152 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
What else other than money might be negotiable or
traded?
When it comes to business deals, the focus, more often than not, is on
money. Try asking, however, what other factors might become part of the
negotiation. If you want to negotiate the price downwards you need to ask
yourself: What else can I offer in return? You could ask:
‘If I were to do such and such for you, would you help me with something
else without any money changing hands?’
‘I’ll tell you what, if I get it to you by tomorrow, would you be prepared to
pay our initial asking price?’
‘If we were to promote your service to our customer base, how much of a
discount would you offer us?’
If I were in their shoes how would it feel?
By asking yourself this question you force your mind to respect the fact that
the other person will want to feel good about the eventual deal. Your aim is
not to get what you want at their expense, but to nd a mutually benecial
solution that works for you both. So ask yourself these sorts of questions:
How would I respond, if I were them?
How important is this negotiation for them?
What other possible options might they respond with?
What are the benets for them of my specic proposal?
What is the deal that they will be hoping to do?
What will make them feel good about the nal outcome?
What reasons might they have for turning me down?
What questions might they want to ask me?
Time management skills and tips
So what has time management got to do with business development? It’s
simple. If you or your people are overstretched, stressed or spending time
and resources doing the things that won’t make a difference, then your
business development results are likely to be adversely affected.
Here then are eight tips to keep in mind:
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Personal performance business development skills 153
Control is everything
The key word is control. If you’re not in control of your time, other people
and circumstances are. Work, friends, families, colleagues, businesses,
public bodies and technology all conspire to drain your time if you let
them.
The key to gaining better control is planning. No, I am not talking about
goal setting. Time planning is simply the process of actively thinking about
what choices you are going to make about how you spend your time, in
order to keep control and to accomplish whatever it is you want to do.
There is one simple question you need to get used to asking: ‘Who has or
will have control over my time in this situation: is it me or someone else?’ If it is
not you then you need to consider or plan how you can regain time.
Have you ever heard yourself using these expressions?
‘Give me a call when you are ready.’
‘Let me know when you want to meet up.’
‘I don’t mind whether you come to us, or if you like we’ll travel to you.’
‘I’m clear all day, I can totally t in with you.’
Who do you think has control in these situations? Control is everything –
planning is control.
Think outside of hour and half-hour blocks of time
Are you open minded and ready to consider something new? Read and
think about this carefully until you fully understand it.
It is not so much a tip or a technique but something more powerful. It is to
do with our personal relationship with time. It challenges the way we are
unconsciously programmed to think about and use our time.
Let me explain by asking you a few questions:
When you arrange business meetings, what times crop up in your
diary more than others?
When you set your alarm for the morning, what time do you set it for?
When you make your evening social arrangements, what times do you
typically allocate?
In the majority of cases, I bet the answers to these questions are at hourly
or half-hourly units of time.
154 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
I have personally researched this and know for a fact that:
50percent of all time arrangements, plans and reminders are xed on
the hour;
40percent of all time arrangements, plans and reminders are xed on
the half hours;
10percent of all time arrangements, plans and reminders are xed at
other times and most of them are at the quarter-hour slots.
What this means in practice is that 90percent of people x their business,
professional, social and personal arrangements on the hour or on half-hour
time blocks.
If people think and operate in this way, then we limit ourselves in terms of
arranging and planning to the number of hour and half-hour units there
are in the day or particular section of the day we are dealing with.
By doing this we literally write off huge chunks of time. Stop just thinking
in these blocks of time and you will gain a massive amount of additional
options and time.
Spend your business development time where it will have
most impact – understand the 80/20 rule!
Let’s face it, there will be elements of what you do that will produce fewer
results than others. Doesn’t it make sense therefore to spend your time on
the components that will give you the best outcome?
There is a principle that states that 80 per cent of the effects or results
come from just 20percent of the causes or input. For those of you who
haven’t come across this pearl of wisdom before, this is known as the Pareto
Principle, named after an Italian economist who noted that 80percent of
all property in Italy was owned by just 20percent of the population.
Look at the following examples to see where it applies in life generally:
Have you ever noticed, if you’re in business development, how
20 per cent of your efforts give you 80 per cent of your sales and
revenue?
In your social and personal life, isn’t 80 per cent of your time spent
with just 20percent of the people you know?
Have you found out yet that 20 per cent of your family and friends
give you 80percent of your headaches and problems?
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Personal performance business development skills 155
By the way don’t get too hung up on the precise statistics here. I may
well be out by a few percentage points here and there with some of these
examples, but the principle is absolutely valid.
Actively identify which of your daily business development activities give
you the best results or outcomes and then spend more of your time doing
those.
Master your habits . . . master your time!
I have often observed people as they start their working day. Many are the
victim of habits. What do they do?
Many have a coffee and read the paper for 10 minutes. If you do this
. . . why? Is it to ease you into the day? Is it because this is a priority
activity that has to be done then? Is this a good or a bad habit? I am
not saying you should or you shouldn’t, but if you just do it because
you always have . . . then examine whether this behaviour is a positive
use of that early and fresh moment of the day.
Many go through their post and e-mails. Why? Does this have to be
done at that moment? What would happen if you did it later?
Regularly question why you do, what you do, when you do it.
Have a time planning system
I know people who live and manage their personal and business lives by
accident rather than intent. Everything is urgent, mistakes are regularly
made, some things are forgotten and many things are often left to the
last minute and then done badly. Not a great state if you want to get great
business development results.
I know some people hate detailed planning, but though the sophistication
of the process is up to you, one thing is certain: any planning system is
better than none. If you don’t plan at all you won’t have control over your
life.
Let me give you my personal, simple, guiding principle to any planning
methods. I call it the www question system approach to planning. It
couldn’t be simpler. Stick to it and you won’t go far wrong. Each ‘w’ stands
for an important question:
W = What do you ‘have to’ and ‘want to’ get done?
W = When will you do it?
156 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
W = Where will you write this information down so that it is easily
visible and accessible to remind you?
The rest is detail!
Master your priorities
In order to plan your time and business development projects to get the
maximum control, you need to make choices constantly about what to do
rst, next and where to spend your time to best effect.
With these thoughts in mind let me give you the absolute golden rule of
prioritising: do the most important thing rst.
Before you begin your day, consciously ask yourself the general question:
what is the most important thing to do rst? Once you have an answer
then that is what you should do. Once that is done, you move on to the
next most important task and so on. That way, when the day is done, if you
have not completed everything, you have at least spent the bulk of your
time on those things of most value.
So how do you decide what is the most important? Many time manage-
ment ‘gurus’ have written about this question and offered some xed
and denitive answers. I don’t like or believe that one answer works for
every one and in every situation, so here is a list of questions and criteria to
help you decide on how to choose which is the most important, bearing in
mind that there isn’t a right or wrong choice. Ask yourself:
Which is the most unpleasant or toughest task so that I can get that
out of the way rst?
Which is the easiest and quickest?
Which can I do best to put myself in the most condent and positive
state of mind to tackle the other things?
Which will make the biggest and most profound effect on my ultimate
objective?
Which activity brings me closest to the money?
Which is the most urgent?
Which just ‘feels’ like the one to start with?
Which issue on the list is giving me the most anxiety or stress when I
think about it?
Which of these, if it had to, could wait until tomorrow?
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