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How to Use Reverse Questioning to Win More Negotiations

“The degree of success you experience in life and in negotiations is based to a degree on asking the right questions successfully.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

You no doubt know what reverse engineering is, right? Reverse questioning in a negotiation is the process of identifying the questions you need to ask in order to obtain the answers that will lead to a successful negotiation outcome. It’s also a way to identify how you’ll control the flow of the negotiation.

As a quick example, if you wanted to exit a negotiation paying $1,000 for a product you’d work from the outcome sought back to the beginning of the negotiation; you might also consider working back from that point to how you would position yourself prior to entering into the negotiation. To perform the latter, you’d assess the requirements needed (i.e. how you’d position yourself) to have your persona projected in a certain light/manner.

The following is what the step-by-step process would look like.

  1. Identify the most and least favorable outcome you’ll seek from the negotiation, along with why you’ve identified those points of juxtaposition. As a benefit, having that insight will help you identify exit points from the negotiation.
  2. Assemble a list of questions that might be asked of you as you would go through the negotiation.
  3. Create answers to the questions posed in step 2 that are needed to drive your efforts towards a winning negotiation outcome, while formulating questions you’ll ask to keep the negotiation on track; these will be your defensive questions. Identify points where you can answer a question with a question; remember, the person asking the questions is the person controlling the negotiation. That’s due to the fact, that person is gaining more information.
  4. Once you create and address step 3, create a list of questions that you might ask of the other negotiator that’s separate from the ones you might use to respond to his questions; these will become your offensive questions. Offensive questions are questions that move your negotiation efforts quicker towards the end of the negotiation; they are questions that the other negotiator has to agree with because they’re based on what he’s previously stated as his beliefs or truths; you’ll be weaponizing his thoughts and questions against him. Some of these questions will also come in the form of questions that answer questions.
  5. Assess how the opposing negotiator might respond to your scenario.
  6. Continue going over steps 1 through 5, in an attempt to uncover additional questions that you’d not considered that need to be included in the process.
  7. Once you feel you’ve honed the questions to a point that the other negotiator has to follow a prescribed path that you’ve created for the negotiation, test your hypothesis in a mock negotiation. This will allow your questioning process to become more refined and may uncover better/additional questions.
  8. Once you feel totally prepared to utilize your questions in a negotiation, do so. Engage with the confidence in knowing that you’ve created a stealthy way of capturing better information as you go throughout the negotiation.
  9. Save your questions in a repository to be used for comparison to past and future negotiation situations.

 

The wrong question asked at the right time in a negotiation may do incalculable harm. The wrong question asked at the wrong time in a negotiation may lead to a negotiation impasse. Create and test your questions before entering into a negotiation and you’ll have more of a chance to reach a successful negotiation outcome … and everything will be right with the world.

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com 

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Bully #Question

#psychology

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Management Marketing Personal Development

5-Time Emmy Winner Consultant to Media Celebrities: How to Become Known

As part of my nationally syndicated radio show, Take the Lead, I interview top leaders and successful individuals who share their success stories.  I recently had the chance to interview Nick Nanton, who is a 5-time Emmy winner and consultant to celebrity authors and speakers.

To hear the entire interview, you can go to http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/nick-nanton_121234

The following are highlights of what he discussed in our interview:

  • Starting off as a lawyer gave credibility
  • The importance of being published
  • Becoming a bestseller
  • Working alongside Steve Forbes, Jack Canfield, President George H. W. Bush, Dan Kennedy, and more
  • Creating your brand
  • How much it costs
  • Media marketing and PR mix
  • Self-publishing vs. traditional publishing
  • Getting on TV as an expert
  • TED talks
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Don’t Hurt the Leader’s Position

“A leader is someone that possesses the ability to successfully lead others from the front or the rear. Always know the position of your leader.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

When someone is serving as the leader of your team and you’ve agreed to give them your support, follow their lead; don’t hurt them or your team by engaging in intended or unintended subterfuge.

