This month’s book is ”A Woman’s Guide to Successful Negotiating; How to Convince, Collaborate & Create Your Way to Agreement”, by Lee E. Miller and Jessica Miller.
It’s FULL of great tips, tools, and suggestions for our August topic, Negotiating!
Join us at our local chapters to receive your copy of our handout, 10 Ways to AVOID the Most Common Mistakes Women Make In Negotiating!
How many of you feel like you are on the top of your game when it comes to negotiating?
If you answered a confident, “Yes”, Way to go, you are one of the brave and one of the few women to master this skill!
If you answered anything but yes, Congratulations to you too! You are among many of women today who were not taught the tricks of the negotiating game.
In fact, you were most likely taught through family upbringing and society that “it’s not polite to ask for more than what you get”, or that “rules are meant to be followed, not broken”.
Well this month, I encourage you to BREAK the RULES and Challenge old beliefs that, in my opinion, HOLD YOU BACK and KEEP YOU PLAYING SMALL.
I invite you to open the door to new perspectives and possibilities in playing the game of life as abundantly as you can!
How?….Well, we can start by just that, ASK!!! Adopt a new mantra to live by: “It Never hurts to ask!”
This is one major mistake women make in negotiating, We DO NOT ASK!
Permission to speak in general for a moment? For the most part, women want to be liked. In negotiating, women assume that when someone gives us an offer, it is the best, most fair offer they can give. So generally, women choose to either accept the offer or not accept it; and that is the extent of our negotiating.
It reminds me of a memory I have. When I was 13 years old, my mom, aranged for my first summer babysitting job with one of her co-workers. When it came to figuring out my pay, she took care of my negotiating because never working before, I didn’t know what to charge.
My mom (bless her heart) did her best to handle negotiating my pay. She said to her friend, “Just pay Marci what you think is fair”. Now I’ll admit, the truth of this story gets a little distorted (as all good stories do) but the story I remember was that her friend paid me about $2 an hour to watch her FOUR kids! Not four angels mind you, four trouble makers!
After a week of watching them as they terrorized me, their animals, and their house, I finally said to my mom “this is not worth the money I am getting paid!” I remember her words echoing in my head, “Oh Marci, lets not offend her by saying anything. She picked the price she thought was fair, so lets just leave it at that”, ”You should be grateful that you have that job earning extra money”!
I remember as clear as day how that situation and her response made me “feel”. Now in mom’s defense, she was doing the best she knew how at that moment and I do not blame her one bit for that sitaution, in fact I am so GRATEFUL for it! Because, what I discovered from that experience was that I have held onto that “belief” throughout a huge part of my adult life! By holding onto it and believing it to be true, time after time it prevented me from asking for what I REALLY wanted because I was afraid I would offend someone or I would look ungrateful for what was being offered to me.
It sent an internal message for years that my needs weren’t as important as other people’s needs. WOW, do you think that held me back from abundance and opportunities? By “seeing it” and “owning it”, I experienced a HUGE breakthrough in my negotiating skills and thankfully I have chosen new beliefs to live into that serve me better.
So use my story as inspiration and motivation to ask yourself: What stories or belifes are you holding onto that aren’t serving you any more in terms of Negotiating?
The gift is that once we receive answers for ourselves, it can lead us to see where we may be pushing current opportunities and abundance away! And by choosing to replace the old belifes with new, more supportive beliefs we can shift not only our life’s experiences, but our children’s, too!
What are some other tips?
Here are 3 Successful Keys to Winning the Negotiating Game:
1. Be Confident – whatever you say, say it with confidence!
2. Be Prepared – gather all the necessary information to help you; know your goals, your objectives, and your ideal outcomes with a range of possibilities.
3. Be Willing to Walk Away – if you must have something to give you the courage to walk away; adopt the philosophy that “no deal is better than a bad deal”!
And remember, just like anything new or unfamiliar in life; the only way to fail is to Never Even Try!