Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In

by Roger Fisher

If you cannot agree on substance, perhaps you can agree on procedure.

Look for items that are of low cost to you and high benefit to them, and vice versa.

At the least, you will usually prevail on the question of process; you can usually shift the process from positional bargaining to a search for objective criteria. In this sense principled negotiation is a dominant strategy over positional bargaining.

Research suggests that people pay closer attention to content in the absence of other interpersonal information, and that strong arguments may have more effect by email than face-to-face.