So what do you need?

Listening to music while in traffic on my drive in this morning, volume high and singing like a diva, I thought of the following nugget of information. Life decisions, personal or business; what we do, to get what we want is all a negotiation!

From the words of a song, “this life hasn’t turned out quite the way I want it to be……Tell me what you want?”

Now the song goes off on a tangent with extravagant wants; however, back in reality, to get what you want depends on the approach you take,  do you have a wish and concession list of things, i.e., things that you really want and others that you are willing to concede if it gets you what you want, in other words, be realistic with your requests.  Taking a pay increase as an example, you may want 10% as of your next wage at the end of the month due to outstanding sales results for the past year; however, you may be willing to wait until the wage review time in 6 months to receive your increase. On the other hand, a backdated increase might be a reasonable price for a lower figure.

With the song still ringing in my ears, it asks “Uh, so what do you need?”. When you need something, this would be a “must have”, and you should be willing to trade other items for this. The person that you are negotiating with will quite possibly push back and this is where instead of arguing back and forth, we make a proposal; this will show you are open to ideas that give both parties what they want, depending on how the deal is packaged! Heading back to the pay increase you are looking for, if you know you need 5%, when their pushback is for 5% only, if they agree to backdate the increase to the time of the request, i.e. 6 months backdated pay, you feel that this is a win-win.

Communicating clearly and effectively will let others know exactly what you want, now as I’ve reached the office car park and the song is finishing, I’ll leave the last words to the artist, Hey, Hey I wanna be a Rockstar!!