Master Negotiators Use These 10 Secrets To Be Successful In Negotiations

The thought of having to negotiate with someone for something can be quite intimidating. I mean, we live in the world of Amazon’s one-click purchasing, no haggle car buying, and we visit the home of low-low prices, we don’t HAVE to negotiate for most of the things that we want.

If you take just a moment to think about it, when it comes down to the things that we REALLY, REALLY want in this life, we almost always seem to end up negotiating for them. Case in point: a house, a nice car, your next job, etc. If it’s valuable, then it sure seems like some sort of negotiation is called for.

If negotiating is so important to getting what we want, then why do we get so nervous when we are facing a negotiating situation? It’s my belief that one of the key reasons that nobody seems to really look forward to to a negotiation is because we don’t believe that we know how to negotiate.

Just like with so many other things in life, there are some basic rules, some things to practice, and then poof – you can determine how good you are at doing it. Things that fall into this category are playing tennis, running a marathon, playing golf, baking a cake, etc. Negotiating is not nearly so nice & neat.

In order to become a good IT negotiator, you must first realize that there is no magic “silver bullet” skill that you need to learn in order to become an accomplished negotiator. Instead, there are a whole bunch of “little” skills that when put together can make you a negotiating force. In order to help you get started on your path to becoming the negotiator that you always wanted to be, here are 10 secrets that all the great negotiators use:

1. Remember that a negotiation is NOT a contest. There is not a winner & a loser, rather a better deal can always be found for both parties.
2. Surprisingly enough, you really do have more power than you may think that you do. Be sure to always be looking for ways in which the other side of the table’s power may be more limited than you originally thought.
3. Always write down your negotiating plan BEFORE you start to negotiate. Make sure that during the negotiations you never decide an issue unless you have had a chance to prepare for it. Make sure that you follow your negotiating plan that you made before you started.
4. Don’t be afraid to negotiate no matter how much you might think that the other side has an overwhelming position. Just remember – they might be feeling exactly the same way!
5. Get the best – don’t enter into a negotiation with an inferior team.
6. Get your shots before you negotiate! Make sure that you (and your team) have prepared your immune system to defend your positions before you start to negotiate.
7. Talk less – listen more. Oh, and don’t be critical when you are listening.
8. Ignore title – don’t let the other side of the table intimidate you with their titles or status. Do your homework and then be willing to confront them.
9. Facts can be bent. Make sure that you are not intimidated by facts, averages, or even statistics that are presented by the other side of the table.
10. If a deadlock occurs, don’t spend time talking about all of your problems – the other side has their own and it’s not helpful to spend time talking about yours.

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

If you are interested in finding out more about how you and your team can develop the negotiating skills that you need in order to close better deals and close them quicker, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a consulting or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

Related posts:

1. Negotiation Do’s & Don’ts From The Master Negotiators If only there was some book, some DVD to watch,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dr. Jim Anderson Receives Verizon Award For Leadership Presentations

Verizon has presented Dr. Jim Anderson with their 2009 ISOP leadership award. Dr. Anderson participated in the Verizon leadership program over the  course of the year acting as an adviser and providing leadership on how to make the program more effective.

The Verizon ISOP program is designed to provide high-potential Verizon IT employees with a year-long opportunity to learn more about how the company operates and to provide them with hands-on opportunities to engage in real-world business problem solving.

Dr. Anderson focused on teaching the management trainees how to form effective team and the steps that they needed to take in order to advance their own careers. This guidance involved coaching the program leaders, delivering keynotes, and creating and delivering team activities.

Upon receiving the award Dr. Anderson said “I’m honored to have received this award. Working with the ISOP class this year has been a source of personal joy as I’ve been able to watch this group start out as strangers and turn into a highly effective IT team.”

Verizon has already requested that Dr. Anderson participate in helping to organize the 2010 ISOP program.

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

Dr. Anderson is available to provide this type of focused management training  to any technical audience. The speech is always customized to meet the specific needs of each unique group.

