unexplainable Happenings

I started a marketing consulting business in the bedroom of my house. In a few years, it had fifteen employees. I was beginning to get some confidence. I had a plan. I wanted to incorporate spiritual/esoteric ideas into businesses. My income, though, was not great. I had a wife and three kids to support. One of my clients, a division of a Fortune 500 company, Avnet, Inc., wanted me to give up my business; they wanted me to run their company. They offered twice my salary, great benefits, and the opportunity to test my management and marketing theories. Could I bring esoteric ideas to mainstream corporate America? I'd have a budget of over three million per month to use at my discretion. I was a little confused about what to do.

At the same time I was doing psychic research. I was investigating a Spiritualist retreat in Ephrata, Pa. Every year, the leading mediums of the world would come to an old hotel, the Silver Belle, in the outskirts of Lancaster County; they would conduct seances and classes for their believers, people who traveled thousands of miles to communicate with their dead friends and relatives. I was curious. I spent some time trying to penetrate the inner circle, trying to determine what was really going on.

It was a relaxing place, a good place to walk and think. I decided I would take an afternoon off. I spent some time at Silver Belle. Maybe, I thought, I'd discover some insight about my business and career. Upon arriving and walking onto the property I was greeted by an older women who looked at me kindly and said matter of factly: "You look a little troubled son. I see you have mechanics and eyes on your mind."

Now this is the god's honest truth. She had never met me before. The name of the Avnet division was Mechanics Choice; the name of my company was Visions Inc. There was no question that she had read my mind or sensed something about my thoughts. This was a real demonstration of some form of ESP.

Another time I was walking in the West Village in NYC. I passed a phone booth which began to ring . I answered the phone. The call was for me. I told my friend who had dialed the wrong number that I couldn't speak then but I would call him back. I continued to my destination.

Both these stories are indicative of either forces at work that we don't understand or a suspension of the laws of probability. There is definitely much about our world that we don't know. However, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a reality that exists beyond our senses. There are those who don't believe in magical thinking, who remain skeptical to the existence of any phenomena outside of what they consider to be normal, logical, or rational. In my mind this is a limited view. Even then, I see that the acceptance of any "whacked" out theory or happening can be problematic. In the continued exploration and questioning of reality we have an opportunity to make real progress. The question is how to do this in a way that can produce results.