The Art of Negotiation

This is your Coach, Andrea Dickerson here with IOwnADaycare.com, where we connect childcare business owners with proven management solutions. For today’s proven management solution, I want to talk to childcare business owners about marketing their childcare business and knowing the art of negotiation.

I believe that when I started studying the art of negotiation and how important it would be in my business to help me close the deal, get clients to come take a tour of my childcare business, hire qualified staff, and knowing how to negotiate their salaries, that was going to be a game-changer for me.

If you are like me, you may have just started off in the childcare business with just a passion and a love for caring for children but you never really ventured out to a business class or any other classes besides ECE classes. Well, that is how I began. I had a love for caring for children which was my natural inter ability and I never had any classes that taught me what to do as a businesswoman. There were things that I had to learn about along my journey.

I am so glad I decided to hire a coach and start dealing with those areas in my life that needed to be fine-tuned. I had to fine tune the art of negotiating. What happened for me was I had to lay pride aside and realize that my business, yet though it had to make money, that money was not the only talent that my business had. That I needed to create a business that was known for negotiation. What does that mean?

Lay Pride Aside, Get Help, And Learn How To Negotiate

I laid pride aside, got help, and realized that if I’m going to keep the right team members, I must learn how to negotiate. I must learn how to approach particulars in the business. I must learn how to have my client happy, but yet run an even better business where my business is financially secure, and my clients are happy.

I had to realize that there was something I had to do differently and that was to learn the art of negotiation. Inside my book, Build It Big, Build It Better, I talk about the art of negotiation. I want to share with you some key points about the art of negotiation.

My Build It Big, Build It Better Book Reads

“One thing that I have learned is that pride will set you back. Pride will set you up for failure. I had to learn how to remove all pride from my business by learning how to negotiate. Several people struggle with how to set their prices in their business. It’s really not about the price in childcare, but about the power of knowing how to negotiate. You got to know how to set your rates to be comparable to the market, and how to negotiate to get parents to sign up fast and in your business.”

This is just a small snippet about negotiation that I wrote in my Build It Big, Build It Better book. What I discovered is that if I wanted to get my clients from the phone into my doors, I had to learn the art of negotiation. What am I telling you to do? First, get my book, Build It Big, Build It Better. This book gives you some of my solid references that I use to get clients into the door.

Let me give you a prime example. When you begin coaching with me, I teach you about having phone scripts in place and so does the book. What I learned along my journey was that most of my clients began to call and ask me how much are my services. Are you experiencing the same question as well?

This Is How You Handle That

Most parents will call and ask how much do you charge? Your response is, “Yes ma’am. We have the best rates in town. As a matter of fact, let me get your email to send you out a coupon that you can use today. It does expire today but you will begin to save additional money today. What is your email so that I can send it to you right away?”

Well, that is the art of negotiation. I didn’t discuss my rates over the phone, but what I did was offer them a chance to save even more when they give me their email address so that I could send them out a coupon. Of course, in today’s society, things should be digital. When you are in my coaching program, I teach you how to create digital coupons or even bar codes so that clients can get your code by phone and they can scan it in and save money on their registration. This is a way I learned how to negotiate.

When I first got started in childcare, I decided I was going to offer free registration, but something about offering free registration began to become a wide spread and wide known tactic. I decided that if I’m willing to give up X amount of dollars in free registration, how can I take that, add a twist to it, and renegotiate how I market with my clients. So, I decided to take that money that I would have offered as free registration and turn it into additional way of interest for my clients. That’s called the art of negotiation.

What if you have a staff member that you are ready to bring onboard to your company? You offer them a salary, then they counteract with an offer. How do negotiate? Well, when you coach with me, I talk to you about how to use numbers in your business to make them effective with your team. Sometimes it’s not just about the weekly pay, but if you learn how to attract clients that value what you have to offer, they will be exceedingly happy and satisfied. That is when you learn how to use your offers and quantify them with numbers.

Let Me Explain

Let’s say that each year you have bonuses that you offer your team. If you have 10 team members and they all get a $100 bonus, then at the end of the year, you can say we have bonuses that we have given  out within the last 12 months of up to $1000. Doesn’t $1000 sound more exciting than $100? They are both true. But it is how you speak it and how you negotiate it with your audience.

Well, alright! I just want to share with you some of my insider tips and secrets that I have learned to use to build a bigger and better childcare business. If you are interested in having the Build It Big, Build It Better book, be sure to click here.

Thank you so much for reading today’s blog post. Remember, if you manage the childcare business that you love, then you will love the childcare business that you manage.