“That was a stupid question!”

Those were the words uttered by someone who considered himself to be superior to the person that posed the question. Such a response can also be the positioning attempts of a bully.

When negotiating, you need to know how not to be cowered by a bully. Doing so will allow you to negotiate more effectively, maintain a more peaceful state of mind, and reduce the overall level of stress you might possess at the negotiation table.

This article discloses insights that will allow you to be better prepared to deal with a bully in your negotiations. It can also serve as a booster for your degree of confidence when dealing with such a person.

Know when someone is truly attempting to bully you.

As I’ve stated in other articles that I’ve written, before assuming someone is attempting to bully you, be sure your assumptions are accurate. This can be accomplished by asking outright if the other negotiator is trying to bully you and/or stating that you feel bullied; the choice you adopt will be dependent on the type of person you’re engaged with. In the case of someone that’s just aggressive, and not a bully, if you state that you’re feeling bullied and say so with a smile on your face, that may alert him that he needs to become subdued.

Understand the thought process behind a bully’s effort to bully you.

You also need to understand what a bully thinks of you. Ask yourself, does he perceive me to be an easy target, someone that will back down at the first sign of aggression, or is he testing me to see how I’ll react? Having this insight will reveal the options you might utilize to combat his efforts. You should have gathered information about the bullying efforts that he’s used in other situations, which means you should be prepared for how he might negotiate with you. But, in case you haven’t, be nimble enough to have strategies at the ready, to deter his bullying attempts.

Consider his source of leverage/power.

Power is fluid. That means it changes from moment to moment. If you understand the source of his power, if you can’t attack him, you can attack it. This is done by letting that source know that it will have a price to pay, as the result of the bullying activities of its associate. Knowing his sources of power will also allow you to gain leverage by simply mentioning the fact that you’re aware of who his ‘backers’ are.

In a negotiation, a bully is as strong as he and you agree he is. Thus, to the degree that either perspective is altered, so is the perspective of the bully’s power. Therefore, if you know you’ll be in an environment in which someone may attempt to bully you, especially if they’ve displayed such tendencies in the past, be prepared with retorts stating, “you don’t want to try that with me. I bite back!” Just be mindful of not escalating a situation passed a point that you can’t control. Such rebukes will allay the bully’s perspective and thoughts about picking on you, which means, he’ll more than likely engage with you in a more respectful manner… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

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When you add narration to a presentation, especially with slide timings, you create a self-running presentation. It’s almost a video-like effect. Such a presentation is great for sending to potential customers on a CD, posting on your website or a presentation-sharing site, or displaying at a trade show or in your company’s lobby.

Usually, I prefer to record my voice using Audacity, a free sound recorder and editor.  If you download it, be sure to also read the instructions for, and download, the LAME MP3 encoder, which lets you save files in MP3 format. The advantage is that it’s easier to edit the files, in case you tend to trip over your own tongue, as I do!

However, recently I wanted to post a presentation with narration at authorSTREAM.com. This slide sharing site has some nice benefits:

    * You can upload presentations with embedded sound

    * It plays many animations

    * You can convert presentations of under 5 minutes to video for free, to post at video-sharing sites (like YouTube) or on your own site.

But the sound must be embedded, which means using the narration feature (or doing a trick with MP3′s to make PowerPoint think they’re WAV files-because PowerPoint can only embed WAV files).

** Get the best quality sound

So I tried the narration feature and discovered that the quality was awful! There was a huge amount of noise in the background. When I tried used the same equipment in Audacity, the sound was just fine. That’s when I discovered the first secret: CD quality.

To start narration, you go to the Slide Show tab and click Record Narration (in 2002/2003 choose Slide Show> Record Narration).  Click the Set Microphone Level button to set and test your audio setup.

Then be sure to click the Change Quality button! You need to do this every single time; you can’t change the default.

Change the quality when you narrate

Then, in the Sound Selection dialog box, choose CD Quality from the Name drop-down list, and click OK twice to start narrating.

Use CD Quality for your narration

You then go into Slide Show view automatically. Narrate the presentation, clicking to move from slide to slide. At the end, you’ll be asked if you want to save the slide timings. Do so to set the timings for each slide to match the narration.

** Edit narration successfully

If you make a mistake, you can re-narrate a slide. Go to the slide, re-open the Record Narration dialog box and start again. Record the narration for that slide and then press Esc. Be careful not to go to the next slide.

However, if your new narration is longer than the original, you may run into a recognized problem-truncated narrations! This can be very frustrating. It apparently happens because PowerPoint saves narration timings separately from slide timings. Even if you increase the timing for the slide, PowerPoint will truncate the narration!

I’m going to tell you what Microsoft says to do and then tell you what worked for me.

Microsoft’s instructions are:

1. Make sure that all animations are set to advance on mouse click and not automatically.

2. If the last item to be animated on the slide is a text frame of an AutoShape that contains text, create one new shape and place it outside of the slide’s area. Set the shape’s Custom Animation setting to Appear. Make sure that the shape is the last item to animate and that it is set to animated on a mouse click.

3. Make sure that any slide transitions are set to advance on a mouse click and not automatically.

4. Re-record the narration and click No when asked if youwant to save the slide timings.

5. Preview the presentation in Slide Show view manually and check the narrations.

6. Then add the automatic slide and animation timings.

No matter what I did, my new narration was cut off. I made it shorter than the original and still the same amount was cut off. Finally, I realized that that the problem wasn’t the length. PowerPoint was cutting off a certain amount no matter what the length. So, I recorded a silent period at the end  of a narration. Then, when PowerPoint cut it off, I was fine!

It happens too often to ignore. You spend hours working on your elaborate presentation. You spit and polish your pitch with colorful charts, testimonials and a project plan. When you reach the meeting room, your client says, “Bob! I have to rush for an urgent meeting. Show me what you’ve got in 2 minutes.”

What do you say in those 2 minutes to create the impact of a 20 minute presentation?

There is no point searching for words at that point in time. You need to be ready with that pitch – upfront, if you want to make it big as a sales presenter.

Here is my suggestion to make your 2 minute pitch.

Take a sheet of paper and answers these three questions:

1. TANGIBLE BENEFIT: What is the one most important tangible benefit offered by your product? The benefit should be clearly measurable.

2. SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE: How is your offering significantly different from any other such offering? The difference should be an obvious one.

3. CLEAR PROOF: What is the proof for your claim? The proof should be credible enough for the customer to accept without question.

Your answers to these questions are the 2 minute pitch.

There is a lot of science behind those 3 questions. They directly influence the decision making process of your customers.

Here is the caveat. Though the questions are simple and direct, the answers to those questions may not be easy to find.

Take the time necessary to come up with the best answers. Call up your existing customers, visit your ‘Product’ department or interview the highest producing sales people to get the clues. The time spent on this is worth its weight in gold.

In fact, creating this pitch should be your first priority as a sales presenter. The process will give you a lot of clarity about your product or service, which in turn will reflect as conviction in your voice when you make your next sales presentation.

Happy selling!