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A number of years ago, I represented a shipping company which was negotiating to build new ships in a Chinese shipyard. The shipping company had done its due diligence and was satisfied that the shipyard in question could build the ships it wanted at an acceptable price and deliver them in a timely fashion. For its part, the Chinese shipyard was eager to land this contract, as it would represent an expansion of its business to commercial customers beyond China’s border. It was an attractive deal for both parties.

Preliminary discussions between the shipping company and the shipyard proceeded favorably, so well in fact that the shipyard sent a team of representatives to Portland in order to put the finishing touches on a shipbuilding agreement. The Chinese contingent consisted primarily of design engineers and vessel operation specialists and their efforts involved working out the technical specifications for the new vessels with the shipping company’s engineering department. The shipyard’s delegation was led by a business executive who also served as interpreter. She was plainly a person of some experience in the shipping business and had obvious status within her own delegation, as she was treated with particular deference and respect by the rest of her team and, of course, by the shipping company as well. We had previously provided the shipyard with our proposed shipbuilding agreement which included the standard terms and conditions customarily included in shipbuilding contracts throughout the world. We had heard no objections from the shipyard as to our proposed contract and when we inquired of the lead negotiator she politely deferred any discussion to a more opportune time. Or so we thought.

Our Chinese visitors worked diligently and enthusiastically with our engineering folks, and the technical specifications and other design features of the new vessels appeared to come together rather seamlessly. Such was the rapport between the shipping company’s engineering folks and their visitors that the shipping company hosted an elaborate lunch at a local Chinese restaurant for the two teams where our visitors delighted in challenging their American counterparts to sample some particularly hot and spicy Chinese dishes. Meanwhile, the shipyard’s lead negotiator kept her own counsel and remained somewhat in the background. If there were any business issues she wanted to discuss, she wasn’t mentioning them. Insofar as we knew, we were smoothly sailing towards an agreement.

Things were going so well that the shipping company scheduled a contract signing ceremony for 5:00 p.m. on the day prior to our guests’ planned departure. The corporate boardroom was reserved for a catered meal for members of both teams. We planned on presenting gifts to each member of the shipyard’s delegation, as tokens of our expectation of a long and harmonious business relationship.

A few hours prior to the appointed 5:00 ceremony, the shipping company’s chief executive officer summoned me to his office. There he sat looking a bit flummoxed along with the shipyard’s lead negotiator who appeared, well, something less than cordial. I was then told that the shipyard had “serious concerns” with our proposed form of contract. Interestingly, the issues in question had nothing to do with the price to be paid for the ships or their scheduled delivery dates or their technical specifications. Those major deal points were of no moment. Instead, the shipyard had objections to many of the standard boilerplate terms found in the contract and the shipyard’s negotiator proceeded to walk us through the draft agreement one item at a time. Thus ensued a marathon all-night negotiating session. Needless to say, the 5:00 signing celebration was postponed and rescheduled many times that evening. The special celebratory meal became a buffet night lunch for those who remained to work.

In retrospect, the Chinese negotiator’s last-minute objections were part of a well-considered strategy made well in advance of her journey to Portland. Her plan, I now believe, was to wear down her hosts by a long night of bargaining in order to achieve her negotiation goals by simply exhausting the other side.

In any event, we bargained for hours. Midnight came and went and still we discussed, explained, bargained and compromised where we could. We made the concessions we could live with and held the line on others. Finally by 2:30 a.m. we had come down to the final sticking points which, I suspect now, were the main issues for the shipyard all along. As in most shipbuilding contracts we had inserted a provision which required any disputes between the parties to be resolved by arbitration in London, England. Although this is a standard provision in such contracts and, in fact, was insisted upon by the shipping company’s underwriters, it seemed like kryptonite to our visitor. We explained to her that we could not change this provision without compromising our insurance coverage on the new vessels’ construction process and we simply weren’t going to go there. Either she did not believe us or thought, wrongly, that we wanted the deal enough that we would yield on this point. As it was, the entire deal seemed on the verge of tanking. Just then, however, a rather happy fortuity and a shrewd play by the shipping company changed everything.

