Professional salespeople love negotiation, but many soloists are more comfortable doing their job rather than negotiating about it. Here are nine tips for improving your negotiation skills.
As a proposal strategist and writer, my job is to get my clients shortlisted with the opportunity to negotiate for an important project or contract. During many hours spent burning the midnight oil together, clients become friends, and I usually end up caring about the outcome almost as much as they do.
By keeping tabs on the progress of some very long post-pitch negotiations and seeing the tactics employed by some exceptional salespeople, I have picked up some great tips for improving negotiation skills that will help you navigate this important, but nerve-wracking, part of the sales process. …

Nine Tips for Improving Negotiation SkillsRead More »

Small Projects

Whenever a project manager has team members on the project, he needs to recognize the needs of managing human resources. However, these small projects will probably not need to worry too much with formal people management processes and techniques. First, if it is a small project the project manager does not have to acquire much staff (if any). The project team is most likely assigned by a functional (staffing) manager. There is not much opportunity to develop the team members since the project is probably short. There is also little opportunity to formally manage people other than making sure the team members know the work they are responsible for and making sure that the work is completed successfully. Similarly, a small project is normally not going to run into many people problems. …

Manage Human Resources — FrameworkRead More »

Have you ever been on a project team that had everything going right? The team members all got along; they all had the right skills; everyone worked hard and pulled together to get the project done.

Those are just some of the characteristics of a high-performing team. High-performing teams can sometimes form by themselves, perhaps even in spite of a manager that gets in the way. However, it is more typical that a manager helps a team become high-performing and facilitates them through a process that leads to the team becoming as effective and efficient as possible. …

Strive to Create High-Performance TeamsRead More »

The role of the project manager normally does not include providing formal performance reviews to team members. This is usually a responsibility of each employee’s functional manager. However, there is no question that a project manager does need to provide performance feedback to team members to let them know how they are doing and whether they are meeting performance expectations. This includes recognizing when team members meet their commitments and providing feedback to them when they are not meeting your expectations. …

Provide Meaningful Performance FeedbackRead More »

Understand the Characteristics of Quality for Your Project

It is hard to define product or service quality at a high-level because the term “quality” is vague and means different things to different people. You must take the time to define the lower-level characteristics of quality for each specific service or deliverable. If you want to ensure that a service or product meets the client’s expectations of quality, you have to understand the underlying characteristics of quality. …

Manage Quality — TechniquesRead More »