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Often when we think of negotiating and influencing, what comes to mind is the slick car salesman who is churning out every trick in the book to sell you a mediocre yet overpriced car. As much as we realize that we may be being taken for a ride, the passionate spins of the salesman can be very persuasive. But is there more to negotiating and influencing than just charisma and rhetoric? The answer is a resounding YES! Understanding basic human psychology is essential to this and in this article we are going to look at some key distinctions and advantages of differentiating between influencing and negotiating.

Negotiating Skills

Negotiating begins with listening to the needs of your listener. Often the temptation for the negotiator is to speak before he or she can listen but this results in missing out on hearing the important needs of the customer or client. The negotiator cannot make an intelligent offer without first knowing the expectations of the other party. This makes for effective negotiating. This of course entails that all the parties involved must make a conscious effort to see things from the other party’s perspective. This of course begins with establishing trust. Coming to an agreement that is mutual is hard if either party is wary of the other. This entails knowing when to make concessions or compromise. Body language also plays an important part in communicating openness and establishing mutual respect and trust. When it comes to negotiating, it is also crucially important to establish common ground – areas where multiple parties do see eye to eye. It is easier to work through areas of differences knowing that the parties involved start from a mutual place of agreement. Negotiation skills is something that can be honed effectively with awareness and sensitivity.

Influencing Skills

Influencing begins by developing a reasoned line of argument that is backed by logic and rationale. In this situation people need to be moved more by facts and practical benefits than by emotional or rhetorical sentiments. This also involves tactfully disagreeing with people’s views without making them feel defensive or judged. This could entail carefully showing flaws in the other person’s views while highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your own position. This also entails using positive language but also emphasizing the positive aspects of one’s arguments. Influencing is just as much about getting one’s agenda across in a calm and persuasive manner as much as it is about the cold hard facts of the argument itself. When making one’s case it is important to positive arguments in a calm and assertive manner than simply disagreeing or asserting one’s perspectives over and above those of your opinions.

Negotiation Skills Training is an important aspect of equipping employees with the right tools and skills to be persuasive influencers, in promoting the services or products offered by the company. The better employees are at helping people to see from their perspectives and buy their agenda, the more successful they are likely to be in completing a service or transaction.

Great product reviews is the life blood of today’s successful affiliate marketer. Yet the biggest obstacle you will have is the growing skepticism from readers of product reviews that are found online. This is due to many having been burnt or scammed by such reviews that are simply rubbish. Yes in many cases, years of too good to be true product reviews have made readers sceptical and hard to reach. I myself and maybe even you yourself have been taken for a ride with a supposedly great product review(s) or a sales page. And how did we feel afterwards – scammed, stupid and a necessity to become hardened to what you see and read.

However, as sceptical as we may have become, reviews are still necessary to gauge a products general worth. So what is now happening is that readers are reading a lot more product reviews and carefully considering them before making a decision. That is why we need to make our reviews stand out from the pack and get noticed as a provider of reliable, honest, objective and quality product reviews.

So how do we write a great product review? Below are 5 very important tips or steps worth considering.

1. Evaluate the Affiliate Website

A good product to promote will always be supported with a well-structured web site that provides loads of support and information for affiliate marketers to use. This will make writing a great review a lot easier. Good affiliate web sites will invariably have information on the products being promoted that can help you to write a great review. It will also help you decide on what to write as you do not necessarily want to be rehashing what the web site sales page are saying. That is, you may need to adopt a “pre sales” style of writing a product review as the web site will be doing the sales. Where you do use information from the web site, make sure you do not copy verbatim and rewrite as much as possible in your own words.

2. Have the Reader in Mind

Before you start the review, have an end objective in mind, in particular, the type of reader you are trying to appeal to and what information he or she is likely to be seeking. The reader you may be trying to reach may be a beginner in say affiliate marketing and is likely to be after the basics rather than a technical approach to some aspect of affiliate marketing. Also keep the writing style informal, using the same types of words that you would use in speaking with a friend and avoid an overly professional approach unless that is called for. Also, try and ask yourself questions as to what that sort of person would want to know in knowing what to write and avoid rambling on. Remember, you are there to help the reader to understand a product better and to help them arrive at a decision that is right for them.