In the daily activities of everyone’s life, everyone follows someone. Thus, those that you follow have influence by the fact that you anoint them as someone to lead you. You embolden them with that privilege by the fact that you follow their edict/mandate/suggestions. That being the case, don’t undermine the leader by:

  1. Going off-point per a strategy that has been discussed and agreed upon (e.g. going around the leader to gain attention for yourself, etc.)

 

  1. Engaging with outside sources that have not been agreed upon – make sure the leader knows what you’re planning to do

 

  1. Creating ad-hoc strategies when you’re in the midst of interactions with those that are not on your team/group

When you subvert the direction of the lead that you’ve granted to someone, you forgo potential opportunities, and diminish your team’s ability to implement the plan that’s been agreed upon; that can be costly in time and opportunities. You may also be cloaking into darkness the light of opportunities that may have shown themselves to you in the future (i.e. if you prove not to be a team player, no one will want you on their team.)

If you’re going to be a team player, play follow the leader by supporting the person that you’ve chosen to follow. Do so to the degree that such returns are beneficial to you and the team. Once you decide that you no longer wish to engage, inform the leader of your intent and disengage. Don’t just drop out without any communication. If you restrict the flow of communications, you don’t know what potential door(s) you’ll close that might have offered opportunities that could lead you to higher heights.

As long as you’ve decided to follow the leader, don’t hurt her. You’ve made a conscious decision to allow her to lead. So, follow her lead as long as it serves you and her … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a team negotiation environment, the leader of the team can position and pose as any of its members; it doesn’t have to be the person that projects the image of a leader at the negotiation table. Depending on the strategy chosen by the team, the leader may pose as someone that’s in a strategic position for a particular negotiation. He may also be positioned as someone that a senior person on the team can replace once the negotiation has reached a certain point.

The point is, once you have a strategy in place, don’t undermine it by undermining the person that’s the lead for the negotiation. Not only will you be weakening her, you’ll also be weakening your team’s negotiation position and the perspective beneficial outcome of the negotiation for all of you.

 

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to  sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Leadership

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Best Practices Management Marketing Personal Development

Don’t Just Sell Value. Live It.

Selling value is more widespread than most think…and at the same time, more narrowly practiced than it should be.

“Selling Value” isn’t just the domain of sales methodologies with variations of that term in a sales training course title. Most selling methodologies I’ve ever come across implicitly sell value whether they use that term or not.  All of those in the “needs satisfaction” family, and even some in the “tricky conversational box-building” school of selling, help sellers to connect aspects of their offer to a gap experienced by a customer. Full disclosure:  I work with Miller Heiman Group, whose skills and methodology offerings build a value connection with a customer’s solution image extremely effectively throughout the selling process.

As pervasive as a seller-centric emphasis on value is, it falls short.  I was exposed to the concept of creating customer value before I’d even heard before I started carrying a bag and was coached to “sell the value”.  As a Product Manager, I developed new products to provide specific unique value to customers.  I certainly collaborated with my company’s sales professionals.  I, and everyone who contacted a customer — even many who didn’t –maintained our primary focus on what each customer valued, then worked hard to provide it.

Here’s the Mind Shift

When I say that selling value is almost always performed too narrowly, I mean:

Stop selling value only as a sales methodology

Especially in today’s complex B2B world, the arc of the customer experience is slivered into contacts with a multitude of organizations/roles in your company:  Marketing, sales development, inside sales, outside sales, application engineering,/technical sales, underwriting, account management, implementation teams, customer success managers, account managers, customer service, technical support, billing/accounts receivable…and more, I’m sure. Every touchpoint with your customer represents a human connection with some aspect of customer value.  As a sales performance professional, I can guarantee you that your sellers have only a tunnel-vision view into the full arc of customer value that your company creates with any customer.

Knowing this, how crazy is it to assume that the only group whose job it is to gather information on value..and then sell it.. is your sales force?

It gets worse.  How crazy is it to use customer value only to sell?  A huge resource goes untapped when (only) sales fails to carry value insights back to those in product/service design, product management, shipping, servicing, manufacturing, logistics, purchasing, scheduling, etc.  I have lived a corporate culture where customer-perceived value is the pervasive mantra.