If you are interested in finding out more about how your employees can become energized about working as a team or how to advance their technical careers, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a speech or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Jim Anderson To Address Verizon Mgmt Team Dr. Jim Anderson has been selected to speak to the...
2. Dr. Jim Anderson Addresses Verizon IT Mgmt Team On Wednesday, October 28, 2009, Dr. Jim Anderson presented a...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Not All Clouds Are Right For Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is all the rage these days and everyone who is anyone is making plans to implement at least some flavor of it as soon as possible. It turns out that the decision to go with a cloud computing solution for your IT department might not be as simple as some would lead you to believe. There are challenges to successfully using a cloud and we need to talk about them…

The Seven Challenges Of Cloud Computing

With all of the magazine articles, conferences, and vendors who have shown up to sell it, it’s easy to forget that cloud computing is still an emerging technology – it’s not quite fully baked yet. Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has identified the following seven issues. CIOs will need to investigate their potential effects before agreeing to any cloud computing initiative:

• Control: this is the biggest issue when it comes to using cloud computing. By design a company gives up control when they sign up to use a firm’s cloud resources. This means that the cloud provider can make changes to the infrastructure without telling the company at any time. This needs to be managed.

• Performance / Reliability: When you are using resources that are not located within your firm’s buildings the question of how much computing horsepower you have available when you need it comes up. Additionally, failures will happen and so understanding how you’ll be notified and how quickly issues will be resolved is critical.

• Security: You know that you can protect your mission critical business data when it’s inside your own walls, but what happens when somebody else is managing it for you?

• Cost Of Bandwidth: You should be saving money on buying hardware and staffing to maintain it. However, you’ll need to very accurately forecast you bandwidth costs in order to determine the true cost of using the cloud.

• Vendor Lock-In: true standards for how applications communicate and control applications that are in a vendor’s cloud have not yet been established. This means that vendors are creating their own proprietary interfaces that could end up tying you to a vendor for longer than you would like.

• Transparency: basically this comes down to the difficulty that you’ll have doing an audit of your IT resources. Since you don’t have true visibility into the cloud you can’t say for certain who has access to your data and how you can keep people out of your sensitive data.

• Reliability: I’d like to say that clouds are 100% reliable, but I can’t. The trade rags are filled with stories about connections that have gone down and back-up diesel generators that have failed to switch on. There is risk with every decision, you need to decide if you can handle the risk that comes with cloud computing.

Final Thoughts

As exciting as the new field of cloud computing is, CIOs need to slow down and take a deep breath. This is new stuff and that means that not all of the details have been worked out just yet. There are seven major areas that could have a dramatic impact on your company’s ability to get the most out of cloud computing. Do your homework and see if cloud computing offers you a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

If you are interested in finding out more about how your IT department can both better align with the rest of the firm and become more valuable, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a speaking, consulting or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dr. Jim Anderson Leads A Class During The Great American Teach-In

Dr. Jim Anderson was asked to participate in the 2009 “Great American Teach-In” event. This annual event provides professionals with an opportunity to visit area elementary and middle schools in order to share information on their careers in an effort to motivate students to stay in school and do well.

Dr. Anderson has participated in this event for the past six years. When asked why he was involved this year, Dr. Anderson said “I feel that we need more engineers and I see The Great American Teach-In as my chance to try to light that fire of interest in those children who just might have that engineering spark in them.”

This year Dr. Anderson used an instructional project that had originally been created by the Institute For Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to teach engineering skills to math and science teachers. The project was used to show the students exactly what engineers do. The project was called “Build A Better Bag” and Dr. Anderson used it to show the children how engineers take an idea, create a prototype, test it, and then go back and update their designs.

The presentation was given to three classes of different ages. In each class the students were asked to provide input on how to create the bag, how to load it once it was built, and then what to do when it failed after being overloaded. Dr. Anderson reported “Every single child was engaged and wanted to contribute their ideas for how to make a better bag. This was exactly the kind of excitement that I was looking to generate.”

Dr. Anderson was proud to have been asked to participate in this event and he’s already looking forward to next year’s Great American Teach-In — wonder what engineering project he’ll present there?

Related posts:

1. Dr. Jim Anderson Hosts The 2009 Transportation Supersession Dr. Jim Anderson served as the co-master-of-ceremonies for the 20th...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dr. Jim Anderson Will Be Speaking To USF Graduating MIS Seniors

Dr. Jim Anderson has been asked to deliver a keynote speech to a graduating class of MIS Seniors at the University of South Florida.

The University of South Florida was founded in 1956 as the first public university established specifically to address the needs of Florida’s rapidly emerging urban regions. USF serves more than 39,000 students and offers 228 degree programs at the undergraduate, graduate, specialist and doctoral levels.

