\”How To Use Disinformation To Negotiate Better” – Negotiation Tip of the Week

You set the stage for any negotiation with information. That’s called positioning. The way you present that information, and its content, shape the persona the other negotiator has of your negotiation power, resources, and abilities. #Disinformation plays a vital role in shaping that persona – using it strategically can help you negotiate better.

Disinformation is used in planning wars, corporate espionage, and in the planning stages of negotiations. Think for a moment about the term #FakeNews. What comes to mind? That phrase has become a form of disinformation.

The following is how you can use disinformation to improve your negotiation efforts.

Creating a Disinformation Campaign:

To create disinformation campaigns, start by disseminating information in small cycles first – you want the target to become familiar with it. That’ll make him more susceptible to believing it and the information that follows. Over time, expand it, its believability to the truth, and its cycles. To have the greatest effect on the target, have information disseminated in places that they frequent (e.g. social media post, news outlets, radio, etc.). Doing so will impact their belief as to the validity of the information (i.e. I see/hear it everywhere – so it must be true).

Psychology of Disinformation:

For disinformation to be viable, tie it loosely to the beliefs of your target. People become swayed more easily if they have a preconceived belief about something they accept as already being truthful. So, if you associate your disinformation with their currently held beliefs, they’ll accept your information more readily. The trick is to make your information just within the outer realms of their beliefs. That’s the setup to having them stretch their beliefs as you later present insights further outside of it. Your efforts should become geared to having them expand their beliefs to the point of easily accepting the new insights you present as the truth.

Combating Disinformation:

As you know or may have discovered, disinformation is a powerful mental tool. Thus, while employing it, you must be mindful about its deployment against you.

To improve your plight when disinformation is used against you, ask yourself the following questions.

  1. Consider the originating source of the information. Ask yourself, what belief is this information attempting to form in my mind or in the mind of my supporters?
  2. How was the information delivered? Did it arrive through a source that has proven to be believable in the past? Is that source being manipulated?
  3. What new paradigms is this information attempting to create and who benefits from it?
  4. To what degree are others attempting to alter my perception for the benefit of who they’re serving?
  5. What happens if I ignore the information?

Posing such questions to yourself and your confidants will help you evaluate the information and its potential validity. I’m not suggesting you become paranoid. What I’m suggesting is you not readily accept information at face value as the truth. There are too many ways to get disinformation into today’s environment. Guard the door that keeps it away from you.

Disinformation is used in all realms of negotiation. And, there is a multitude of ways that it’s used. Therefore, the better you become at utilizing it, and knowing how to thwart its use against you, the better you’ll become as a negotiator… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Tips on Creating an Effective PowerPoint Presentation

To most people, creating and giving business PowerPoint presentations may be the bane of their life. It’s safe to say that most of them haven’t mastered the art of creating simple yet effective PowerPoint presentations. For all its flaws, PowerPoint presentations remain the most used form of business presentations.

Instead of being controlled by the fear and dislike of giving business presentation – the better approach is to learn the software and skills in order to take advantage of it to the max. Pay attention as well to the following tips on creating and giving the perfect business PowerPoint presentations.

Being Well-prepared Is Key
One of the key factors in ensuring a successful business presentation is to be thoroughly prepared for it. In business presentation, you are basically selling something to your audience – be it a concept, service or a product. Whatever it is that you are presenting, the goal is to inspire action. It is very important for you to know the material on the business presentation inside out. If you appear not knowledgeable, your audience can easily pick up on it.

Good content
Another area that you should prepare carefully is the look and content of your presentation. Organise and design the slides on the presentation so that they flow smoothly.

Practice, practice, practice!
When it comes to giving business presentations, there’s no such thing as too much practice. Think yourself as an artist on stage with all eyes on you. Surely you don’t want to stutter, stumble, and falter. In addition to having superb knowledge of your content, you should know the structure and flow of the presentation – this means you have to rehearse it. The most effective way is to stand in front of a mirror and give the presentation out loud. It’s even better if you can do it in front of your friends, family or colleague.

Some more useful tips include

  • Keep your presentation simple and to the point.
  • Don’t drown the presentation in a sea of words. If possible use relevant images or charts – as they are easier to process. Relevant images also engage the audience better and they keep them interested.
  • Make clear titles, headings, captions that are easy to read. Don’t go overboard with the fontstyling.
  • Remember to make the background and text contrasting colors.
  • Don’t be too generous with the number of slides. In business presentations, less is always more.
  • As long as you have already covered relevant points, don’t drag the information for too long.

Breakthrough Affiliate Marketing – Presenting – The Top 5 Tips to Magnify Your Affiliate Marketing

If your present occupation does not generate enough income to meet your needs and wants, then chances are you have probably considered engaging in an affiliate program to make extra money on the side. If you really want to create bigger revenues, heads up: there are five important tips that can help increase your income through this online venture. After applying these useful tips, who knows? You might even end up leaving your desk job to go full time in this up and coming profitable venture.

1. Joining chat rooms, forums and message boards can really help magnify your affiliate revenue. But before jumping headfirst into the rush of things, screen out groups of people that might find your products and services to be of little use of them. Be part of assemblages that can find meaning and purpose to your products. And when you do get to join them, stop short of saying “Hi! Hello! I am selling so-and-so products”. Instead, create rapport by showing a genuine concern for the needs of a particular group before presenting your items. Doing so will gain their confidence in you as both a friend and a seller. Putting it simply, hard selling = spamming = loss of clients.

2. If you have the time and the interest, do try to write your own eBook. On the extra spaces, offer to place advertisements of your products and your site. You can then give copies of your eBook for free to other people. This is hitting two birds with one stone: you gain an appreciative nod from your audience because of your generosity, and you subtly introduce to them items and services for sale through the ad spaces.

3. Also, get organized and create an affiliate program directory in your website. Offer viewing of this directory for free, and watch that hit counter go crazy with the skyrocketing numbers you get from the countless numbers of interested Netizens.

4. Many people will be offering the same products and services as you, so up the ante and stand out from the crowd by creating unique-looking ads. Get those creative juices flowing and design ads that are a cut above the rest.

5. And finally, do make honest and well-written reviews about your products or services to give people the impression that you are not biased and you have tried and tested the product or service yourself. Don’t make empty promises, just real-life testimonials about how your items have helped you attain some of the goals that you desire for yourself.