Negotiating Your Value, by Coach DQ, CPCC, CPC

Are You Prepared To Negotiate For Happiness? Believe it or not, everything truly is negotiable! Each new job offer or performance review is an opportunity to negotiate base salary, bonuses, benefits, stock options and various other incentives that add to job satisfaction and ultimately, provide more financial security. You need to take control of your job search before your new job offer and plan ahead of time for your annual performance review to reach your ultimate goal of financial security and happiness. Are you prepared to negotiate?

With each new job offer or performance review, you are being handed an opportunity to define, communicate, and achieve what you want for your financial security. In order to achieve this, you'll have to understand the basics of negotiation.

The first step in negotiating is making the decision to reach your goal. Once you have made that decision, you need to plan your approach, gather supporting information, consider alternatives and viewpoints, communicate specifically, and understand your strengths and weaknesses. You must be able to respond effectively to the negotiating party, and knowing your competition will enable you to bargain your position more accurately.

Here are a few tips to focus on during your research and negotiation: 1. Be Persuasive It's hard to force your boss to increase your compensation, and trying to do so can potentially damage your working relationship. Think about the process as trying to convince him that it might benefit the organization to pay you more.

2. Aim High and Be Realistic Many researchers have found a strong correlation between people's aspirations and the results they achieve in negotiation. At the same time, you want to suggest ideas to which your boss can realistically say yes.

3. Start Off with the Right Tone You want to let your boss know you will listen and try to understand his views. At the same time, you expect your boss to do the same for you so you can work together to address this issue. Avoid ultimatums, threats and other coercive behavior.

4. Clarify Your Interests Your compensation should satisfy a range of needs, not just salary. Make sure you have thought about other points of value to you as well -- like profit sharing, stock options that vest immediately, a bonus, greater work responsibilities, a quicker promotion schedule, increased vacation or flexible hours.

5. Anticipate Your Boss's Interests Just like you, your boss has needs and concerns. To persuade him to say yes, your ideas will have to address those things that are important to him.

6. Create Several Options Joint brainstorming is the most effective way to find ideas that satisfy everyone's interests. It works best when you separate it from commitment -- first create possible solutions, and then decide among them.

7. Focus on Objective Criteria It is far easier to persuade someone to agree with your proposal if he sees how that proposal is firmly grounded on objective criteria, such as what similar firms pay people of like experience or what others in the company make.

8. Think Through Your Alternatives In case you cannot persuade your boss to say yes, you need to have a backup plan. Part of preparation is creating a specific action plan so you know what you'll do if you have to walk away from the table.

9. Prepare Thoughtfully to Achieve Your Goals This is the only aspect of your negotiations you can completely control. To take advantage of all of the above advice, you have to invest a significant amount of your time and energy.

10. Review to Learn The only way you can really improve your ability to negotiate is to explicitly learn from your experiences. After you finish negotiations, reflect on what you did that worked well and what you might want to do differently. You will ultimately be successful in achieving your goal of financial security and happiness!

Negotiation is not an art form – the more you practice, the better you become at it! Do your homework and feel confident! Know your worth. Doing it right requires preparation, studying comparative situations, role playing and getting another perspective.

A case in point: A client recently hired me to help her with negotiating a promotion, she knew her boss had a real tight budget so together worked on her strategy; role played what she would say, what possible objections might come up, and how to overcome them. She did some research and prepared her case. The result a 20% increase in salary, a gas allowance, flex hours, a gym membership, a new "Director" title and a lunch stipend. So the next time you are negotiating your annual review, a new position, a promotion, whatever it is remember everything is negotiable.

Rekindling Ties With Old Friends Through Prepaid Call Cards

In today's fast-paced world of technology and communications, prepaid telephone calls are a trendy method of contacting friends and family from almost everywhere, and it also allows the caller to control spending and not get tied up into paying standard fees or regular rates with standard telephone service providers.

Most telecom companies now provide prepaid call card service, which they usually sell advance. When a customer purchases a prepaid phone call card, one is paying for long distance connection time in advance. When a customer makes calls using the phone card, the card's value is deducted based on connection fees, duration of connection or calls made, surcharges, and any or whatever maintenance surcharges are associated with the call card.

Prepaid phone calls are generally implemented in a telephone operator's network using a method called "intelligent network functionality". The competitive rates these providers offer are usually made possible by spending lesser cost routing and lower overheads than the established telephone operators.

Friends or family worldwide now find it convenient to establish connections and maintain friendships through the advent of prepaid phone call cards. These cards, commonly known as phone cards in the US and the United Kingdom, are readily available almost from every newsstand, convenience store or drugstore. They are now admittedly the cheapest means of making long-distance and international calls, and what is more important is that they offer complete anonymity to the one using it.

Prepaid phone call cards sold by retailers are considered active once they are purchased. A call card generally has a web site that offers prepaid PIN's for calling, which denotes that there is no physical phone card. There are also call cards that have toll-free operators, that offer added services to customers or patrons who hold accounts with them and have already paid money in advance for the service.

This service is typically accessed by the user when he/she dials a toll free number from any telephone, much like a 1-800 number. The customer then authenticates himself with the operator by entering a PIN number. Most of the time, these operators have toll free numbers all over the world, ensuring that a customer can access the service even when he is in another country.

Prepaid call cards are also offered by majority of mobile phone providers around the world. Typically all the standard mobile call card services are readily available to prepaid users, however a user would need to top up, or load their balance in advance before they can be used. Loading up on an overseas call card could be done via a variety of mechanisms- either thru vouchers, swipe cards, debit and credit cards.

Whenever one needs to avail of a prepaid call card service, the customer should keep these in mind, to enable him or her to find the best prepaid call service which would truly suit his requirements for overseas or local calls. A person should know if he/she would be making calls mostly overseas?; Whether he/she would be calling to the US from overseas frequently?; Would the customer need internet access to come along with the prepaid call card service?, or Whether he/she is calling mostly just within the US and Canada. For travelers to the US and Canada, it is advisable to get the services of a call card, since most prepaid call cards in the US offer better and cheaper rates, and there are a wide array of services available in all US cities or towns.