Dr. Anderson has been asked to deliver his keynote address titled “10 Secrets To Having A Successful Career In IT“. He has delivered this speech over 20 times in different settings to audiences of different sizes.

When asked what he would be doing differently this time, Dr. Anderson stated “The down economy has made all students who are looking at graduating very nervous, MIS students are no exception. During my keynote I’m going to reassure them that they have chosen the right career field — IT is a dynamic and growing area that desperately needs bright young minds. I’m also going to share with them the steps that they can take from their first day on the job in order to make sure that they will have a long and satisfying career.”

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

Dr. Anderson is available to provide this type of focused motivational speech to any university audience. The speech is always customized to meet the specific needs of each unique group.

If you are interested in finding out more about how your students can become energized about a technical career, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a speech or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Jim Anderson Addresses Verizon IT Mgmt Team On Wednesday, October 28, 2009, Dr. Jim Anderson presented a...
2. Dr. Jim Anderson To Address Verizon Mgmt Team Dr. Jim Anderson has been selected to speak to the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Will Your Product Get Lost In The Customer Complaint Triangle?

I can remember being something like 9 or 10 years old when I first learned about the Bermuda Triangle. I’m not sure where I first got my facts, but I’m willing to bet good money that it was that classic TV show with Leonard Nimoy called “In Search Of…” I didn’t sleep for something like a week after that.

Welcome To The Bermuda Triangle

The basic story behind the Bermuda Triangle is that it is a patch of ocean (one side bounded by Bermuda) in which a large number of planes and boats have mysteriously vanished and have never been seen again. We product mangers have our own version of the Bermuda Triangle: it happens when complaints cause our customers to disappear without a trace.

Whether or not the Bermuda Triangle is real, when customer complaints are not handled correctly a product can be made to disappear.

The Customer Complaint Triangle

Dr. Stefan Michel, Dr. David Bowen and Dr. Robert Johnston are European researchers who spend their time studying how customer service is done and they’ve discovered another triangle which can prevent your product from disappearing. This triangle consists of your customers, the product manager, and the customer service rep. They just might have solved this mystery once and for all…

It turns out that customers who have a complaint are most interested in fairness. They feel that your product has wronged them and they want to have things put right. But that’s not all.

Not only do customers want things put right, but they also want how the product failure was allowed to occur in the first place and what you are going to do to make sure that it never happens again. Oh, and they want all of this information in a reasonable amount of time.

The Recovery Paradox

Here’s the important part: there’s something called the “recovery paradox” in which a customer can end up being more delighted by a skilled service recovery than they were with the product in the first place.

My last experience like this occurred when I purchased an iPod adapter for my car’s stereo system from the electronics supply store Crutchfield. I was installing the adapter, ran into some problems of my own making, and ended up having to call them for help. They talked me though what I was doing, pointed out what I was doing wrong, and solved my problem in about 10 minutes. I now love these guys.

The product manager’s role in dealing with customer complaints is to use the complaints to change the product so that the problem never happens again. The key to doing this successfully is to ensure that there is good information flow between the customer service team and the product mangers.

There have been some great studies that show that the more complaints that come in, the less likely a product manager is to talk to the customer service team – who wants to hear more bad news about your product? That’s just wrong.

The final side of this triangle is the customer service rep. It turns out that customer service reps get the most job satisfaction when they are able to solve customer problems. However, they often get little support from product managers to do this.

What All Of This Means For You

In order to provide these front-line employees with the support that they crave, a product manger needs to make sure that they are equipped with the information and the training that they need to effect a service recovery. Additionally, a feedback loop needs to be set up so that the product manger can communicate the product changes that are being put in place as a result of previous complaints.

In the end, no one person can resolve a customer complaint. It really does take a triangle of staff working together to make sure that an angry customer doesn’t get lost forever.

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

If you are interested in finding out more about how you and your products can boost your firm’s bottom line and gain more market share, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a consulting or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

Related posts:

1. Product Managers & The Secret Of The Color Wheel I’ve recently had to sit through so many bad presentations...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

4 Secrets IT Leaders Can Use To Motivate Their Staff

All humans, including those in in your IT department / on your IT team, respond to four basic drives. Given this understanding, we are now faced with the really big question: how does an IT leader use this knowledge to motivate his/her staff? It turns out that there are actually a number of possible levers that you can pull…

The Drive To Acquire

The Drive To Acquire Is Handled By How You Handle Rewards. This is, of course, a classic staff driving lever. How well your IT department sorts out the good performers from the poor ones, how it matches the rewards that it hands out to performance delivered, and how easily it permits talented staff to advance in the organization determines how well you are meeting your employee’s drive to acquire.

The Drive To Bond

The Drive To Bond Is Handled By Your Department’s Culture. Put simply, this comes down to how much camaraderie exists within the department. Does your staff work well together? Is there openness, teamwork, and genuine friendship amont the people who work for you?

The Drive To Comprehend

The Drive To Comprehend Is Handled By How You Design Jobs. Are the IT jobs in your department both meaningful, interesting, while at the the same time challenging? These are all critical to meeting the needs of this drive.

The Drive To Defend

The Drive To Defend Is Handled By Your Performance Review Process. If the annual performance review process is seen as being fair and trustworthy by all, and if resources are allocated in a transparent way then this will meet your staff’s drive to defend.

What This Means For You

The key take-away for you regarding all of this drive stuff, is that in survey after survey, IT employees reported that when there was even a small enhancement to their ability to fulfill any one of these four drives, then their overall motivation shot up. However, (this is also a key point) all four drives have to be met – missing even one can significantly dampen an employee’s motivation.

Finally, employees have said that the statements and actions that their immediate IT managers make are just as important to their overall productivity as all of the company’s policies and rules. Now that’s food for IT leaders to spend some time thinking about…!

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

If you are interested in finding out more about how you and your IT team can work more closely with the rest of the firm and become more valuable, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a consulting or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

Related posts:

1. 4 Drivers Of Employee Motivation That All IT Leaders Must Know IT managers know that sometimes employee motivation can be a...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dr. Jim Anderson Delivers A Keynote Address To The Verizon IT Mgmt Class

On Wednesday, October 28, 2009, Dr. Jim Anderson presented a complete training program to Verizon’s internal IT management class. The presentation consisted of a keynote speech, a team building exercise, and a wrap-up presentation.

A Keynote To Remember

Dr. Anderson’s keynote presentation focused on providing the IT managers with a clear understanding of how they could use the skills and training that they had developed during their 9-months of intensive study.

Stories were a key part of the presentation. Dr. Anderson started off by relating the story of the 1986 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster and how individual decisions to take action determined who lived and who died. He also included the story of the life of Dr. Normal Borlaug who used his special knowledge about how create crops that could grow quickly just about anywhere to save the lives of over one Billion people.

Team Exercise: Let’s Build A Catapult

Realizing that he was dealing with a group of engineers, Dr. Anderson decided to include a team building exercise that required four teams of students to use Popsicle sticks and rubber bands to construct a working catapult.

The teams then used their catapults in a competition. The teams had to try to land a marshmallow into another team’s landing pad. Final results were based on how many shots it took for the team’s catapult to land a marshmallow in another team’s landing zone as well as how many shots it took for the the team that was aiming for the landing pad that the team had built. A great time was had by all.

The Big Wrap-Up

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Anderson provided the management class with an understanding of what the real purpose of the exercise was: to show how important communication was both inside teams and between departments. Everyone agreed that the teams that communicated the best had ended up winning the competition.

In his closing remarks, Dr. Anderson encouraged the class to not return to work as usual. He pointed out that just by participating in the training they had been changed. He encouraged everyone to use the information and skills that they had developed in order to make their IT departments run better and do more.

What This Means For You

Dr. Anderson is available to provide this type of focused motivational speech to any IT team. The speech is always customized to meet the specific needs of every unique group.

Team building exercises that are designed to expose team issues and identify ways that they can be solved can be included in any of Dr. Anderson’s programs.

If you are interested in finding out more about how you or your team can become energized about solving your IT challenges, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a speech or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Jim Anderson To Address Verizon Mgmt Team Dr. Jim Anderson has been selected to speak to the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Your Career Is Being Threatened By Backstabbers - Do You Know What To Do?

They really are out to get you, you know. All those schemers who want your job, your promotion, your bonus are even as you read this sitting at their desk scheming how best to make you look bad, take credit for your work, or even how to get you fired.

In this down economy, those who have it in for you are even more likely to take action because so many firms are in the process of trimming headcount that they want to save their jobs by taking yours. What’s an IT leader to do?