3. Your Personal Experience in Using the Product

Nothing convinces a reader better on a product review than a firsthand account of your experience in using the product. Products that you are using are good to promote for that reason. Tell your reader what you found good about the product and how it is helping you. It will help the reader see that you have enough conviction in the product that you were willing purchase the product yourself. If you do not own it, the best way to compile a review is to buy it and use it if your serious in promoting it. It will give you so much more to add into your review that other affiliates may not be picking up on and will make your product review more valuable to the reader. If the price is affordable, consider it as an investment.

4. What to Consider in the Product Review

- Features: What is the product? What are the physical and/or intangible features? List the products aspects such as weight, height, color, number of pages, delivery method, etc.

- Benefits: What does it do? Does it help you make money? Save time? Save money? Does it solve a problem? As buyers are mostly motivated by the benefits of a product, it must be carefully considered and articulated in the review.

- Results: What results have you or others received from using the product? Can you quantify them in an easy to read and understandable format? Do not make extravagant claims as this will destroy the credibility of your review.

- Difference: If this product is different from others on the market, explain exactly what it is. This is best accomplished using a table of quick facts comparing the various products with their respective features, etc. This is a style of presentation that people can read and understand very quickly and simply.

- Balanced View: Are there things you don’t like about the product? Share them! A product that’s all positive won’t seem realistic. You should always keep the review as objective as possible looking at all aspects of the product. If you are expressing a negative aspect, this need not be a bad thing. You can often turn that around by mentioning why the negative is not enough to deter anyone from purchasing the product if that is case. If there is a major negative, reconsider whether you should even be promoting it or show how this may not be a negative for certain types of readers or users of the product.

- Call to Action: You should have a clear call to action in all your marketing pieces and a product review is no different. In product reviews, this is generally accomplished by including a link to an offer, web site or further information on the product.

5. Review the “Product Review”

When I first write my review, it all sounds good and I am proud of it and the effort I put in. However, I invariably find that if I leave it and come back to it later with a fresh mind, I can generally find improvements in the way I am saying something or in what I have covered or not covered. This opportunity may delay you a day or two in publishing the review but the benefits of writing a great product review should not be under estimated. A great review that is well thought out, original and fresh is likely to get a longer shelf life than poorly written review and gain wider circulation amongst readers. Remember, that your reviews will be around for years or maybe decades and you are trying to future proofing the reviews as much as possible.

Finally, ask yourself questions such as “Would I buy based on this review?” or “Do I believe a single word of what I have written in the review? If yes, then you have written a great product review.

You don’t need to buy an expensive program to make a PowerPoint presentation anymore. You can go online and use online applications like TeamSlide or Opshare to create your own. Another one is called Beam Your Screen. The point of them all is the same though. It allows you to share power point presentations with the public or your affiliates.

These are personal web application that actively presents power point slide presentations to larger groups of people. You control the presentation from your browser while your viewers watch your presentation in theirs.

The amazing thing about this online tool that is truly cross-platform. It requires no plug-in, no Flash player and no downloads. There is no technical hassle of any kind for anyone who would like to participate in viewing your power point presentation.

A program like Teamslide works equally well in Internet Explorer (IE), Safari and Firefox web browsers. Aside from the free version there is also a professional version that you can install on your hosted webspace or webserver.

The good thing about this is that it does give you that unique content that is so important to offer the visitors to your site. If the content of your power point presentation is truly valuable then you will see visitors returning to your site to learn from the presentation again and again. This of course will help boost your rankings in the search engine page as the more visitors your web site has, the more favored you will be by the search engine algorithms.

A PowerPoint presentation can also be a very useful viral tool to post on other sites especially if it consistently points to your site as being the place to purchase items described in the presentation or the place to learn more about what is being shown.