You Can Negotiate Anything

• What is negotiation? It is the use of information and power to affect behavior within a “web of tension”.
• All power is based on perception. If you think you’ve got it, then you’ve got it.
• View your life’s encounters as negotiations.
• Negotiation skills give you a sense of mastery over your life. It isn’t chiseling, and it isn’t intimidation of an unsuspecting mark. It’s analyzing information, time, and power to affect behavior and make things happen the way you want them to.
• The power of legitimacy is power derived from perceived or imagined authority.
• Is the expenditure of energy and time on my part worth the benefits that I can receive as a result of this encounter?
• The more people there are who want your money, the more your money will buy. Generate competition.
• The phrase “what if” is magical in negotiations.
• The key to making an ultimatum prevail is always the extent to which the other side makes an investment of time and energy.
• The success of a nibble is in direct proportion to the amount of time invested.
• Always induce the other side to invest in a situation. And that’s why your initial approach to a negotiation should always be collaborative, as though you’re hungry for help.
• Admitting that you don’t have all the answers humanizes you and causes others to be more receptive to your approach.
• Don’t be too quick to “understand” or prove your intellect at the outset of an encounter. Watch your listen-talk ratio. Learn to ask questions, even when you think you might already know the answer.
• Ultimatums must come at the end of a negotiation, never at the beginning. You can’t frost a cake until you bake it.
• What we do not understand, we cannot control.
• Success derives not only from holding a strong hand, but from analyzing the total situation so cards can be skillfully played.
• I define power as the capacity or ability to get things done… to exercise control over people, events, situations, and oneself.
• You have plenty of power. Use it to sensibly implement objectives that are important to you. You owe it to yourself not to live by what someone else thinks you ought to do.
• In essence, power is neutral. It’s a means, not an end.
• You have power if you perceive that you have it.
• Within reason, you can get whatever you want if you’re aware of your options, if you test your assumptions, if you take shrewdly calculated risks based on solid information, and if you believe you have power.
• Intelligent risk taking involves knowledge of the odds plus a philosophical willingness to shrug your shoulders and absorb a manageable loss.
• The chance of a setback is the price you must pay for any progress.
• Establish your background and credentials early in the confrontation and your statements may not even be challenged.
• Prepare yourself ahead of time. If the negotiation is important enough to you to win, it ought to be worth some of your time in boning up.
• Ask intelligent questions and know whether you are getting accurate responses.
• Recognize the principles of human nature. Make them work for you, not against you.
• Your perception that I can and might help you or hurt you physically, financially, or psychologically- gives me “muscle” in our relationship.
• Don’t eliminate options and reduce the other side’s stress unless you receive quid pro quo.
• Approach each person on a human level with the hope that you can help them solve their problem.
• Many people vote for candidate A not because of any degree of affinity, but because they cannot stomach candidate B. This is true in all of our dealings and decision-making.
• Don’t act as though your limited experience represents universal truths.
• Learn to hang in there. You must be tenacious.
• If you want to persuade people, show the immediate relevance and value of what you’re saying in terms of meeting their needs and desires.
• Try to regard all encounters and situations, including your job, as a game, as the world of illusion. Pull back a little and enjoy it all. Do your best, but don’t fall apart if everything doesn’t pan out the way you’d like it to.
• If your job becomes fun, your anxiety will drop to the level you experience in a challenging game of ping-pong.
• As long as you get there before it’s over, you’re never late.
• This reality, that all the action occurs at the eleventh hour, holds true in every single negotiation.
• Most concession behavior and settlements will occur at or even beyond the deadline, be patient. True strength often calls for the ability to sustain the tension without fight or flight.
• Generally speaking, you cannot achieve the best outcome quickly; you can achieve it only slowly and perseveringly.
• “No” is a reaction, not a position.
• With the passage of sufficient time and repeated efforts on your part, almost every “o” can be transformed into a “maybe” and eventually a “yes”.
• Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.
• The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
• When you give someone the silent treatment you often force the other person to talk, if only out of discomfort.
• A tactic perceived is no tactic at all.
• If the prey understands the hunting game, they are unlikely to remain in the line of fire.
• If conflict is viewed as a problem to be solved, creative solutions can be found that enhance the position of both sides and the parties might even be brought closer together.
• At the outset of a negotiation, you should always come on like velvet, not coarse sandpaper.
• Listen with empathy, which means stopping yourself from working on counter arguments while they’re speaking.
• All people are unique, but not that complex. They merely wish to satisfy their needs.
• Successful collaborative negotiation lies in finding out what the other side really wants and showing them a way to get it, while you get what you want.
• Hold in your mind a picture of the trusting, problem solving climate that you would like to see when the event ultimately takes place and take action to bring it about.
• Leadership is often the ratification of decisions that were already made.
• See those whom you wish to persuade in context, as a central core around which others move. Get the support of those others and you will influence the position and movement of the core.
• Remember, the provocative act by itself rarely upsets you; rather, it’s the view that you take of it that rankles. No one and nothing can irritate you without your consent.
• Quick is always synonymous with risk.
• Who takes the risk in a quick settlement? The person who is less prepared and cannot determine equity.
• More often than not, success comes to the negotiator with greater patience and staying power.
• If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
• Try not to negotiate with a person of limited authority.
• The good life is not a passive existence where you live and let live. It is one of involvement where you live and help live.

Source: You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen