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Do you want to make the best deal in a negotiation? What are the best negotiation books for making deals?
Making negotiations is a part of everyday life. People make negotiations on houses, salaries, or even where to eat for a date night. Settling on a deal that’s satisfying to both parties is the best possible outcome, but not always easy to achieve.
We’ve rounded up the top negotiation books that you can use to make attractive deals.
Negotiation Books to Improve Your Compromising Skills
Poorly handled negotiations are the cause of many painful problems in work and home life. These stressful conversations can rapidly go awry, with people behaving at their worst—yelling at each other, snipping sarcastically, or even going silent and withdrawing. When this happens, little progress is made and resentment builds. Moreover, we often deliberately avoid having these conversations because we’re afraid we’ll make matters worse.
With these negotiation books, you’ll soar through difficult deals without creating a hostile atmosphere with the other person.
In Negotiation Genius, negotiation experts Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman provide a comprehensive system for negotiating successfully in all areas of your life, whether you want to land a lucrative contract, get a raise, or split chores with your roommate. To be a “negotiation genius,” you must prepare extensively before a negotiation and learn to not only claim but create value. By applying the authors’ strategies, you can avoid common negotiation pitfalls, make attractive deals, and build stronger relationships.
Never Split the Difference aims to provide a comprehensive guide to negotiating theory and strategy, giving you the tools you need to negotiate successfully. Voss’s thesis is that good negotiation happens on the emotional level of the brain, not the rational level. Your job as a negotiator, Voss argues, is to practice and display empathy toward your counterpart by understanding their emotions, learning to see the situation from their point of view—and, ultimately, getting them to feel comfortable enough with you to let their emotional guard down.
Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury is a practical guide to negotiating more effectively whether you’re haggling over a price, negotiating for a pay increase, or debating how to divide the housework. The authors propose an alternative to traditional adversarial bargaining, which often results in unfair agreements and strained relationships. Principled negotiation, by contrast, aims to reach wise and fair agreements efficiently and civilly. In addition to walking you through their method, the authors offer numerous tips and techniques for handling challenging negotiations. Anyone can use their method, under any circumstances.
Crucial Conversations teaches you an array of dialogue principles and practical skills, explained and demonstrated through numerous examples. After this book, you’ll be able to talk to anyone about virtually any topic, no matter how sensitive. When you learn to handle crucial conversations effectively, the quality of your relationships and your effectiveness in negotiations will improve dramatically, and you’ll be able to help get everybody what they want.
Difficult conversations are a constant throughout life, at work, at home, and in the world. We never outgrow them, get a promotion that saves us from them, or meet a person who’s so perfect for us we never have to have them. But difficult conversations, if we engage in them successfully, are the mark of a healthy relationship. In fact, the success and survival of any relationship, business or personal, depends on the ability of those involved to master difficult conversations. Difficult Conversations will help you ask for that raise, bring up issues with your spouse, understand your kids better, and get to the bottom of your feud with your neighbor.
Do you have a great business product and want to land new customers quickly? In Exactly What to Say, business expert Phil M. Jones describes how to improve your business negotiations by using key phrases that appeal to your listener’s subconscious mind and guide them to a decisive “yes.” He’ll teach you how to avoid the dreaded customer response of “I’ll have to think about it” and how to capitalize on the conversation even if a customer says no. Jones’s advice is geared toward business interactions, but the principles are transferable across many industries and contexts.
People fit into one of three reciprocity styles. Givers like to give more than they get, paying attention to what others need. Takers like to get more than they give, seeing the world as a competitive place and primarily looking out for themselves. And matchers balance and give on a quid pro quo basis, willing to exchange favors but careful about not being exploited.
Of these three styles, which do you think tends to be the most successful? You might think that aggressive takers come out on top, but Wharton professor Adam Grant argues givers are actually the most successful. In Give and Take, learn how givers build larger, more supportive networks; inspire the most creativity from their colleagues; and achieve the most successful negotiations.
Have you ever wondered how persuasion works? How are salespeople, fundraisers, and politicians able to lure us into compliance— without even thinking that we’re being manipulated?
This is what Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion sets out to answer. The book shows how the persuaders of the world use our basic mental instincts against us, transforming them into tools of compliance. By exploring the origins and common uses of six principles of persuasion—reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity—you’ll learn to spot when you’re being hustled and discover how to beat the manipulative negotiators at their own game.
How Highly Effective People Speak
Effective communication, according to Peter D. Andrei, is more of a science than most people think. Persuasive speech is a complex craft that can be studied and learned, and its strategies can be broken down and used by anyone. In How Highly Effective People Speak, he shares the basic strategies of powerful communication, teaching you how to speak with eloquence and persuasion by tapping into patterns of thinking that affect human behavior and perception.
Do you want to improve your communication skills and positively affect others’ actions? Do you want to become a more persuasive negotiator? If so, you may benefit from the communication strategies René Rodriguez offers in Amplify Your Influence. Rodriguez explores numerous ways you can connect with people, help them reach their goals, and help them change their behavior for the better. He argues that we’re all capable of guiding and shaping others’ actions, as long as we have the right tools.
Final Words
Negotiating is a useful skill that comes in handy at work, at home, or with strangers. You never know when someone wants to strike a compromise, and you should be prepared to get the most out of what they’re offering. These negotiation books will help you keep your emotions in check and spot another person’s motives when you’re under pressure to settle.
Have you read any of these negotiation books? Tell us which one was your favorite in the comments below!
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