Never Get Angry in a Negotiation

By Jessica Stillman
Source: http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/never-get-angry-in-a-negotiation.html

New research out of Stanford reveals cool threats beat angry words when it comes to negotiating.

If you based your negotiating style on what you see in movies, you might think shouting while being a lawyer is the way to go, but luckily entrepreneurs have more solid information to go on than the imaginings of Hollywood screen writers. Recent research conducted by professors out of Stanford and INSEAD rigorously compared the effects of showing anger (whether real or feigned) in negotiations with the effects of cool but open threats.

To do this the team ran a series of four experiments, asking study participants to negotiate first with one another and then with a computer program, which the test subjects were led to believe was actually a human negotiating partner, testing how many concessions an angry negotiating style was able to wring out of opponents versus the number of concessions won through clear but collected threats. What were the findings?

“Our results say that anger isn’t as effective as a simple threat in getting people to concede,” Margaret Neale, a Stanford professor of organizations and dispute resolution who participated in the research told Stanford Knowledgebase, which goes on to explain the details of the later computer-simulated negotiation experiments:

When the computer made angry statements (and made them late in the negotiation, before rounds 5 and 6), it was able to elicit an average of a little more than 14 concessions; in the threat condition, on the other hand, the average number of concessions was higher — about 15.5 when the threats came late in the negotiation. The same pattern of threats trumping anger held with expressions of anger or threat in earlier rounds, although both types of statements proved less effective than when delivered closer to the end of the negotiation.

Remarkably, even though threatening negotiators got their counterparts to concede more, they created less ill will than did angry negotiators: In a follow-up study, the participants rated the threatening negotiators as more likable than angry negotiators.

Further questioning of participants revealed that threatening but collected negotiators come across as more poised and confident, which led those across the table to believe their threats were thought out and serious. Meanwhile, angry outbursts were often perceived as a passing storm of emotion – a hissy fit in everyday language — that a savvy negotiator could simply wait out.

The takeaway from the research is clear. Forget the movie stereotypes and ditch the theatrics and emotional outbursts if you’re trying to get the most out of a negotiation. Instead, calm but clear threats late in the game appear to be the most effective – and as an added bonus, this approach will probably mean you’ll even be seen as more likeable at the end of the negotiation.

Do these research results jive with your real-world experience of negotiations?

Read more:

• Make Your Vacations Good For Business
• The Fast Track to Start-Up Life
• Make Your Employees Feel Less Busy

Jessica Stillman is a freelance writer based in London with interests in unconventional career paths, generational differences, and the future of work. She has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch, GigaOM, and Brazen Careerist. @EntryLevelRebel

Friday Humor: Pet World

Email Doesn’t Have to Suck

by Christina DesMarais

There’s a better way to manage your inbox–let SaneBox do most of the work for you.

Email is a pain. There are simply too many messages to handle—and I’m not even talking about spam from marketers (I use a separate address to collect those emails). The headache is the increasing number of legitimate business messages—it’s a humongous time-suck that only seems to be getting worse.

Two years ago I answered nearly every message. A year ago I downgraded to at least trying to read them all. Last winter I started scanning the sender subject fields concentrating on the ones coming from people I knew or looked like they might contain information I needed. And lately, I’ve been considering closing my account and starting over with a private address reserved for only work colleagues and select sources.

Until, that is, I tried SaneBox.

It’s like Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature in that it looks at your messages and prior history engaging with those senders and decides which emails you’re likely to deem most important.

When you turn on the Priority Inbox feature in Gmail, Google separates your email into three categories: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything Else; all the mail is still in your inbox, but the important messages are up top.

SaneBox is a bit different in that it removes less important messages from your inbox completely, moving them to an @SaneLater folder that you can peruse whenever you want. If SaneBox puts an important message into that folder you can move it to your inbox and it remembers the action so the next time you receive a message from that person, it will go to your inbox.

Priority Inbox is trainable in this way, as well; the more you move stuff around, the better it gets at categorization. But I prefer SaneBox.

SaneBox vs. Gmail’s Priority Inbox

SaneBox gives you a custom dashboard including a timeline that graphs how many important and less important emails you get every day. My current average, according to SaneBox, is 81 a day. If I took a minute to read, digest, and respond to each one of them, that’s nearly an hour and a half a day going through email. If you figure there’s at least 250 work days in a year, I’m spending 375 hours annually on email. That’s not acceptable.

