Essential Managers: Negotiating Skills

by Tim Hindle

You can't always get what you want -- for yourself or your business -- but this book will help you negotiate the best deal possible! Learn all you need to know about negotiating, from preparing your argument and briefing a team to establishing the right atmosphere and closing a deal. Negotiating Skills shows how to start from a strong position and find a common ground with other people, and it also provides practical techniques to use when talking and bargaining. Power tips help you handle real-life situations and develop first-class negotiating skills that will dramatically improve results and relationships. The Essential Manager have sold more than 1.9 million copies worldwide! Experienced and novice managers alike can benefit from these compact guides that slip easily into a briefcase or a portfolio. The topics are relevant to every work environment, from large corporations to small businesses. Concise treatments of dozens of business techniques, skills, methods, and problems are presented with hundreds of photos, charts, and diagrams. It is the most exciting and accessible approach to business and self-improvement available.

Genres: Business

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 1999

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some books you read which do little for you. Part of this is down to the book itself but the main part is down to where the reader's interest lies. So, the author does a commendable job in his sections on preparing for / conducting and closing negotiation. But this is not an areas I have had little involvement in or likely involvement in the future. You might say negotiating salary and benefits may have been carried out because of my skills in negotiating but I think came down more to desire than strategy. Nevertheless, what the author shares is useful knowledge and may come handy in the future.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

DK is a wonderful publisher, from their children's series on. This is another entry, in an "Essential Managers" series. The focus here? Negotiating skills. The book has scarcely 69 pages of text, so this cannot provide detailed consideration to negotiating.

But it does a nice job as a thumbnail sketch on the subject. It is also a small enough volume that one can take this anywhere (a truly portable book!). The book defines its aim thus (Page 5): "Negotiation involved parties who each have something that the other wants, reaching an agreement to exchange through a process of bargaining. 'Negotiating Skills' explains this principle of exchange and gives you the confidence and skill to conduct negotiations and achieve a mutually acceptable outcome." The book is organized around three stages of a negotiating process--Preparing for a negotiation, Conducting a negotiation, and Closing a negotiation.

Preparing for a negotiation? Sections address the concept of exchange, identifying one's objectives, assessing the person with whom you are negotiating, choosing a strategy (One lesson: Keep strategy simple and flexible), developing an agenda (sounds simple enough, but an agenda has real value in any decision making process), and even seating plans. Actually conducting negotiation? How do you make a proposal? How to you respond to the other party's proposal? How can reading body language help? How can you strengthen your position and weaken your "adversary's"? Finally--closing the deal. Subjects addressed include handling breakdowns, using a mediator or going to arbitration.

Again, very brief. If you want a detailed discussion, this volume won't work for you. However, if you want a brief "common sense" introduction, this would be useful.