The Art of Negotiating the Best Deal

Until this course, I generally shunned studying the topic of negotiation, assuming it was mainly about crass ways to manipulate people in order to get what you want. But we all routinely need to negotiate things big and small, and I generally trust the quality of courses from The Teaching Company, so I figured I'd try to be open minded and give this course a try.I'm very glad I did! Having taught negotiation for a couple of decades, and gained plenty of firsthand negotiation experience himself, Seth Freeman does a great job. He gives us both academic rigor and practical methods, illustrates points with many examples, and is a very clear and engaging communicator. Most importantly, Freeman shows that negotiation isn't (or shouldn't be) about trying to take advantage of people, it's fundamentally about more effectively collaborating with people so that everyone is better off.My summary of the main points:(1) Do sufficient inquiry and research to understand your goals, the other party's goals, the potential influence and roles of parties outside the negotiation, the factual context of the negotiation (economic and market conditions, laws and regulations, technologies, etc.), and cultural factors. Make the first offer only if you have good defensible information on which to base it, otherwise let the other party make the first offer.(2) Approach negotiations with an attitude of confidence, humility, fairness, and respect. Try to negotiate real time and face to face, ask questions, be a good listener, tell stories, build rapport, foster mutual trust (eg, show some vulnerability), expect give and take, enable the other party to save face, and don't be in a hurry to get to the 'bottom line'. Be 'hard on the problem, easy on the person'. And if faced with an especially high stakes negotiation and/or difficult negotiating partner, do rehearsals to prepare for the negotiation.(3) Negotiate deals as packages rather than piecemeal issues, and be creative in identifying options which best meet the goals of both parties (these options may be quite different from anything either party initially envisioned). And when appropriate, broaden your perspective to negotiating a set of related deals with various parties, in a sequence such that each deal builds on the previous ones.(4) Go into negotiations knowing what your fallback options are if an agreement can't be reached. If agreement does appear to be nearly reached, carefully scrutinize the terms to make sure there are no pitfalls before accepting the deal. And if it truly appears that an agreement acceptable to you (better than your fallback options) can't be reached, courteously end the negotiation rather than agreeing to an unacceptable offer (the other party may come back later with a better offer).I listened to the audio version of the course, which works well. However, in order to share this course with my family and others, I've also ordered the DVD version.

A huge audiobook packed with tons of useful information, tips, tricks, ideas. I'm sure if I could remember and apply even half of the ideas I'd end up being a far better negotiator.This will likely need another listen or maybe several re-listens.

A person might think this if for business people learning how to manipulate others into buying their product. They would be wrong. Actually this course has benefits for people of all walks of life. Everyone negotiates. We have to. It is part of life. We negotiate our friendships, our marriages, our relationships as employers and as employees. We negotiate our salaries, our mortgages, how much we pay for all sorts of products. And this course is about how to negotiate effectively and fairly. It is good for consumers in that it alerts you to bullish negotiating tactics that strong arm you into buying things you don’t need or paying too much. It also teaches you why it is not best to negotiate in such a way that you get all you possibly could in a deal. It teaches you the dangers of developing a reputation of being greedy, and the benefits of developing a reputation for being generous and fair.Some of the better things I have learned is thinking through your BATNA, or best alternatives. How to research this and figure out what you can be happy doing without. The importance of third party objective estimates of what a thing is worth, like blue book values when buying or selling a car. Some of the stuff may be things you more or less knew before, but hearing the discussion concerning the phenomena gets you thinking about it in different way, and not only knowing it but understanding it.

Best audio book for small and big negotiations