rel="nofollow" href="#u9f6f3f69-9e20-580f-a728-e5a4816fe792">Part IV: Thirty Laws of Human Nature: Gambits, Moves and Countermoves: This section outlines specific techniques for manipulating human nature to serve your interests. Times change, empires rise and fall, but human nature and our biology remains the same. By no means is this list complete with all techniques in existence; it is, however a fundamental list of common techniques used by negotiators in the field every day.
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Part V: How To Negotiate By Reading Body Language: Learn how to read body language and 58 percent of all communication that is made nonverbally.
Part VI: Eight Elements Of Power And How To Increase Your Personal Power: This section focuses on increasing your leverage in any negotiation and combine types of power to your advantage.
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Part I:
Why We Must Study
Negotiation and Why We Don’t
Learn to Negotiate in School
“The whole concept of negotiating is intimidating to many people.”
—Leigh Steinberg
Reason To Study Negotiation #1: You Are Entitled To Nothing
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Reason To Study Negotiation #1:
You Are Entitled To Nothing
“In business and in life, you don’t get what you deserve;
you get what you can negotiate”
—Dr. Chester Karrass
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n post–World War II, America was left as the heavyweight champion of the world. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia, and many other countries were left in ruins from the bombs and destruction
of total war. America with her great factories, vast resources, technical know-how, and manpower became the only superpower left standing. Economically, post–World War II in the 1950s was boom time: amazing cars were built, beautiful homes were constructed, and the factories that were used to build war machines grew into great industrial companies like Boeing, General Motors, and Ford. These factories became the industrial base of the American economy and provided fantastic jobs, a stable economy, and a fantastic standard of living.
In the 1950s the man of the house worked hard and was the primary breadwinner in the home. One man in America could support a family, own a home, and own a car. In the 1960s, to stay competitive, the same man working for the same company had to work more hours to afford his lifestyle—family, home and car. In the 1970s, his wife had to take on some part-time work to maintain the same family, home, and car. In the 1980s the man and his wife both work full time to maintain the family, home, and car. In the 1990s both the man and his wife worked full time
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plus overtime to maintain the family, home, and car. In the 2000s up until 2008 with the American economic crash, the man and his wife both worked full time but still didn’t make enough money to support their family, home, and car so they subsidized their lifestyle on credit cards.
What happened over the sixty-year period from 1950 until 2010 in America?
The story I offer above is a very simplistic view of the average family in the United States, and it reflects two things (1) The competitive edge that America once had in the world by winning World War II, and (2) The entitlement mentality that has become standard in America from enjoying over fifty years of isolated propserity.
The truth is, the age of entitlement is over. No longer is America the best in the world by default when it comes to industry, medicine, or education. With the proliferation of smart phones and the Internet, the world has become very small and very flat. In the 1950s a business would compete with a few small local competitors, and a local man would competete with another local man for a job. We now live in a world where the business on the corner now competes with local business plus competition in China, India, Germany, the UK, and everywhere else in the world. The same goes for jobs: Where the man in the 1950s would compete with his local companions for a job in a factory or in an office, today that same man in America is competing with workers from all over the world in China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and many other economies.
Over the last sixty years the world has become ultra-competitive, and the world has shifted dramatically. The days of entitlement are over, and we no longer live in a world where local needs are met by local companies. There is no such thing as entitlement anymore because the competition is global, and the competition is fierce!
In the words of Dr Chester Karrass “In business and in life, you don’t get what you deserve; you get what you can negotiate.”
Over the sixty-year slide from being the “best in the world” to being just another player at the table, America gave ground through negotiations to Mexico, China, Germany, Japan, India, and other leading world pro-ducers. The government and big corporations gave away their factories,
Reason To Study Negotiation #1: You Are Entitled To Nothing
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work forces, intellectual property, and an unbeatable compettive edge in exchange for faster and bigger short-term profits.
To paraphrase a Native American proverb, Only when the last the last fish has been fished, the last tree cut down, and there is no more clean water to drink or air to breathe, will we realize that we cannot eat money.
The beauty in this Native American proverb is that money is derived from having true value—money itself is of no intrinsic value! The profits came out of the factory, the workforce, the intellectual property, the fish, and the trees. True value is what drives economic prosperity and not money unto itself. The competitive edge was bought and paid for over the years through blood, sweat, and tears. Sadly, what took generations to build was given away in moments through a bad negotiation. Through poor negotiations, bad leadership, and shortsightedness, we gave away our real value and took only money in return. In the words of Henry Ford, perhaps the greatest industrialist of all time, “A business that only produces money is a bad business.”
To be competitve in the next 10 years or next 100 years, we must focus on our true value of companies, our products, and our people. We may have the best or we may not have the best, but what is true in either case is that we must negotiate to protect what we have and procure what we don’t have. The world has many places to shop and buy, to sell or be sold, and these places are global and easily accessible. The only way to be competitive going forward is to negotiate: we must protect our true value and negotiate for the best price and positioning of our products and services on the world stage. The days of entitlement are over.
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