The Five Tool Negotiator

Book excerpt: The Five Tool Negotiator stands apart in a category saturated with breezy, self-help volumes as a compulsively readable and highly researched must-have for anyone looking to improve their bargaining skills. Nationally renowned UCLA law professor Russell Korobkin distills insights drawn from his decades of studying and teaching the keys to successful negotiations into five simple-yet-sophisticated strategies: Bargaining Zone Analysis * Persuasion * Deal Design * Power * and Fairness Norms. Incorporating lively anecdotes and fascinating social science experiments, Korobkin brings to life concepts from the disparate fields of psychology, economics, and game theory. Designed for use at both the flea market and in the C-suite, this game-changing, universal approach provides a formula that a savvy reader can implement immediately: · Tool #1, Bargaining Zone Analysis, enables you to identify the range of agreements that will benefit both parties. · Tool #2, Persuasion, convinces your counterpart that reaching an agreement will benefit them more than they otherwise would have recognized, making them willing to give you more. · Tool #3, Deal Design, structures the agreement in ways that increase its value to both parties. · Tool #4, Power, forces your counterpart to agree to terms relatively more desirable to you. · Tool #5, Fairness Norms, enables you to seal a bargain that both parties can feel good about. From negotiating the price of a used car to closing a multimillion-dollar merger, Korobkin meticulously explains how to answer the following questions that arise in every negotiation: Should you make the first offer or let the other side go first? What makes some proposals seem more fair than others? How do you decide whether to accept an offer, reject it, or make a counteroffer? When should you propose an unusual agreement structure? What steps can you take to make a bluff believable? Readers will come away with a roadmap to becoming a truly complete negotiator, able to understand bargaining as both a strategic and social activity. Intuitively accessible and reassuringly persuasive, The Five Tool Negotiator promises to be a classic in the art of bargaining strategy.