Book summary: Secrets of Power Negotiation

Behavioral advice

• Be willing to live with ambiguity
• Be resilient
  • Maslow hierarchy of needs
    1. Survival
    2. Security
    3. Social
    4. Self-esteem
    5. Self-actualization
  • Be willing to live beyond stage three most of the time – surpass the need to be liked
• Don’t be conflict adverse

Dealing with the decision maker

• When present with a proposal, don’t ask for something specific in return but let the other person offer up an item for exchange
• Get the other person to commit first
• Always flinch when proposed something
• Never say yes to the first offer
• Ask for more than you expect to get
• Never be too eager to close the deal – they will give away half of his/her negotiating range
• Shut up and wait after delivering a rejection or delivering the details of a proposal
• Always negotiated in absolute numbers instead of percentages
• Convince them that you are the only one that could solve the problem

Finding the decision maker

• Ascertain the person you are dealing with is the actual decision maker
• Do not present yourself as the decision maker
• When possible always defer to higher authority. The more vague and abstract the better
• Seek to neutralize the other person’s Higher Authority Gambit ( also watch out for good cop and invisible bad cop)
  • Appeal to their ego
  • Get their commitment that they will take the proposal to the committee with a positive recommendation
  • Use the qualified subject to close (assume close)
    • Example: let’s sign the deal and put in the condition that it will be closed unless the following conditions occur

Things to watch out for

• The value of a service greatly diminishes after its been performed
• Negotiated your fee before you do the work

Situations

• Impasse
  • incomplete disagreement over one issue that could kill the whole agreement
  • solution:
    • Propose to set aside the issue and discuss the other details based on the assumption that we will be able to sort out this issue as some point
    • Create momentum by solving other smaller issues first
• Stalemate
  • both sides are still talking but not making progress
  • Solution:
    • Create momentum by solving other smaller issues first
    • Change the dynamics by altering one of the elements
• Deadlock
  • lack of progress frustrated both sides causing conversations to come to a halt
  • Solution:
    • bring in a 3rd party
      • mediator
      • arbitrator
  • Keep an open mind about deadlocks – they happen sometime

Tactics to watch out for and utilize

• Good cop / bad cop
• Red Herring – they ask you for something impossible to divert attention so as to get something they want out of you
• Cherry picking – if on the receiving side, Don’t deal
  • ask for itemized breakdown
  • Learn so much about your competitors that they would see it as a waste of their time to go talk to them
• The deliberate mistake
  • They offer a good deal to you and then realize from their boss the terms no longer apply
• Acting dumb to make their feel OK and cause them to let their guard down
• Don’t get thrown off by their tactics just focus on the concession you are targeting for

Powers of concern

• Reward power
• Coercive power
• Reverent power –
  • When people invoke the power of traditions. The power accumulated by doing things consistently
  • How to neutralize it:
    • Demonstrate exceptions do exist
    • Demonstrate that times have change
• Situational power
  • Always do enough research so that you can challenge the situation