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Entrepreneurship Marketing Operations Personal Development

Without a Brand Promise a Brand is Just a Label

Brands go back to the Roman Empire. Products were emblazoned with a mark that identified the merchant. Today, brands don’t just indicate identity; they also represent the brand’s promise. This promise covers much more than just performance—it reaches packaging, quality, price, availability, and other factors that create your consumers’ expectations!

Modern distribution and communication can bring your brand to widespread recognition and reputation that are based on both past and present behavior. But this is an intricate double-edged sword! A brand with all-star reputation and distribution can excel in the marketplace, but on the other hand, a brand can lose its charm when just one consumer necessity fades. For example, brands can continue to provide good quality, dependability, and price, but they can lose favor by breaking their promise in different ways, like environmental practices or labor relations.

The brand promise is complex. Your consumer has their own expectations based on knowledge of your brand, no matter what you want your brand promise to be. If a consumer’s recent experience doesn’t match their expectations, not only will they stop using your brand, but they’ll also be compelled to warn others (to whom they’ve previously promoted your brand) to avoid it! When it comes to reputation, your former promoters can become formidable opponents. They have more authority with your consumers than you do.

This is why it’s essential for small startups and large corporations alike to understand the unpredictable nature of a brand promise. Start with accepting that you don’t own your brand. The consumer does! You don’t even own your brand promise—the consumer does! Your brand promises certain behavior in your customer’s experience that you and your marketing team might not even notice. New competitors, changes in the market, changes in your category, or even the news can sometimes alter your brand promise in your customers’ eyes. So be cautious and pay attention!

When people trust a brand, they want to feel completely comfortable. So, they stop looking for an alternative once they’ve discovered their brand. Shopping for a new brand fosters anxiety and possible disappointment. Understanding this can be a huge advantage to brand builders who don’t disappoint their followers. The more you know about how customers see your brand promise, the better you can honor it and remain relevant in their point of view.

Your customer service and salespeople know more about marketplace dynamics and consumer perception than your marketing staff. Why? Because they talk to consumers every day! Your salespeople have the most up-to-date info on the competition, your category, and the marketplace. When you break your brand promise, your customer service people know before anyone else in your company. To live up to your brand promise and to keep your devoted customers, we suggest a regular and formal line of communication between your Customer Service and Sales teams and your Production, R&D, Marketing, and Administrative teams.

It’s easy for creators to get too comfortable with their brands. They think they have reached their destination, when maintaining your brand promise is actually a persistent journey. Don’t allow your brand to become just another label. When you keep your brand promise, you keep your faithful customers as promoters for your brand.

For more, read on: http://csnetworkadvis.staging.wpengine.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

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How to Really Overcome a Bully Before Negotiating

“A bully is a misguided person with perceived power. Extinguish his sources of power and you extinguish the bully.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Do you know how to really overcome a bully before negotiating with him? There you are. You’re negotiating against a bully! He’s someone that’s willing to lie, cheat, and steal to come out ahead in the negotiation. You think to yourself, ‘what can I do? This son-of-a-gun is not playing fair and I don’t know how to overcome him!’ The answer to, ‘what can I do’ was hidden in what occurred before the negotiation began.

The following insights will allow you to position yourself better to overcome a bully’s ploys before you negotiate with him.

Positioning:

In every negotiation, positioning occurs. It’s shown in the way the negotiators perceive each other and themselves. Thus, positioning is important because it determines how negotiators will interact with one another.

If you know you’ll be negotiating against someone that has bullied others in the past, before entering into the negotiation, attempt to discover the demeanor of those individuals. In particular seek to define whether they were perceived to be weak by your opponent due to their short-comings, or if your opponent felt empowered due to some other factor(s) he had going for himself at the time of the negotiation(s). That information will allow you to best position yourself from a position of strength. A bully’s loathing for weakness is the reason he only picks on targets that he perceives to be weak.

