Is it possible for both sides to win in a negotiation? How can you discover your opponent’s ceiling? Can you make a negotiation pleasant?
In You Can Negotiate Anything, Herb Cohen teaches you how to conduct the most productive kind of negotiation possible: one where both sides win. You’ll also learn how to win at competitive negotiation and the secrets to a favorable deal.
Read below for a brief overview of You Can Negotiate Anything.
You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen
You’re a negotiator, even if you don’t know it. In You Can Negotiate Anything, Herb Cohen says negotiation is the art of getting other people to do what you want—and all of us do that every day. Every time you discuss what TV show to watch with your family or decide who’s going to get lunch for the rest of the team, you’re negotiating.
Although the game of negotiation is an unavoidable part of daily life, Cohen notes that many people fail to understand the strategies that lead to victory—that is, desirable outcomes for you and the people you care about. Effective negotiation skills will help you accomplish any goal that involves interacting with other people. Thus, if you can master this game, you can use this power to create a better life for yourself and a better world for others.
Cohen is a corporate negotiator and professional speaker featured in Time, The Economist, and Playboy, the latter having referred to him as “the world’s best negotiator.” During the Carter and Reagan administrations, Cohen served as a negotiation adviser, coaching the United States through the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis and the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
How to Craft a Win-Win Negotiation
Many people think of negotiation as a ruthless showdown between competitors, but it doesn’t always have to be this way. Cohen asserts that the most productive negotiations are win-win, in which two parties work together to find a creative solution that’s better than what either would have come up with had they simply stated a list of demands. People are rarely fully aware of everything they want or of everything the other party is able to give them. In the process of negotiating terms and talking over various possibilities, both parties discover that they each have more to offer each other than they realize.
For example, imagine the owner of a multi-industry conglomerate wants to acquire a newsworthy 3D printing startup. However, the CEO of the printing firm refuses, wanting to retain as much control over their company as possible. Although this seems to be an impasse, the two parties agree to meet for a negotiation. Over the course of their discussion, the two executives discover that the conglomerate CEO foresees rapid growth in the 3D printer industry and wants to profit from this prediction. The 3D printing CEO wants to make sure they can continue pursuing their cutting-edge research and worries that new owners wouldn’t prioritize that mission.
This new understanding of each other’s goals allows the two executives to find a mutually beneficial solution: The 3D printing CEO accepts a sizable investment that allows the conglomerate CEO to get a slice of any future profits, while helping fund the printing firm’s current research goals.
Now that we’ve explained how win-win negotiation works, here are a few tips on how to conduct one successfully.
Tip #1: Establish the Common Goal of Fulfilling Everyone’s Desires
Cohen states that the first step in a win-win negotiation is to establish a common goal: Announce to the person you’re negotiating with that you want to find a solution that satisfies everyone’s desires. Then, get them to commit to seeking the same goal. This way, once you get into negotiation, both parties will actively search for win-win solutions.
If you fail to establish this common goal, the other negotiator will focus the conversation on whether you’ll give in to their various demands. This creates an unfriendly atmosphere that makes it much more difficult to brainstorm mutually beneficial solutions.
Tip #2: Build a Trusting Relationship
The most effective win-win negotiations are the result of an ongoing trusting relationship, argues Cohen. If two people have helped each other find mutually beneficial solutions in the past, they’ll trust that the other person isn’t trying to take advantage of them. Instead of hiding information that could be used against them, they’ll share everything relevant to the situation. This absolute transparency empowers them to work together to come up with the ideal solution for everyone.
To get someone to trust you, demonstrate your willingness to seek mutually beneficial solutions: Strive to see every situation from the other person’s perspective, and express genuine concern for their needs. Cohen recommends getting to know the other party on a personal level if possible.
Tip #3: Make Negotiation Pleasant
Win-win negotiation is about finding a solution that satisfies the desires of both parties. One way you can do this without making any sacrifices or concessions is by giving the other party the kind of negotiation they want. According to Cohen, if you make the negotiation process pleasant for the other party, they’ll be more willing to help you fulfill your desires.
Cohen notes that not everybody’s desires are the same: Get to know what kind of person the other negotiator is and tailor the negotiation to their specific needs. Most people want to be treated with kindness, respect, and empathy in negotiation. This is another reason it’s important to be friendly, even if the other party is outright hostile. However, for some people, the act of driving a hard bargain is what makes negotiation enjoyable. To satisfy them, you may need to give them the chance to haggle.
How to Win at Negotiation
Cohen contends that sometimes, it won’t be possible to craft a win-win negotiation. Some people aren’t interested in building trusting relationships: They want to be the only ones who win in a negotiation. They view any concession they can get from you as a victory and anything they must give up as a loss. They interpret win-win negotiation tactics (such as trusting them enough to share information) as a sign of weakness and will respond by trying even harder to take advantage of you.
When you’re negotiating with people who stubbornly cling to this win-lose mindset, you may have no choice but to try to beat them at their own game. To do this, you must learn strategies and psychological tricks that allow you to get as much from the other negotiator as you can while conceding as little as possible.
Cohen argues that even if you morally object to practicing some of these techniques, learning about them will help protect you against them. When you’re aware of the tricks an opposing negotiator is trying to pull on you, you’ll be able to avoid being swindled.
Here are several tips on how to win at competitive negotiation.