At about this time, our vice president of engineering walked into the room holding a two inch thick binder which he said contained all of the agreed upon technical specifications for the new vessels. He sat down at the negotiating table and he listened patiently for a few minutes as we explained to the shipyard negotiator again why we could not budge on the last sticking point. Perhaps from sleep deprivation, or inattention, our engineering guy opened the binder of specifications and he began to initial each page in the lower right-hand corner. Engineers like to do such things. At least, they do that in the shipping business. He was well into this exercise in penmanship when our CEO, exasperated, told him to stop what he was doing and to put the book down. The engineer seemed a bit stunned and the Chinese negotiator immediately recognized what was happening. Our CEO politely explained to her that we were at the point where we would or would not have a deal, but we were not making any further changes to the contract. Whether a deal would happen was now in her hands. She left the room for a few minutes and when she returned she accepted our dispute resolution clause. We finally were able to close the deal.

The signing celebration took place at about 3:00 a.m., and it was as well attended as any gathering I have made at such an hour. We presented each of our Chinese visitors with tee shirts bearing our company logo, with large Chinese characters emblazoned on the front of the shirt which spelled, I am told, “teamwork”. For my participation, the Chinese negotiator presented me with a pair of porcelain harmony balls, which chime when being handled. I still have them. Every now and then when I see them in my office bookcase, I remember one tough negotiator. I also remember how the shipping company’s willingness to walk away from a deal it wanted was crucial to accomplishing its objectives. It eventually turned out that we purchased one or two ships from that shipyard. All in all, it worked out well for the shipping company.

Sometimes you have to be willing to walk away in order to get what you wanted from the beginning.

© 9/16/2015 Hunt & Associates, P.C. All rights reserved.

The clock doesn’t lie!

If you are giving business presentations, no doubt you’re working within a timeframe. Your clients and prospects are busy people. They want to get the most value out of time spent in your presentation.

Professional public speakers often record their talks — and practice delivering to fit within specific time slots. One hour? Got it. Twenty minutes? No problem. Ten? It’s a snap.

What is it that professionals know — that you can use too?

These 4 secrets can help you time your performance for perfect success.

Secret 1: Time Your Opening

Most likely, you will use the same opening, even for presentations that vary in length. When you practice your initial start and focus on your key points, you can develop a highly persuasive introduction.

In addition, your opening sets the tone for your entire presentation. When you start strong, you’re going to grab audience attention. Then, you are in a good position to hold attention for the duration.

Secret 2: Rehearse For Every Timeslot

Even if you are very familiar with your topic and presentation, rehearse and practice for each timeslot. Your stories will vary. Audience interaction will expand and contract based on time available.

During face-to-face delivery, you are likely to speak more slowly than in rehearsals. This is due to adding impromptu comments, adding stories, and interacting with your audience.

Alternatively, if you are extremely nervous about presenting, you may talk faster — and race through your talk without taking a breath. To avoid this downhill slide, practice so you are comfortable with the best pacing for every amount of time.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking; “I could do this in my sleep.” If you could, you just might sleep through the alarm signaling the end of your allotted time.

Secret 3: Practice Questions and Answers

Answering questions is one of the most critical areas to stay within your timeframe is answering questions. Practice giving brief and concise answers with your presentation coach or with peers.

Focus on the questions you anticipate most from each specific audience. Practice giving shorter and longer answers – while still remaining personable. This provides several options for being able to manage your time – and create interaction with your audience.

If you are giving an extremely short summary, it is acceptable to say, “I’m so sorry I don’t have time for questions right here. But I will be available to answer your questions one-on-one.”

Alternatively, you can provide your contact information and say, “I’m sorry our time is so short. I’m happy to answer you questions personally. Just contact me directly.”

These comments encourage participants to ask their questions — at a later time. In addition, comments such as these also show your willingness to share your expertise and make the best use of the limited time you have to present your information.

Secret 4: Work With an Expert Coach.

Whether you are new to presenting or highly experienced, a professional coach can give you objective feedback. He or she can instantly spot small changes, which can dramatically improve your performance.

One of the most fascinating areas of feedback will be on how to be effective in any time slot. In working with your coach, be sure to ask for timing feedback. This can help you increase confidence and be ready to happily adapt an hour presentation into a 10-minute summary.