The Best Defense Is Knowing That You Need A Defense

Your career sabotage problems begin when you detect that someone is out to get you. Once you are aware that something is going on, it’s going to bug the heck out of you. You are now officially in a bind: if you complain, then there is a good chance that you are going to be viewed as “… not being a team player”, if you ignore it and do nothing, then you can pretty much kiss any future promotions goodbye.

A Backstabber’s Hit List

So just what kind of actions do backstabbers take to bring you down? Here’s a quick list – let’s see how many of them you recognize as having been done to you either now or in the past:

• Taking Credit For Your Work: this is a classic. The backstabber talks with you to find all about work that you have been doing and then represents that work to others as having been done by them. Sometimes they will even tell you that you’ve done a poor job and ask you to not talk about it so that you don’t look foolish – and so they can take credit for it.
• Spreading Rumors About You: this can be a sneaky one because it can go on for a long time without you knowing about it. If you have a good network, somebody besides you will probably hear about the rumors before you do and tell you. Otherwise you’re just going to have to keep your ears open and detect what people seem to be saying about you.
• Project Sabotage: In this case, the saboteur realizes that your career advancement depends on the project that you are in charge of being a success. Once they know this, they will be willing to work very hard to cause your project to fail. Withholding needed resources or providing needed information late are two easy ways to drill holes in your project boat.

How To Save Your IT Management Career

It sure seems like it will be easy for others to sneak in to our rooms in the middle of the night and make off with our careers. Is there anything that we can do? It turns out that yes, there are things that you can do to protect yourself and your career. They aren’t easy and they don’t always work, but they sure are better than sitting around and waiting for the axe to fall on you because of the actions of others. Here are some thoughts:

1. Keep your cool: the last thing that you want to do is to flip out. If you let your temper get the better of you, then you’ll have fewer options for solving the sabotage problem.
2. No Direct Confrontation: Look, if they’ve been clever enough to try to get you out of their way, then they’ve probably not left any evidence lying around. Even if you could get all CSI on them, you are in a workplace and nobody really cares about that piece of hair that you found that clearly shows that your saboteur was the one that spread the rumor that you were hard to get along with.
3. Make Sure The Rumors Are Not Correct: So this is just a bit awkward, is there a possibility that the rumors could be right? Take a moment to look in the mirror and do some hard thinking. If the stories are correct, then you’ve got other problems to solve.
4. Love Those Timestamps: people can only take credit for your work if nobody else knows that you did the work first (first come, first served). What this means is that email can be your new best friend. When you are reporting on results or completed work, send out an email telling as many people as possible. This way the world will know that you did the work and when you did it. This can stop a saboteur in his / her tracks.
5. Talk To Your Boss: At the end of the day, your boss is the one who really has control over your career. You need to have a talk with him/her and let them know what’s going on and ask for their help in resolving it. After all, this is just the kind of personnel thing that bosses are there to take care of.
6. Talk To Your Boss’ Boss: Of course, if it’s your boss that is doing the backstabbing, you really need to get some outside help. Talking with his/her boss is one way to do this. Another way is to talk with someone else at that same level and ask them to intervene.

What All Of This Means For You

Of course, if it turns out that it’s your boss that is doing your career in, you’ve got a real problem. There is a very good chance that in the end it’s going to be either you or him/her once you start to put a stop to the sabotage. Make sure that your resume is up-to-date because there is a good chance that you just might be needing it soon…

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

If you are interested in finding out more about how your IT department can better align with the rest of the firm and become more valuable, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a consulting or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

To Memorize A Speech Requires Both Strong Visual Images And Actions

Back when I was in school, I was taking mainly technical courses and I got to be pretty good at them. The routine was pretty much the same for each class: learn the formula, work some problems to practice using the formula, take a test and show that you know how to use the formula.

The same thing went for my Computer Science classes except that instead of formulas, we were dealing with computer languages. You can well imagine how surprised and unprepared I was when I had to take some business courses: there were no formulas!

Instead, there was a great deal of “facts” that needed to be memorized and then dumped back out of your head while you were taking a test. My friends who were in Business School had become very good at this type of memorize / dump routine; however, I was basically clueless.

Eventually I found a way to get all of that information to stick in my brain. What was even better was that, unlike my friends, it would remain there long after the test / final exam had come and gone. I had truly found a way to memorize my material.