In addition to the @SaneLater folder that stores non-essential messages, you can also enable folders such as @SaneNews for newsletters and @SaneBlackHole for those messages you want to send straight to your Trash. (Ha! Finally I’m getting revenge on a certain five-letter-titled fitness magazine that has not let me unsubscribe to its newsletters for two full years!)

Automated nagging!

And it also has a nifty feature that lets you CC or BCC a message to @SaneBox.com to remind you if someone doesn’t respond.

So let’s say you need an answer from your boss about a project and you need it no later than two days from now. In the CC field just include the address 2days@SaneBox.com and in two days SaneBox will put the message back in the top of your inbox if she never replied to it. This way you remember to bug her again.

SaneBox also creates an @SaneRemindMe folder that lets you keep track of all the messages to which you still need replies. Use oneweek@SaneBox.com, June5@SaneBox.com or 5minutes@SaneBox.com; it doesn’t matter, SaneBox will figure out the time frame you need.

The service is $5 a month and works with email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhone, and Android and as well most email services like Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail.  The only service it doesn’t currently support is Hotmail.

Christina DesMarais is an Inc.com contributor who writes about the tech start-up community, covering innovative ideas, news, and trends. Follow her tweets @salubriousdish or add her to one of your circles on Google+. Have a tip? Email her at christinadesmarais (at) live (dot) com. @salubriousdish

The Best iPad Business Apps

Stay productive on the go with mobile office suites, remote access clients, file sync programs, and other useful business applications designed with the iPad in mind.

By Jeffrey L. Wilson

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372150,00.asp

Picture this: You’re dashing through the airport in a mad rush to catch a cross-country flight to meet clients. Now, what would you rather have in your bag, as you’re bobbing and weaving between travelers: a business laptop (which typically weighs between 3 and 6 pounds) or a 1.3-pound iPad 2? If you don’t mind working on a touch screen (or are using a Bluetooth keyboard), the choice is simple.

The App Store has an incredible software catalog that transforms Apple’s slate into a highly capable productivity device. In fact, there are apps available to meet nearly every business need, from word processing to remote access, so you can continue doing the job at hand—but on a tablet that weighs less than two pounds.

The iTunes Apps Store contains many apps that duplicate the functionality of traditional desktop applications—and the breadth of functionality continues to increase. For example, the Editors’ Choice award-winning iWork for iPad (a mobile version of Apple’s office suite), LogMeIn Ignition for iPad (a mobile version of the popular remote access software), Dragon Dictation (Nuance’s mobile application that brings much of the speech recognition functionality of Dragon NaturallySpeaking to the iPad), Filemaker Go for iPad (database software), and Power.ME (which excels at task and workflow management) give business users the ability to edit documents, access a Mac or PC remotely, transcribe voice notes, keep inventory, and keep track of important data.

The marketplace also has many apps that may not represent traditional workplace applications, but may prove useful to nonetheless. The Editors’ Choice award-winning Twitter for iPad (social networking), and Dropbox for iPad (cloud-based file synchronization) lets you build your brand and make files accessible from multiple computers.

Of course, these are just a handful of the numerous iPad business apps available in the iTunes Apps Store, but these are some of our favorites that you’ll find in our Best Business Apps roundup. Check out our slideshow to see which is best suited for the job at hand.

Click the links in the slideshow below to read more about our recommended apps for business iPad users.

View Slideshow
See all (9) slides

More

7 Ways to Make a Mini-Marketing Campaign

By Tim Donnelly
Source: http://www.inc.com/guides/201109/7-ways-to-create-a-mini-marketing-campaign.html

Go big or go home? Forget that. These strategies for increasing your brand influence take hardly any time, and very little money.

Let’s say you’ve got some down time between major marketing campaigns. Does that mean your marketing efforts have to go into hibernation? Of course not. You can fill in the downtime in your bigger advertising strategy with some mini-marketing campaigns that are often quick, uncomplicated and cheap—or even free. Experts from top marketing firms share some ideas on things you can do to run a smart—and influential—mini-marketing campaign that might even change the way you reach your customers in the future.