Develop your presentation skills so you can communicate effectively to any audience. Timing is one of the trickiest areas and is critical for success in business presentations. 

This article will elucidate the rules of presentation visual design that, if heeded, will almost always assure that your audiences will be able to follow your ideas every step of the way. Of course, you must keep in mind that visual design is only one-third of the package required for a successful presentation, the other two being content and delivery.

Like a fine dining experience that requires equal parts food, service and atmosphere to really work, the visual design part of the presentation process is every bit as necessary as the others to achieve the desired result – in this case, true knowledge transfer.

So without further ado:

7. Maintain paragraph integrity. First, all 1st Level Paragraph text must be the same size in every slide. Likewise, all 2nd Level Paragraph text must be smaller and of a different color. Lastly, don’t go beyond the 3rd Level, and this text should not be smaller than 20 points.

If all information of the same importance is of the same size throughout your presentation, your audience won’t be raising question marks as to just how important this information is with each click of the slide. Take this concept one step further by ensuring that all material of the same nature is the same color. If, for instance, you use a lot of numbers in your bullet points, make them all one color, different from the text. Once your audience recognizes this pattern, they’ll spend less time digging through the text to find their figures.

6. No boring fonts. Rarely is there a need to use more than two different fonts in any presentation. However, there is a HUGE need to use any two fonts other than the PowerPoint defaults Times New Roman and Arial!

The problem is that because everybody else uses these two fonts 99% of the time, if yours is the fifth presentation your audience is seeing that day, pretty soon all the text starts to look the same, and you lose much of your meaning and impact. We often hear from clients who have to sit through presentations themselves that after a while, they can’t remember which vendor said what – it all becomes a big blur. Make sure you’re not part of the blur.

5. Use proper builds. Without a sense of good design, which in most cases means simply showing restraint, animations can quickly overwhelm an otherwise well laid-out presentation. The trick then is to introduce concepts one at a time in a way that doesn’t draw more attention than the concepts themselves. Builds are essential elements in turning slides that would otherwise have TMI into ones that audiences can follow; but like other elements of good design, a proper build should never announce itself. Rather, a well animated presentation should simply appear to “happen”, without a clue as to why it seems so easy to follow.

4. Be colorful – Light on dark. Watch much black-and-white television these days? Although black-and-white works as an art form in many ways, humans tend to like color. Even old-guard newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal finally concluded that to avoid losing readers to more modern media, they had to go to color.

While humans can discern a dozen or so shades of gray, they can see millions of different colors. We’ve evolved to use our sense of color to survive – help your audiences survive your presentation by not blinding them with black on white.

3. Less is More. This rule is central to good presentation design, but absolutely essential for graphs or charts. We often see pie charts come across our review desk with over a dozen slices, many so small they need to be annotated with lines and arrows far from the graph itself. Do you really think anyone will remember all 25 competing products in your market and their percentage share? Might be good information for a handout, but in a presentation few people can absorb more than six elements in any graph.

You make your point much more effectively when you limit your displayed data to the stuff the audience is likely to remember. Less information becomes more retention of the stuff you really want them to go home with.

2. One concept per visual. Here’s another really common problem we see in the majority of business presentations, and the solution flows from rule number 3. When more than one concept appear at the same time, your audience not only tries to figure out the concepts, they also try to determine which one deserves most of their attention, how the two or more are related, whether one is the “right” one or the “good” one, and so on and so forth – all having nothing to do with your actual message itself.

This extra time and effort acts as a drag on presentation flow, and explains why a 45-slide presentation, properly broken down into one concept per, takes less time to present than the same information packed into 15.

1. Favor Right-Brain information. We humans have evolved with two different ways to deal with stimuli from the outside world so that we can react to it in the way most likely to keep us alive. Our right brain reacts to input such as colors, graphics, shapes and patterns instantly, without stopping to process the information first. Our left brain kicks in when presented with speech, text or numbers; however with this kind of information we first pause to analyze it before storing or reacting to it. We have filters on the left side on the brain, and not everything gets through.

If you want your ideas to strike fast and be readily absorbed, then every time you can, figure out how to turn your left-brain type data into shapely and colorful right-brain images.