Persuasion And Negotiation Techniques For Acing Interviews And Lowering Your Rent

Persuasion And Negotiation Techniques For Acing Interviews And Lowering Your Rent Photo courtesy of Wiki How. Lower Your Rent Negotiating rent is something everyone should look into if theyre renting from a private (or at least accessible) landlord. For example, if youre looking to live off-campus, it might be beneficial to look into an apartment or condo being rented by a single, private owner, or from someone subleasing, because they will be more likely to negotiate prices in order to get their place rented more quickly. On a personal note, I subleased an apartment last year for 100 dollars less than I had been asking for, simply due to the fact that I was in such a hurry to have someone paying at least the majority of the rent. You can use this, and the techniques below, to your advantage. Know The Market No, you dont have to know the economic ins and outs of the housing market, but you should gain an idea as to the rental prices around your campus or where youre preparing to rent.  What The Neighbors Pay,  a section of the Apartment Ratings website, is a great tool that allows you to search rent and price demographics for certain cities, neighborhoods and complexes. Knowing the average prices for the area youre looking into renting allows you to have an idea of how low you can feasibly negotiate, and also helps you avoid paying higher than the average. Also be sure to look into your landlords market; knowing how long an apartment has been empty or how many empty apartments they have in the area can help you gauge how receptive they will ultimately be to your negotiation. Time It Right According to an article in  Forbes, landlords are more willing to negotiate near the end of the month because it usually means the apartment has been empty for longer. As with my experience, renters are more likely to accept a lower price rather than risk the apartment not being filled. Forbes also recommends to, if you have a lease, start your negations early so that you give yourself enough time to find another apartment (or convince your landlord you could). If you start too early, however, your landlord may simply find a new tenant to replace you, the article stated. Haggle Now that you know the market and its the end of the month, you can begin your negotiation.  Roger Dawson, author of  Secrets of Power Negotiating,  said in an article for  Forbes  that negotiators don’t deal in reality, they deal with perceptions. He goes on to explain that being comfortable going into a situation without a concrete outcome is essential, and to also be mentally prepared and confident in your pitch. To begin, always ask for a lower price than you think youll receive. This sets the table for compromise, which is really what the haggle is all about. Also be sure to explain your reasoning in a non-aggressive manner and  avoid hesitant language, such as umm and I mean, seeing as they make you appear unsure in your argument. If your landlord turns out to be uncompromising on the rent, Forbes also recommends negotiating parts of the rent, such as asking for free parking or a fresh coat of paint. Ace An Interview Interviews involve mostly persuasion rather than negotiation techniques, as youre essentially asking the potential employer to buy what youre selling (you), which is why many sales techniques are useful for interviews. Research and Empathize Just as you need to know your market to negotiate rent, you need to know the company youre applying to in order to persuade the interviewer to hire you. This involves not only researching the basics of the company, but also the position youre applying for. Knowing the company and its current state and current events allows you to ultimately empathize with the interviewer. The best way to do this, according to an article via the  Global Post, is to connect the job to your qualities, making statements such as, Your job description emphasized detail orientation, which is a quality my managers have always recognized in me. Connect There are many ways to connect with an interviewerwith empathy, as listed above, but also with different nonverbal and verbal cues. You still want to avoid the hesitant language I mentioned earlier, since in an interview it would signal uncertainty regarding your qualifications. You can also build rapport by mirroring the posture and movements of the interviewer (not overly so, but subtly) and by maintaining friendly eye contact. Its also useful to connect through complimenting, but rather than using generalized complements (I just  love  your company!),  try to complement a procedure within the company that you enjoy. For example, a common question in interviews asks what you didnt like about your last job. A useful way to turn this into a positive statement and give a complement is to say something like I didnt enjoy the overly pushy, out-of-date marketing techniques my previous company used, but prefer marketing techniques that develop a connection between the products and the customers through relatable copy, such as with the campaign your company used for so-and-so product last month. As you can see, the dislike of pushy marketing campaigns turned into a positive view of connecting through marketing and a complement on how the interviewers company utilizes their marketing. Strong, specialized statements such as these create a powerful persuasive pull, as theyre in-depth and leave little question in the interviewers mind that you know the job youre applying for. Stand Out Through Email People remember what they saw first or last  but almost never what they saw in the middle, said  Joanna Wiebe, copywriter and author of Copy Hackers. This is especially important advice to think about when sending emails or crafting any piece of written communication. Having an engaging subject line or opening line is an indirect way of persuading the reader to keep reading; if the first sentence commands drool and eye blur, you can bet the person youre trying to reach hit delete and took a nap instead of reading your proposal. This isnt to say you have to have an off the wall or weird subject line of an email; after all, you dont want it to be disregarded as spam, but you should pepper the first sentence of your email with an uncommon word or two. A study titled The Bizarreness Effect: Its not surprising, its complex, found that people were best able to recall messages when bizarre nouns were  mixed with  common words in a standard sentence, as Weibe summarized on her website. The key is to make the subject clear with an uncommon word mixed in, or if you dont feel comfortable being a little bold with a subject line, save it for the first sentence of your email. Again, no need to go crazy, but do get a little creative. What would make you open one email over another out of the 20 emails asking the same thing or applying for the same position? Vacations really do have the power to help you hone certain business skills, or at least bring them to light. In fact, gambling in Vegas can make you a master risk evaluator, financial strategist okay, now Im going too far (maybe). Regardless, persuasion and negotiation are, indeed, skills that can save you shopping money or aid you in making more money, even if youve never used them abroad. And to that I say, happy haggling!