Leverage: (ploys you can employ when negotiating with a bully)

  • Using Other people
    • All bullies look up to someone. If you can find a way to curry favor with the bully’s icon, you can supplant his bullying efforts against you. After all, the bully wants an easy target. If the bully’s icon has favored you, that makes you less of a target to the bully.
  • Bully’s weakness
    • All bullies have an Achilles heel. It may be how they wish to be perceived by others. It may also appear in the form of the bully being perceived in one light versus another. Whatever it is, discover it and be prepared to exploit it during the negotiation if such is called for.
  • Bully’s Persona (his vanity)
    • If you’re aware of the pride a bully takes in having himself perceived in a certain light, attempt to alter that light; have it shine on someone or somewhere else. You will have taken away his source of motivation. Hold it hostage until he dismantles his bullying ways. The point is, hit him where you’ll get the most attention and where it will hurt him the most. Remember, he despises weakness and applauds strength.

Be Stealthy:

Every good negotiator gathers information about the opposing negotiator. When you know you’ll be negotiating against a bully, drip misinformation into places that he seeks to gather information about you. The better you can use such information to misguide him, the more difficult it’ll be for him to assess the type of negotiator you are; always be willing to display a different negotiation demeanor based on the opposing negotiator.

When engaging a bully in a negotiation, there are all kinds of mind games that occur. Utilize the insights above and you’ll be in a better mental state than the bully. The better you play the game, the greater the chance that you’ll be able to overcome a bully when negotiating … and everything will be right with the world.

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Bully

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Life is Always Testing You; A Negotiation Inspirational Insight

“Tests are meant to measure your improvement. Life’s tests are meant to improve you!” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“Life is Always Testing You”

“This is a test. For the next 60 seconds …”

“Fear not the passing of time. Fear instead your lack of ability to use the gifts that time gives you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Life is always testing us and thus, life is always a test. Be thankful for that because it means that you’re alive, with the ability to go higher in life.

We plan for one thing and something else happens. We set our expectations upon what we’ve planned for and life zags when we thought it was going to zig. At times, it can drive you nuts! But, you shouldn’t let it. Consider it as just another test that life is putting before you; it’s doing so to make you stronger. It’s doing so to see how quickly you can adapt to unexpected occurrences. To the degree that you don’t let such occurrences create mental angst within you, you’ll become infused with more resiliency in life, for your life. That can serve as a source of motivation to fortify your mental attitude and enhance your aptitude to achieve more in life.

The way we perceive and interpret what occurs in our life determines how we’ll adapt to those occurrences and how well we interact with them. Thus, if you view an occurrence from the perspective that it’s a test from which you can improve your abilities, the new/altered occurrence from what you expected can be viewed in a more positive light. That positive perspective should allow you to deal with the unplanned, unexpected occurrence easier and with less apprehension.

When something doesn’t serve you, don’t let it disserve you a second time. Occurrences will come to you from many different sources. Let the positive things that come from such sources support you. For those that detract from you and your goals, be thankful for their insights as you say goodbye to them, knowing that they too add value to your life.

Once you look at your life’s occurrences as being a value-add to your life, you will have adopted a mindset of openness, acceptance, and a mental state of ease. Once you do that … everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

Negotiations are fraught with occurrences that challenged your preconceived plans based on the plans you assembled for the negotiation. Again, to the degree you’re flexible in the flow of the negotiation and you’re adaptable to the changing flow that occurs in/during it, the better a grip you’ll have on determining its outcome. That means you should manage your emotional state during the negotiation, constantly be thinking of any hidden meanings in unspoken and spoken words and any additional insight that body language gestures convey. That assembly of insights will make you a more formattable negotiator, which will lead to better negotiation outcomes for you.

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to  sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Lifetest

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Management Marketing Personal Development

The Decision Process IS the Product!

Your decisions are the result of the decision-making process you employ to make them.  Let me illustrate using a story.

When my kids were growing up, we had a family tradition of going out dinner every Sunday night. My wife and I were both great cooks. While it was easy to eat well at home, the dedicated — OK, captive — family time in a restaurant setting was great for connecting with each other, and started the coming week on a great footing.

