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As I’ve often said, “If you make a mistake and don’t repeat it, then it becomes part of your experience base.” As a result, it should become one of the lessons you’ve learned. On the other hand, if you repeat the same mistake, then shame on you!

Here’s one lesson I’ll never forget. About twenty five years ago , I believe I made the biggest negotiating mistake of my career. I actually gave something away at the negotiating table without getting anything in return. I agreed to pay an extra year of licensing fees. As the fees were at a reduced rate, it really didn’t appear to amount to much in the context of the total agreement.

About one year later, I found out that what appeared to be a minor point during the negotiations, turned out to be a deal breaker for the other party. In fact, had the other party not gotten the additional licensing fees, irrespective of what they might have had to give in return, the bank would have withdrawn their offer to finance this party’s leveraged buyout of another division of the company. In essence, there would not have been any possibility of the other party consummating their buyout, and they “won” an enormous point without having to give anything in return.

While this is a simplistic overview of the negotiations leading up to this particular point, had our team had any information regarding the importance of this point for the other party, we could have gotten some concessions we wanted in return for the additional licensing fees. Another experience learned the hard way.

At the same time, you have to be careful not to take the information you’ve gathered about the other party’s situation and use it to hammer them into submission, as the other party probably will spend a significant amount of time and effort “getting even” at some time in the future. By way of example, early in my career, I negotiated a licensing agreement which was very favorable to the licensee in terms of the benefits versus the costs. About two years into the seven year agreement, the licensor had the opportunity to “level the playing field.” The licensor had developed the next generation raw material used in the process which offered significant cost savings opportunities in the manufacturing process. The licensee had no choice but to purchase their requirements from the licensor. You guessed it! The licensor charged a premium for the new raw material that more than made up for the shortfall he believed he had been forced to accept when the original license agreement was signed.

Lessons learned: You need to do your homework and obtain as much information as possible about the other party prior to the actual negotiations. Once at the negotiating table, ask open ended questions to get additional information. Never give anything away without getting something in return. At the same time, be careful not to hammer the other party into submission.

Metrics are essential management tools designed to provide specific measures of effectiveness of company programs and activities relative to stated goals, objectives, and plans. They describe what needs to be done, how things should be done, and who should be doing such courses of action. The answers to these questions determine the programs, activities, strategies, resources, as well as expected outputs that are specific and measurable. There are many kinds of metrics in the arena. You can draw up metrics for almost all kinds of company programs, from personnel development programs, marketing and sales campaigns to resource management, planning processes, and many others. However, these metrics will be useless unless they are disseminated and properly explained to the concerned people. One easy way of making people understand company metrics is through the use of metrics PowerPoint.

PowerPoint presentations have many advantages over other kinds of presentations when it comes to driving a point across. Presentations can be concise and brief, yet effective and persuasive with the use of diagrams, graphs, and texts. Naturally, all these things can also be done through printed documents, but PowerPoint presentations can be manipulated more easily to highlight or stress a point. You can enlarge or focus particular parts of the presentation that will help you convey the message more effectively. In addition, there are less distractions to your audience since they do not have to look down to read printed materials in order to follow your discussion. Power point presentations are easier to digest and you can stimulate interest by adding thought-provoking images.

All these advantages are available to you when you make you metric presentation. But it must be remembered that all these conveniences are just aids, and the most important ingredient still that will hold the interest of you audience is the relevance of the contents of your presentation.

Presentation of metrics must follow an orderly pattern. If you are presenting a marketing campaign metrics, it would be best to highlight the goals of such a campaign, perhaps by placing it in the first slide in bold and big letters and accompanying it with representative images of what the accomplishment of the goals will do for the company as a whole. Next will be the objectives, which, of course, must be achievable, measurable, specific, time bound, and the like. Those objectives must have the aforementioned qualities is very important since it establishes the measures with which accomplishments can be evaluated on their effectiveness. Do not forget also what many managers often forget – the mechanisms to be used in monitoring the implementation and evaluation of results.

The planned activities envisioned to achieve the objectives follows. This is the most interesting part because now, your audience will know what their roles in the campaigns will be, with whom they will work with, what resources are needed to operationalize the campaign, and most importantly, what particular activities are to be conducted and their specific outputs.

The metrics PowerPoint presentation must be simple and straight to the point. You can make a few digressions to amuse, arouse, and sustain interest to, but nothing will hold the interest of your audience better than relevant content.