1. Experiment with new audiences.
“Throughout the year, large campaigns rarely stray from their core target audiences. But there are opportunities within secondary audiences. To draw on these opportunities, we usually turn to social first. We monitor social campaigns throughout the year and identify key questions and conversations we want to explore further. Then, when we have time, we survey these audiences, conduct small, targeted promotions, or post engaging messages to see what they have to say. More often than not, we learn something new that we weren’t considering for an upcoming launch or get added validation for a new idea or direction.“
—Todd Miller, managing partner, The Archer Group

2. Go big with pop-up events.
“Find a venue where many people who are your customers or prospects show up. Better yet, buy a booth or offer your services for speaking or host a party for customers and encourage them to bring friends. This gives you the chance to speak with current customers to learn what they like/dislike, but mostly it gives you the chance to prospect. Just don’t make the mistake too many business people make after the event: failing to follow up on every lead. If you gathered hundreds of business cards or email addresses then send a thank you and invitation to stay in touch. Offer something of value in this email—a discount, a free newsletter, added features, etc.—then the people most interested will “hand raise” and identify themselves to you for further follow-up and marketing efforts.“
—Linda Worrell, managing director, Red F

3. Sponsor conversations.
“People today love to talk and express their opinions. Blogs, chat rooms, comment sections are filled with loads of people expressing themselves. This, if you play your cards right, can be a great opportunity for your product or brand. Why not offer up topics for people to discuss? And make them topics that relate to your marketing efforts. Use Facebook or blog comments to start a relevant conversation where, at some point, your product can play a role. Be careful, however, not to appear to be ‘selling.’ Generate a conversation that is authentic to the topic, and that your brand can become a part of as opposed to a conversation that is about your product. People will happily talk about things that are interesting to them, and brands are not interesting. So make your brand a byproduct of the conversation, not the topic itself.“
—Kevin Roddy, chief creative officer, Publicis & Hal Riney

4. Attach yourself to large events.
“Sponsoring big events can be an effective but expensive way of connecting with industry leaders. Instead of going the sponsorship route, think of interesting ways to associate your product or service with the event to create organic buzz. For example, a cocktail hour at a nearby venue or a social-media driven game that incorporates panels and parties might be more cost-effective ways to leverage an event. Your campaign idea should provide value to event-goers; the reason Foursquare was a hit at SXSW was because it made it easier for friends to find each other. Keep in mind that early adopters can be your biggest cheerleaders, so connect with anyone going to the event who is an admitted fan of your product and reward them for sharing positive stories. People trust the advice of their friends and peers, so keep in mind that one good experience with your product can have a waterfall effect that goes viral.“
—Maneesh K. Goyal, CEO of MKG, an experiential marketing agency

5. Emphasize earned media.
“Emphasize ‘earned’ media programs during these ‘dark’ periods in-between your big campaigns. Earned media, in the form of, for example, traditional public relations efforts and social media programs can be a cost-effective way to stay in market even when you don’t have ad budgets. We have found that emphasizing social media outreach and programs just as paid advertising campaigns wind down can be a highly effective way to keep an organizations message in market even after paid ads go away.“
—Jose Villa, founder and president Sensis advertising agency

6. Try a new format.
“One of the things you have to look at when you attempt short-burst marketing is how much share of somebody’s attention you can capture for the most reasonable share of money. What I would consider looking at social as an environment to capture market share. There’s not much advertising in social apps. Usually, you get a large percentage or 100 percent share of voice within the application. Within that you’re also getting a very engaged audience. Some offer the opportunity to buy in the stream of social activities people are performing across web and mobile. It’s the most effective way you can spend your money for a short burst of time. The key is buying ‘in activity:’ as you send a gift, perform a mission, check in or set a status, that is when we perform our advertising. You’re reaching an engaged consumer at the right time. As somebody performs a social activity, and you reach that consumer, that’s when they’re likely to share, that’s when they’re likely to ‘like.’”
—Robert Victor, CMO of Appssavvy

7. Revisit old leads.
“One thing to do would be to recontact people that you’ve spoken to that have for whatever reason, in a friendly way, turned you down in the past. Revisit those people. If people have called you to inquire about your product or service but have not bought from you, it’s always good to call those people back and re-pitch them. They’ve already expressed interest in you, they may or may not have been in research mode when they called. It’s a fruitful, no-cost list. You don’t have to spend money to get that list. You know they’re interested in your product.”
—Dan Feldstein, cofounder and chief marketing officer, Red Ventures

Read more:

• Creating Marketing Campaigns That Matter

Tim Donnelly is a freelance writer and managing editor of Brokelyn.com. His work has appeared in Billboard, The Atlantic, Thought Catalog, and The New York Post. @TimDonnelly