You Can Negotiate Anything
Another classic, Herb Cohen’s book – You Can Negotiate Anything, is another favorite of Bobby & Brian. Cohen has such an incredible background story, childhood friends with Larry King, who detailed his negotiating skills even as a child. Cohen worked with both Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan to negotiate the release of 52 hostages back from Iran. And for decades Cohen has served as a consultant to top executives and the FBI for decades.
Several key principles stood out to us: Stay out of “zero-sum” negotiations – when the person on the other side of the table has nothing to gain out of the partnership. If you aren’t in the position to get to a “win-win” – you are either selling the wrong product, or you’ve allowed yourself to be completely commoditized. We’ve found and detailed in our Negotiating Best Practices podcast how critical it is to know what “chips” or levers you bring to the table. Your counterpart will come to the table discussing alternatives, or perhaps precedents of pricing from another customer, but you need to know where and when you can bend.
Perhaps the best lesson for me was the importance of deadlines. He tells a story about negotiating a deal in Japan, staying for two full weeks, understanding their culture, and ultimately finding himself negotiating on the way to the airport and had to compromise. In tech sales, we so often find ourselves negotiating against a quarter or year-end. If we know we are going to be taken to the wire – why are we negotiating against ourselves by so speedily responding (or waiting!).
Takeaways:
- Know the background of the person you are negotiating with! Have they come from another customer, what goals do they have personally with this project? What needs are they representing from the business?
- Have a list of your gives, know what you are and aren’t willing to part with! This is so often missed and late in the game.
- Be likeable, people want to work with people they like.
- Understand deadlines on both sides, don’t allow yourself to get going too early, or too late based on these objectives.
Other great anecdotes from the book:
- “No’ is a reaction, not a position. The people who react negatively to your proposal simply need time to evaluate it and adjust their thinking. With the passage of sufficient time and repeated efforts on your part, almost every ‘no’ can be transformed into a ‘maybe’ and eventually a ‘yes’.”
- “Most of us, in our civilized society, rely too heavily on reasoning capacity to make things happen. We’ve been raised to believe that logic will prevail. Logic, in and of itself, will rarely influence people. Most often logic doesn’t work.”
Find the book on Amazon, here
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