How to Negotiate Anything, Anywhere: Winning the Negotiating Game

by Herb Cohen

The ups and downs of negotiating can be challenging. Changes in the international scene—such as multi-cultural work teams and foreign outsourcing—place negotiating skills in high demand. Expert negotiator Herb Cohen views the world as a huge negotiating table, describing the art of compromise not as a competition but rather as the art of offering choices.

In How to Negotiate Anything, Anywhere, Cohen demonstrates—in an entertaining way—how to negotiate with savvy. Using humorous lessons and insightful anecdotes—and even employing apt imitations of famous personalities and personal acquaintances—Cohen communicates different negotiating strategies and how they can be used.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Audiobook

Audio Cassette

First published July 1, 2001

About the author

For more than three decades, Herb Cohen has been a practicing negotiator, intimately enmeshed in some of the world’s headline dramas from hostile takeovers to hostage negotiations. His clients have included business executives, entrepreneurs, sports and theatrical agents plus large corporations - as well as governmental agencies, such as the Department of State, FBI, CIA, The US Conference of Mayors and US Department of Justice.

Unlike some theorists, he was actively involved in the negotiations that settled the NFL players’ strike and the General Motors Chevy mobile litigation and also participated in the START Arms Control Negotiations with the Soviet Union.

He started formally teaching the subject of negotiations during a two week course for attorneys in 1963 sponsored by Allstate Insurance Company. It was then he first used the terms “Win-Win. Win-Lose, Lose-Lose”.

Herb Cohen’s analysis, insights and humorous view of many of these high-level happenings have appeared in many international publications, and he himself has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, People, The Economist, The New Yorker, Esquire, Readers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and even Playboy Magazine.

He is the author of You Can Negotiate Anything which was on the New York Times best-seller list for almost one year and has been translated into thirty languages. His latest book, Negotiate This! By Caring But Not T-H-A-T Much was published in mid-September 2003.

During the Cold War, Herb Cohen served with the U.S. Army, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment on the East-West Border in Bad Kissingen, Germany.

While attending university and law school he worked in many business and governmental organizations and ultimately became a faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Business. Since then he has lectured at many educational institutions and enterprises such as The Harvard Negotiating Project, Yale Law School, The Kellogg School, Wharton, the University of Wisconsin, the University of California-San Diego, McGill University, UBC and the Columbia and Chicago University School of Business.

Reviews

[Lars Brynjulv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Passe seg for å forhandle med meg om dagen

[A · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to have dinner with a friend's uncle who is from New York and thinks he knows everything, and he thinks you need to know what he knows, this book is for you.

Unlike the title, Mr. Cohen does not explain much how to negotiate things, but gives his thoughts on different topics. On childrearing: be flexible; buying a car: go to two dealerships after you have learned the real price of the car and options you want; negotiating with General Motors: refuse their first offer; and getting a raise: the boss will always tell you now is not a good time.

I would rate this lower for the information not included, but the entertainment value of hearing the author tell you at the beginning that he is not reading a script or book, but instead just telling you like it is, is worth hearing in his own voice. Do not read this; listen to it, and be drinking at the same time to make it more pleasurable.

[Arabesque · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t feel like the author really told me anything that worthwhile. There were a few good tips but overall, it did not seem to be about negotiating but rather advice on this and that. Disappointing.

[Ari Raliegh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely dated

[Tressa · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to Negotiate Anything, Anywhere was engaging, uplifting, and fun. Herb Cohen, the author, was a great narrator.

[Jaan Liitmäe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don`t waste time pls

[Andrea · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is another "book on tape" but I'm not sure you can even call it that. The author discloses at the beginning of the recording that he's not reading from a book at all.

After listening to the whole thing, I'm not sure if I feel like I have the ability to negotiate "anything." I'm pretty sure I got some good info on how to negotiate a car and a few other helpful techniques. But to negotiate anything like the cover claims - no. He recording ends with a self-help message of Make Obtainable Goals! Live Each Day Like Your Last! I found it to stray a bit from the intended subject matter.

The recording was only about an hour long. So it might be worth it to give it a listen on a few short car rides or your commute to work.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would read again.

[Aca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very short.

[Negotiation with children: "Tell me what you did wrong and you won't be punished, if I find out about it from someone else -- there will be consequences."]