For the first few years of this tradition, the process of picking a restaurant went like this: as we were driving out of the church parking lot, discussions – actually a low-intensity argument – would start. Options were proposed and rejected by one or more family members in what seemed like an hours-long process of consensus-building. The product of this process: about 95% of the time, we ended up at Chili’s. That was the only option that could survive that process/ discussion gauntlet relatively unscathed. We all knew we were in a rut, but every time we tried to propose options, the process we used directed us back to the same place. Our “variety” became “table or booth?”. Chili’s is a great place, which is why it made the cut so consistently, but…sheesh.

Same Program, Same People, Wildly Different Results

Then somebody had the great idea to change the process. Each week, one of us got their turn to pick the restaurant for the family. The oldest, in high school at the time, introduced us one week to the Mexican dive hangout he learned about from friends. Our kids were introduced to sushi, Greek, Thai, seafood and more – and loved every single one. My youngest developed a love for the culinary arts – I’m positive in part, due to his wide exposure. I can’t remember a single flop; we almost always walked out of a family meal happy about a new experience. We repeated a few of the big hits (usually at the request of somebody other than the original “chooser”), but the variety and quality of the choices when way up. Importantly, every single one of us agreed that they loved the new results better every. single. week.

Here’s the lesson: the people – the Buying Influences — involved in this decision didn’t change: same personalities, same preferences, same budget, same geographic constraints, same everything. Yet, we achieved far different, far better results.

If you are a Sales Professional:

How groups choose drives what they choose. Consumers choose different decision processes or heuristics. You can guide them to use different heuristics within reason.  They’ll easily choose from a short list of processes they’ve used in the past, for instance. Groups of people organize decisions in certain ways, and often default to the same process they used most recently even if the results were less-than-ideal.

Complex selling is a consensus sale among a group of humans making a group decision… much like my family’s restaurant selection decision. High-performing sellers become students of the group dynamic, and harness different group decision-making processes in order to optimize results. You can add critical players, propose new processes yourself, get coaching to help shape decisions from within the group, and even work within formal processes like RFPs and bids to optimize your chances of success.

If you are a Sales Leader or a Business leader:

Understand how process used determines the outcome achieved.

If you don’t like the product, you may not need to change the people or other resources. To change results, look at your processes. Great leaders become students of group decision-making, and learn how process affects product.

On making decisions: look at your decision process. The way you facilitate each decision shapes it. The process you and your team uses to make a decision indelibly shapes the product – the outcome — of the decision.   If you don’t know how the process you imposed is affecting that decision, you’re either blindly replicating old decisions (for better or worse) and hoping for better results this time…or relying on luck.

On looking at your Processes: Don’t kid yourself about what you already have. In my sales performance consulting practice, I help customers change selling processes. The clients who initially think they don’t have a process are wrong. They have a process, even if it’s just an “everyone does what they want” process. That’s why changing it is hard (it would be a lot easier if “no process” really existed).

Feel free to comment below, or contact me directly. I offer tools to help sales professionals effectively and efficiently optimize customer processes, and love talking about them with new people. If I can help you guide your thinking on your own processes, I’m happy to share my thoughts.

To your success!

#sales, #salesprocess, #millerheiman, #millerheimangroup, #MHIglobal, #salesperformance, #customercentric, #process, #decisiondynamic

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When You’re Just Too Busy

We wear busy like a badge of honor. Busy has become a status symbol within our society, which is crazy when you stop to consider how terrible it is to our productivity, personal well-being and relationships. We believe if we aren’t busy, we aren’t productive.

Researchers have discovered people are feeling overwhelmed at work dealing with constant distractions that then spill over into our personal lives, affecting our recovery, families and friendships. The result: the feeling of anxiety, stress, fatigue and a lack of focus on what matters most.

The Centre for Time Use Research at Oxford University says the total amount of time people work is the same as it’s always been and data indicates people who say they’re the busiest generally aren’t.

Question is: If we aren’t actually busier than in the past, why do we feel like it?  

