When most people negotiate, they attempt to bond with the other negotiator in an effort to lay the groundwork for a positive encounter. As a result of adopting such a position, they negate the potential benefits that negativity can have during the negotiation.

Since a good number of negotiators are motivated to move away from negativity and towards that which is perceived to be positive, being negative in a negotiation can have a large impact on the outcome of the negotiation. Therefore, during your negotiation planning, consider how you might utilize negativity. Also, consider how negativity might be used against you during the negotiation and how you might combat it.

The following points give insight into how you might consider positioning yourself, by using negativity during a negotiation.

1. If you know the other negotiator is trying to avoid a particular negative outcome, highlight and reinforce the negative outcome he’ll have if he adopts a position that is contrary to a position you’ve offered. In essence, reinforce the negative outcome he holds to be true in his mind, in an attempt to heighten the potential of it becoming his reality.

2. If you’re negotiating against multiple negotiators, consider adopting a position that will undercut the positions of both negotiators, by causing their positions to become misaligned against each of them.

3. Use the take away to enhance your position. Anytime someone believes he’s won an outcome, mentally, that outcome becomes his; he owns it and views it in that manner. If it’s an outcome that he’s acquired as the result of a hard fought negotiation, the outcome becomes more valuable to him. If you take that outcome away from him, it will become even more valuable. Even if you just use the threat of taking it away, you’ll increase the perceived value of the outcome.

4. Highlight how the other negotiator’s position dissimilates him, compared to what is deemed normal and rational. Since most people possess a crowd or group mentality, they want to be considered like everyone else. If you observe this characteristic in the person with whom you’re negotiating, consider how you might advantage the negotiation by utilizing this tactic.

5. You can utilize the thought of fear, as a source of negative motivation, if you know the other negotiator is moved to action from that point of view. Fear and negativity go hand and hand, and thus to couple the two in one instance can create additional stress and tension in the other negotiator.

If you look at the political process in countries that have free elections, you’ll note how effective most negative advertisements are against a candidate. Thus, from a psychological perspective, negativity sells. In a negotiation, if you use negativity wisely and strategically to promote the move away from position (move from negativity) that the other negotiator might possess, you’ll become more efficient when negotiating… and everything will be right with the world. Remember, you’re always negotiating.

Negotiation Tips:

· Always keep in mind, there will be times when you can minimize your losses and maximize your gains by being negative in a negotiation. Just be sure the time is appropriate before utilizing the strategy of negativity.

· When using negativity, allow the other negotiator to alleviate the pressure of negativity by moving in a direction that he views as being more positive.

· In a negotiation, sometimes you can’t win for losing and you can’t lose from winning. However, you can take control of a negotiation by being able to adapt to its flow and utilizing the appropriate strategy in a given situation. Knowing when to use negativity gives you an additional tool by which to influence the outcome of a negotiation.

In previous articles, I have talked about strategies for creating a strong opening to your presentation. Once you’ve grabbed your audience’s attention, it’s time to move into the body of your presentation. Here, you’ll discuss your topic in more detail. If your purpose is to inform, you’ll use the body of your presentation to describe your topic and demonstrate how it relates to your audience. If you’re goal is to persuade, you’ll use the body of the presentation to define the problem and offer your solution. In this article, we’ll discuss proven methods for developing the body of your presentation.

Remember, you have a limited amount of time in which to address your audience, therefore you must limit the number/breadth of main ideas covered in your presentation. Depending on the time allotted to you, it’s best to stick to two to five main points. You need to provide supporting evidence for each main point, so allow enough time to develop each point in adequate detail. It’s usually best to err on the conservative side – if there’s a question in your mind about how many points you can reasonably discuss, go with the lower number.

Once you’ve determined the most important issues to illuminate during your speech, the next thing you should plan is the appropriate organizational structure for your speech. Yes, you really do need to plan your presentational structure. There’s nothing more frustrating than listening to a speaker who jumps from one topic to another without explaining how the topics are related, repeats herself often, and never seems to get to the point. These are just a few the side effects of poor organizational structure. You should organize the body of our presentation in a manner that makes sense for your subject. In fact, most subjects naturally lend themselves to a particular structure.

The most common organizational patterns are:

1) Topical – use when several ideas relate to your theme, each distinct idea becomes a main point. This structure is useful for informative speeches.

2) Chronological – uses time sequence for a framework. This structure is useful for both informative and persuasive speeches, both of which require the presentation of background information

3) Spatial – organizes material according to physical space. This structure is useful for informative speeches.

4) Classification – organizes material by putting things into categories. This structure is useful for both informative and persuasive speeches.

5) Problem/Solution – organizes material by describing a problem and then presenting a solution. This structure is useful for persuasive speeches.

6) Cause/Effect – organizes material by describing the cause of a problem and then presenting the effects of the problem. This structure is useful for persuasive speeches.

As you can see, some subjects could easily be organized by a number of different patterns. Chose a structure that supports the presentation of the supporting materials you plan to share with your audience. Whatever organizational structure you chose, make sure to stick with it throughout your presentation.

Video presentations are important to get right. Your aim should be to keep your viewers watching your video rather than clicking away part way through. Whilst there will always be people who don’t watch the entire video, you’ll be able to tell from your stats how long people watch for and can tweak your newer videos to help reduce the number of people who click away.

Grab attention fast

You know from the videos you watch that you need to get people’s attention fast. Our attention spans seem to be dropping by the minute and if we don’t get what we thought we’d clicked on, we’ll click the back button fast.

That means you can’t spend the first minute or two of your video waffling and generally beating around the bush. You need to have a brief introduction – I’ll typically say something like “Hi, this video is about” and then whatever the title of the video was.

Nothing more.

No long introductions – the equivalent of the polite sales call introductions of “how are you today” that you immediately recognise as being from someone who’s never spoken to you before in your life.

Make it personal

The closer you can get your video to being like a one-on-one conversation you’re having with a friend, the better.

This really is important!

Your personality will come across when you do this. Which means that you’ll either attract or repel people watching your video.

Don’t take that personally – we can’t be all things to all people, it’s just not possible.

Instead, you’ll get people who like your style and let you know that by subscribing to your YouTube channel, even if you don’t remind them that’s an option.

You may even get comments and YouTube allows you to moderate those. It also does quite a good job of filtering out the spam that pervades the internet.

Keep to the point

Videos aren’t the place to go off on a tangent.

Personally, I like to work from a slide show or at the very least a bullet pointed list.

That works for me and makes sure that I keep close to the original point I promised to talk about.

Don’t cover too much

It’s better to split your presentations into several shorter videos rather than trying to create an epic that covers everything.

This has two main advantages:

• It works with short attention spans
• It gives you more chances to appear in the search results

Most search results tend to drill down – people are getting wise to the fact that Google is relatively clueless if you only give it one or two words to work with and are using more words for their searches, often from the list of suggestions that show up as soon as you start typing.

Use the suggestions that show up as the basis for your titles.

Then answer the question that’s been raised in the search query.

Nothing else – just stick to the topic.

Of course, if you’ve promised 5 tips then you need to give 5 tips. That should go without saying – although without an editor overseeing you, it’s not uncommon for things to go astray even with something as basic as that.

I’ve done it on articles before now and been picked up by the editorial process.

But the chances are that you’ll be writer, presenter and producer of your video. So you need to be alert for that potential problem.