This is exactly the skill that you need when you have an opportunity to give a speech. You need to memorize your speech in such a way that it comes back to you quickly and easily each and every time that you need to give the speech without the need for any notes.

In fact, if you could find a way to get your speech to play out on that big TV in your head, then all you would have to do is watch it and tell your audience what you were seeing. Sounds like an impossible dream? It’s not and I’m going to show you how to do it.

First, let’s start with just a little bit of medical knowledge so that you understand why this technique works. Based on years of research, Doctors believe that the part of the human brain that is responsible for our memories is the part that is called the hippocampus.

Here’s the important part: if this part of the brain is stimulated sufficiently, then we will remember what stimulated it. We are all very visually based beings. This means that our memories are made up of images – sorta like a big stack of photographs.

If you can visualize something, then it suddenly becomes much easier to remember it. That’s why long phone numbers can be hard to memorize (no good picture) and why what a fancy new car looks like (it’s all about looks) can be easy to recall even if you’ve only see it once.

In order to memorize your speech, you need to do three things:

1. Break the speech up into a sequence of steps. These steps need to be as small as you can make them and they need to be placed in a sequential order: start, middle, and ending.
2. You need to associate an image AND and action with each step of your speech. The wilder and more outrageous the image/action are the easier that step is going to be to remember.
3. Finally, you need to “place” all of your steps someplace where you will be able to find them. If your speech was short and only had 10 steps, then I’d suggest that you visualize yourself “placing” them on your body: toes, ankles, knees, shins, hips, butt, back, shoulders, neck, head. If you have more steps, then I’d use some place that you know very well: your home is a great place to start. Think of your bedroom and “place” each step on things that are currently in your bedroom.

Now comes the fun part. In order to memorize your speech, what you are really going to be doing is running thorough your list and recalling the images/actions that you have stored in each location.

The key to success is that you’ll need to recall each step in proper sequential order and you’ll be need to be able to do it with little or no effort. How about an example to make this all seem just a little bit more real?

Let’s say that you were asked to give a presentation on your company’s new 401k program (how boring would that be?) Here are the key points that you need to cover in your speech: everyone is automatically enrolled upon joining the company, you can un-enroll, the company will match the first 5% that you contribute, if you leave the company you can take your 401k with you, and you can borrow against your 401k in special circumstances. Yawn! Now let’s do some work to memorize this speech:

1. Break it into steps:
   • everyone is automatically enrolled upon joining the company,
   • you can un-enroll,
   • the company will match the first 5% that you contribute,
   • if you leave the company you can take your 401k with you,
   • you can borrow against your 401k in special circumstances.
2. Now create pictures / actions for each step (sorry, these pictures/actions work for me – results may vary for you):
   • I see an assembly line of new employees moving along past a machine that stamps “401k” on everyone’s forehead. The stamp hits them with a big “smack” sound and leaves a big red mark.
   • I see some new employees on the assembly line, after they have been stamped, reaching up and peeling off a piece of clear tape that covered their forehead and, because it got stamped and not their actual forehead, they can just throw it away and they are not labeled as “401k” like everyone else
   • I see the employees on the assembly line one-by-one stopping at a table where an accountant wearing a green visor and sitting at a plain wooden table sits. Each employee starts to lay down $1 bills on the table and as he does so, the accountant lays another $1 bill down on the table right by the employee’s bill. However, once the employee lays down his 6th $1 bill, the accountant stops laying his money down. The employee scoops up all of the money and gets back on the assembly line.
   • I see some employees jumping off of the assembly line holding big piles of cash and vanishing through a hole in the floor that has a big flashing “EXIT” sign beside it.
   • I see an employee jumping off of the assembly line and running towards a house that is fully on fire. The employee goes over to a big water tank that is located right by the house, turns a faucet on and drags a hose over to the burning house turns it on. Money starts to stream out of the end of the hose and smothers the house and puts the fire out.
3. Finally, I see myself sitting in my office and the assembly line of new employees is running by the office just out in the hall.

There you have it. Admittidly this is a fairly boring topic for most of us to talk about; however, using the memorization techniques that we’ve talked about you can see how you could “lock” this speech into your brain. When it came time to deliver the speech, all that you would have to do is sit back and play the stored images back on that big TV in your mind. What could be easier?

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting

If you are interested in finding out more about how you or your team can become better at speaking in public, get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a consulting or training program could be customized to meet your unique needs.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.