Synopsis
Examines the psychological factors involved in the negotiating process, and describes tactics for using them to one's advantage.
From the Author
Effective negotiation is 10% technique and 90% attitude.There are a lot of negotiation books on the market. I know because, as a professor who teaches negotiation at one of America's top business schools -- the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania -- I have read them almost all of them.
I wrote "Bargaining for Advantage" because the students and executives I teach are some of the best and most demanding in the world -- and they demanded something different. They wanted a negotiation book that was more intelligent than the usual "war story" book by a sports agent or hollywood celebrity. But they also wanted a book that was more realistic than the typical win-win, theoretical treatment that academics give the subject.
So I decided to write a book that would be about the way real people negotiate -- complete with the best that researchers could tell us about how to conduct and improve our practice. Then I worked hard to bring this material to life through vivid stories and examples given us by the world's best negotiators. I searched through the lives of history's most successful people -- people like Mahatma Gandhi, Benjamin Franklin, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Sony's Corporation's founder Akio Morita, and modern business moguls like Donald Trump and Ted Turner.
I then organized this material into a user-friendly set of lessons and concepts I call "information-based bargaining." This approach will teach you the way the best negotiators in the world actually practice their art -- and show you the scientific basis for how they do it.
At Wharton we believe that the best negotiators are those who learn to "be themselves" at the bargaining table. This means that effective negotiation is only about 10% tactics -- the rest comes from having the right attitude. My goal in "Bargaining for Advantage" is to instill in readers the confidence and positive attitude they need to open their own, personal negotiation "toolbox" and start achieving their goals -- at home, at work and at the bargaining table.