Part of the answer is simple – attention is our new currency and is more valuable than ever before. With a constant stream of incoming emails, meetings to attend, things to read, ideas to execute, it’s no wonder we feel unable to give our undivided attention to what is most important.  When you couple everything competing for our attention with the digital age of technology, it’s no wonder we are feeling overwhelmed, overstressed and overtired. Fact is: we work 24×7. We never get a break.

Technology and societal pressures leave us feeling the need to be accessible to everyone all the time. As a result, everything suffers. Ironically, being constantly accessible actually decreases our productivity, not the other way around. When we feel rushed, we actually suffer from decreased production, focus and attention to detail. The pace of which we work slows, we are more apt to make mistakes and more likely to disconnect from meaningful relationships.

When we are overwhelmed and lack concentrated focus, we inadvertently compile our stress by taking on even more obligations than we can handle. Before we know it, we are sacrificing what matters most to suffice what matters now. Even worse, we have preprogrammed ourselves to believe we must always be on, plugged in and responsive. We fail to give ourselves the necessary time to recover and refocus.

It’s time to change our mindset. It’s time for an Attention Revolution.  We must stop considering busy as an indication of our importance. We must measure our success not by the time it takes to complete a task, rather the results we achieve. It’s time to prioritize what matters most to us and use those priorities as filters for what we commit to doing. We must learn to say ‘no’ to requests for our time that steal our attention from what matters most. It’s time to start realizing the value our undivided attention brings to relationships, productivity and accountability.

Maybe then, we’ll see we aren’t as busy as we thought we were.

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Are You a Thought Leader? Get Your Ideas the Attention They Deserve

Have you ever heard the term ‘Thought Leadership’ and wondered what it was and who gets to call themselves a ‘Thought Leader?’ True thought leaders shape and shift ideas, perspectives and focus in others.

Thought leaders don’t just know something, they are known for something. People often consider themselves Thought Leaders and yet are actually just thought repeaters. If you really want to stand out as a unique leader who drives passion and focus in others, you must know with conviction, or be willing to develop the skills that meet the following Thought Leadership criteria:

  • Within your business or corporation, you are the go-to resource that best represents your brand, idea and thoughts.
  • You can quickly strategize using thought leadership as a marketing strategy to operationalize your unique ideas.
  • Create ideas and information your business and department can capitalize on by sharing it with the world in a way that is unique and one-of-a-kind.

Utilizing your unique talent and ideas in Thought Leadership can help you inspire and develop top talent within your company. It can also help you attract and retain a larger client base with great connection, engagement and partnership with your brand.

Question is, once you’ve identified your inner thought leader, how can you share your insightfulness to those around you?

1. Capture what you know: You must take the ideas from your head and create ways to communicate them to the marketplace. Thought Leaders can be found in any existing field of work imaginable; however, having a thorough knowledge and unique insights into a topic is only the beginning. Document what you know, your intellectual property. Become a subject-matter expert with unique insights and perspectives to share in your area of expertise. Communicate them in a way that demonstrates value, with language that is uniquely yours.

2. Make your ideas known by others: Of equal importance is the Thought Leader’s ability to educate others on their ideas. It is critical to to share ideas in such a way that you inspire others to want to pass the information along to those in their inner circle. So, package your ideas in an accessible and attractive format to distribute to a market hungry for insights and solutions to problems, and those hearing your message will be eager to distribute it accordingly.

3. Communicate with other Thought Leaders: Communicate with other industry thought leaders, those that are shaking up the way their industry operates. Those with unique insights and ideas often value like-mindedness. They will embrace your approach and engage others willing to listen and learn.

4. Concentrate your messages to the markets that will value your expertise: Your ideas offered must be powerful enough to shift, or contribute to the future direction of an industry, community or even a whole way of thinking. If your thought leadership ideas focus on customer engagement, focus on developing relationships and creating connections with those whose interests concur. If technological ideas are what you’re known for, engage with other like-minded industry thinkers that will see the value in your message and understand the long-term impact your ideas will have.

Thought leadership is a unique skill set and way of packaging solutions to problems others may not consider. Once you’ve identified this talent within yourself, or developed the skills to be known for what you know, move forward with the communication strategy presented so you can spread your knowledge and ideas successfully.