Herb Cohen - You Can Negotiate Anything

Herb Cohen

You Can
Negotiate
Anything

CITADEL PRESS

Kensington Publishing Corp

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Copyright 1980, 1994 Herb Cohen

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Citadel Press is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

First printing 1984

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-10: 0806508477

eISBN-13: 978-0-8065-4036-8

eISBN-10: 0-8065-4036-2

In memory of my father, Morris Cohen,

whose negotiating strategy was always to

give much more than he received. His life

spoke an eloquence of its own .

Our best thoughts come from others .

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Acknowledgments

This book, like any other, has a long ancestry. Many people and experiences have shaped my thinking over the years. In this respect, it is honest and accurate to say that work on this manuscript began a long time ago.

Despite this qualification, what follows is primarily the product of thirty years of direct involvement in thousands of negotiations. During this period, I have profited immensely from working with many distinguished thinkers and doers, in both government and the private sector.

However, I would be remiss if I did not specifically mention some individuals who contributed to my development. Though they cannot be held responsible for anything I have written, their names follow: Robert E. Alberts, Saul D. Alinsky, Renee Blumenthal, Harlan Cleveland, Michael Di Nunzio, Viktor E. Frankl, Jay Haley, Eric Hoffer, Eugene E. Jennings, George F. Kennan, Marya Mannes, Norman Podhoretz, Bill Rosen, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Sabath, Francis A. Sinatra, and of course, Esther Greenspun.

To others, who left their mark on these pages, I extend my appreciationspecifically George Elrick, Eleanor Harvie, Anita Lurie, and my best friend, Larry King. I am indebted to Carole Livingston for her advice and to my publisher, Lyle Stuart, for his unique blend of risk taking and patience.

Above all, I want to thank my life partner and wife, Ellen, for her involvement and support. This undertaking would not have even been contemplated, let alone completed, without her.

Before you go any further, let me elaborate upon three things that you will notice as you proceed.

First, I wish to assure the majority of my readers that I intend no slight in using the masculine tense predominantly. In writing this book, I spent endless hours trying to grapple with the semantic bias of the English language. My initial attempts to eliminate the pronoun problem resulted in prose that was either confusing or clumsy. Consequently, you may occasionally come across a bit of verbal sexism. When this occurs, accept my apology. Obviously, I do not believe that because Eve was fashioned from Adams rib, women are a side issue. In this age of emancipation, the fault lies primarily in our fatherlands mother tongue.

Second, I have chosen not to furnish any footnotes, references, or technical texts to support the concepts or ideas in this book. My purpose was not to produce a scholarly work for the specialist, but to write a practical and readable guide for laypeople. The thoughts and examples must make sense on their own. If they dont, even a divine footnote cannot provide salvation.

Third, I have painted with a broad brush, so you will not become mired in technicality or legalese. This was done to make it easy to understand the broad underlying concepts. Obviously, in some instances I have made suggestions tongue in cheek, in a figurative sensenot to be taken literally.

It is not my intention to prescribe behavior or tell you what you should want. Instead, my aim is to illuminate your reality and its opportunities. In doing so, I will point out thinking and behavior that may be limiting you, as well as options and alternatives from which you can choose. Each of you will then, within your own comfort and belief system, have a way of getting what you want, based on your unique needs.

H.C.

Northbrook, Illinois

September 1980

PART ONE

YES, YOU CAN

To get to the Promised Land you have to

negotiate your way through the wilderness .

Your real world is a giant negotiating table, and like it or not, youre a participant. You, as an individual, come into conflict with others: family members, sales clerks, competitors, or entities with impressive names like the Establishment or the power structure. How you handle these encounters can determine not only whether you prosper, but whether you can enjoy a full, pleasurable, satisfying life.

Negotiation is a field of knowledge and endeavor that focuses on gaining the favor of people from whom we want things. Its as simple as that.

What do we want?

We want all sorts of things: prestige, freedom, money, justice, status, love, security, and recognition. Some of us know better than others how to get what we want. You are about to become one of these.

Traditionally, rewards presumably go to those possessing the greatest talent, dedication, and education. But life has disillusioned those who hold that virtue and hard work will triumph in the end. The winners seem to be people who not only are competent, but also have the ability to negotiate their way to get what they want.

What is negotiation? It is the use of information and power to affect behavior within a web of tension. If you think about this broad definition, youll realize that you do, in fact, negotiate all the time both on your job and in your personal life.

With whom do you use information and power to affect behavior off the job? Husbands negotiate with wives, and wives with husbands. (I hope your marriage is a collaborative Win-Win negotiation.) You use information and power with your friends and relatives. Negotiations may occur with a traffic cop poised to write a ticket, with a store reluctant to accept your personal check, with a landlord who fails to provide essential services or wants to double your rent, with the professional who bills you for part of the cost of his or her education, with a car dealer who tries to pull a fast one, or with a hotel clerk who has no room, even though you have a guaranteed reservation. Some of the most frequent and frustrating negotiations occur within a family, where parents and children often unknowingly engage in this activity. Let me give you an example from my personal experience.

My wife and I have three children. At nine, our youngest son weighed fifty pounds, remarkably light for a child his age. Actually, he was an embarrassment to our entire family. I say that because my wife and I like to eat, and our two oldest children have voracious appetites. Then there was this third kid. People would ask us, Where did he come from? or Whose kid is that?