Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People Paperback – May 2, 2006

Most people can't negotiate at all. They think they can but that's because they haven't defined what it means to win in a negotation. For instance I have a friend who is an aggressive and competitive negotiator who almost always wants to win and for his opponent to lose (WIN - lose). His problem is that he almost always loses but doesn't consider it a loss since he moves the goal posts or he starts to play another game. He goes from a game of business negotiation, loses, then makes it a moral issue where he believes he wins. In fact he loses that too. To top it all off he is also very emotional so he argues from emotion, not logic.This book would help him. He could see that in most of his big moralistic wins he actually lost and lost big. He would have seen that he was in an inferior position when it came to leverage. Often times he had a lot to lose and a lot to win but since his goal was to win 100% he often lost that much. He came away with nothing. If armed with this book he would know better and would try to get as much as he could in his inferior position. He would be negotiating with logic and not emotion. He would define "winning" in a different way.However we need not dwell on my friend. Let me tell you what I took away from this book. I learned that figuring out a person's negotiating style and determining who had the leverage were the most important things. If I come across a compromising person with a lot of leverage I become an aggressive negotiator and I try to get as much as possible without losing the deal. If somebody is a weak negotiator I am ruthless regardless of their leverage. If I have all the leverage and nothing to lose I'll be aggressive again. I compromise when I know I have little to know leverage but I never give up that fact to the person I'm negotiating with. Lastly, I always try to make the deal be perceived as a win-win no matter what I was thinking. They get some of what they want but I got most of all I want.However, I have learned more about negotiating since this book so let me tell you that this is not the end-all, be-all of negotiating books. Read others, take seminars, research different approaches and you'll get better and better. This book gives an amazing foundation for you. It's taught in some law school negotiation classes and it's on a lot of business school class syllabi. It will frame your thinking on negotiations and teach you to be logical instead of emotional.The book is practical, logical and can be applied the same day you read it. If you read one business book this year read this one. The other is just noise (unless it's another classic in negotiating.)

What is common among Donald Trump, Benjamin Franklin, J. P. Morgan, Sony's Akio Morita, your boss, your customer and your daughter?They will all bargain with you for things they need and more importantly, for things you need from them.Rchard Shell's practical, easy to understand book lays the intriguing art of negotation bare. Unlike other "coaches", Shell invokes real examples of multi billion dollar deals to get his point across and this is what sets this book apart. You will not see just what needs to be done but also how to do it. Shell serves you the bargaining do's and don'ts hot from the negotiating tables of legendary leaders of our times as well of past. We hear how Benjamin Franklin and Mahatma Gandhi negotiated their way into the system that was unbiased and unjust and managed to use it to their advantage.We see how Sony became a household brand because Morita said no to a deal of a lifetime when he thought he wan't getting a good deal.Shell starts with fundamentals, 6 of them, to help you realize your style of bargaining and best strategy according to your style. He gets into leverage and strategy and then explains 4 principles that will guide you through the actual process of negotiation. He even provides a chart for you to maintain, if you think you are confused or nervous. With the tools available in this book, and a little practice, you can gain self confidence needed for winning on the negotiation table.

I use this book in a class on dispute resolution. Of course, I have to use Getting to Yes because everyone in the world, living or dead, says its the best book on negotiation. But like Getting to Yes, and virtually every book and video and lecture and paper, it promotes the notion of principled negotiation. Which is wonderful and ideal. A standard to strive for in every walk of life.But my real world experience tells me, at least in my field of Real Estate Development and Construction, that a lot of lying goes on. Bargaining for Advantage, doesn't promote it, but it talks about people who find lying, exaggerating, leaving things out etc. to be within the ethical boundaries, and, most certainly, legal ones. There are even published guidelines for lawyers to know how much they can lie and still be ethical. It is wrong to talk about puffing and fraud at the same time. Fraud is a crime. It can land someone in jail, and should. But when a general contractor tells a plumbing bidder he has a lower price, and doesn't, this is not a crime. It's nice to sit in an ivory tower and cry unethical every time a bottom line is revealed inaccurately but I will not send my students into the world without a true picture of what they will encounter. I have seen a lot of treachery in my career. Bid rigging, graft, extortion. It exists. If you offer 200 and they ask 700 for something worth 250, you set yourself up to be fleeced. Some idiot, probably a lawyer on the other side, will say let's split the difference. Will you end up paying 450, leaving 200 on the table. Better to go in at 100. When you sweeten your offer you jump to 120, not 200. There is a tango that goes on among even ethical people in negotiations. All the time. You have to learn it, even If you don't want to play. You have to be able to spot deception and deal with it. Bargaining for Advantage helps.

Un libro que nos ayuda a estructurar la negociación y nos da tácticas según la situación para salir mejor posicionados.