| I learned early on in my career that bringing a | | | | learned to always bring the agenda, my success |
| product, brochure, testimonial or "prop" to any | | | | rate increased dramatically. Here's what an agenda |
| meeting, is absolutely necessary. Whether it's a | | | | it does to the negotiation dynamic: |
| sales call, interview or team discussion, keep in | | | | 1) It's an immediate compliment to the Other Side. |
| mind that people learn and absorb information in | | | | It essentially says "your time is valuable, so I've |
| different ways. 40% of us are visual, 40% are | | | | done this to make our meeting more valuable." |
| kinesthetic (touch) and 20% are auditory. If we | | | | 2) Rarely will the other side have one, so you've |
| depend only on the sound of our own words, we | | | | subtly gained control of the meeting. |
| potentially miss 80% of the audience. | | | | 3) This control allows you to set the pace and the |
| With that in mind, let's dive into a painfully | | | | sequence of discussion. |
| simplistic, often overlooked, but powerful tool | | | | Agenda's don't have to be sophisticated. In fact, |
| known as The Agenda. Webster defines agenda | | | | simple, one-page documents with bulleted points |
| as "the plan or list of things to be done". | | | | work best. Agenda's also tend to keep the |
| In business negotiation training we utilize this | | | | discussion on point. In the Humble Confidence |
| concept as the final stage of aggressive | | | | Negotiation Workshop we devote the majority of |
| preparation. It's called Create the Agenda. I've | | | | our effort to Aggressive Preparation. 90% of a |
| made over 5000 sales calls in my career. Many of | | | | successful negotiation occurs here. |
| those involved some type of negotiation. When I | | | | |