Tip #1: Project Confidence
Cohen explains that the person who has more power in a given negotiation always wins. Power, however, is situational: If someone needs you to accomplish a specific goal, you have power over them in that situation. For this reason, you can win any negotiation by convincing the other party that they need you to fulfill their desires more than you need them to fulfill yours.
The key to conveying your power in negotiation is projecting confidence, says Cohen. To estimate how much power you have in a given situation, people largely rely on their instinctual impressions of how you look and behave. The more confident you are, the more power other people will believe you have, and the more they’ll believe they need to concede for you to give them what they want.
To cultivate feelings of confidence, you must truly believe that you don’t need the other negotiator as much as they need you, according to Cohen. To do this, you have to recognize that you have a surplus of other options available—alternative ways of fulfilling your desires to use if the other negotiator offers you a bad deal. Boost your confidence before entering any negotiation by surveying the options at your disposal, and avoid negotiation at all costs if you don’t have a wide array of other options.
For instance, if you’re about to negotiate the cost of renovations to your house with a local contractor, you should refresh your memory of the other options at your disposal: You could ask your friends for referrals to other contractors, delay the renovations for several months, or even do some of the necessary labor yourself. Knowing that the contractor needs your business more than you need their labor, you can project the confidence necessary to get a better deal.
Tip #2: Inflate Your Value, Deflate Their Value
It doesn’t matter how much value each negotiating party has to offer. What matters is how much each side believes the offerings are worth, says Cohen. Thus, you can get a better deal if you can convince the other negotiator that what you’re offering is worth more than it really is, or that what their offering is worth less than it is.
For instance, imagine you own a fast-food franchise location and want to sell it to a local entrepreneur. You could inflate your restaurant’s value by giving away free desserts to customers on the day you give the potential buyer a tour, so the restaurant is busier than it typically is. Likewise, the purchasing entrepreneur could get a better price by deflating your restaurant’s value—for instance, by purchasing online bots to publish negative reviews on your Yelp page.
One way to inflate your offering’s value is by generating competition for it. Cohen suggests that if you have something truly valuable to sell, entertain as many buyers as possible, in a way that’s obvious to everyone you negotiate with. If the other negotiator sees that many people want what you have, it’ll seem more valuable and they’ll give you more for it. Don’t just give one potential buyer a tour of your restaurant—lead a whole tour group of potential buyers.
Tip #3: Discover Your Opponent’s Negotiation Ceiling (and Hide Yours)
Cohen explains that in win-lose negotiation, each party has a negotiation ceiling: the maximum amount they’re willing to sacrifice in exchange for what they want without abandoning the deal. The goal is to discover the other party’s true ceiling so you can get them to concede everything they’re willing to part with—while hiding your true ceiling so they can’t do the same to you.
Generally, any information about either party is a clue—big or small—about their negotiation ceiling. Thus, win-lose negotiators try to reveal as little as possible about themselves and the situation they’re in. For example, if you’re looking to sell a fast-food franchise location, you would want to hide the fact that you’re moving into a more affordable house because you can’t pay your mortgage. If you even make an offhand comment about how your kids are about to go to college, it could hint to opposing negotiators that you’re strapped for cash.
To maintain an information advantage, Cohen recommends making the other party do as much of the talking as possible.
Tip #4: Leverage Sunk Cost
According to Cohen, another reason it helps to be patient in negotiation is that the more time the other negotiator spends trying to make a deal with you, the less likely they are to walk away. Cohen explains that when someone has already spent a considerable amount of time and energy talking with you, failing to make a deal would mean they wasted it all. To avoid the pain of wasting this sunk cost, most negotiators will accept a lesser deal instead of walking. Thus, the longer you can extend the negotiation process, the better chance you have of getting a good deal.
Getting the other party to sink time and energy into a negotiation unlocks some new tactics for getting what you want, says Cohen: First, you can bring the negotiation process to a swift close by giving them an ultimatum. Make a single demand, and let the other party know that you’re going to walk away if they don’t give it to you. If the ultimatum is reasonable enough and the other side’s sunk cost is great enough, they’ll accept.
Second, you can use the nibble: Cohen explains that this is when you throw in another small demand at the last second of the negotiation process—often, after the main deal has already been agreed upon by both sides. If the other party has a large sunk cost, they’re likely to give in. For example, if you’re buying an expensive custom-built computer, you could wait until the seller is finished building it, then ask for a free keyboard and mouse the day you go and pick it up. Since they’ve spent so much time and money building the computer for you, they’ll likely give in to this little extra demand rather than scrap the deal.
Tip #5: Manipulate Their Emotions
Last, Cohen notes that negotiators in the win-lose mindset can profit from emotional manipulation. That is, you do anything you can to evoke a specific emotional reaction from the other party that will help you get your way.
Often, this strategy involves playing up emotions you don’t really feel or outright lying to the other negotiator. For instance, if your roof gets destroyed by a falling tree and the insurance adjuster isn’t giving you a high enough settlement, you could start crying fake tears to get them to offer more money.
Another popular form of emotional manipulation is the implied threat—to make the other party give in to your demands out of fear that you’ll somehow hurt them. According to Cohen, if you keep your threat implied and vague rather than specific, your opponent will imagine that you’re willing and capable of doing much worse to them than you really are.
