Kennedy - Everything is negotiable: how to get the best deal every time

Whether you need to ask for a raise at work, request a better hotel room while youre on holiday, or even debate with your stubborn teenager at home, you can learn effective and powerful negotiation skills to help you get the best deal every time.

In this fully revised and updated fourth edition of the worldwide success Everything is Negotiable, expert negotiator Gavin Kennedy walks you through all the techniques and tricks you need to get the best deal in any situation. With chapters on such subjects as making your offer count, dealing with intimidation and getting it in writing, as well as self-assessment tests to help chart your progress, Everything is Negotiable is a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to improve their negotiation skills. Superbly practical and insightful, this essential guide will make sure you come out top in any negotiation.

or how to benchmark yourself

or why you lost your self-centred determination

or how to avoid a bargain

or how not to get the curtains pulled

or how to make them meet your budget

or how to avoid the risk of negotiators regret

or how to avoid a one-truck trap

or why suffer in silence?

or the myth of goodwill conceding

or how to surprise them into better deals

or how not to haggle

or how to toughen your resolve

or how to spot and steer clear of them

or how to make your offers count

or how to handle difficult negotiators

or why seven offers wont get a yes

or how to use leverage

or how not to have negotiating authority

or answering their WIIFM question

or how to spot the difference

or how to stop conceding

or how to shape up to better deals

or how to cope with threats

or how to make it hard to bargain

or how to resist intimidation

saluting negotiators everywhere

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781409020882

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Random House Business Books 2008

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Copyright Gavin Kennedy 2008

Gavin Kennedy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain in 1982 by Random House Business Books

Fourth edition first published in 2008 by Random House Business Books
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London SW1V 2SA

www.rbooks.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781847940018

For Patricia

The first edition of Everything is Negotiable originated in my at the bargaining table seminars for senior sales negotiators in the mainframe computer business through 1980-82.

Senior computer sales personnel were not an easy bunch to keep attentive. Many were already on 100,000 plus a year (one guy earned more than his MD!), mostly from selling expensive mainframe equipment and accessories to large private client firms and public sector organisations.

Those early attendees were part-time cynics to the last man about training more time wasting was the least offensive of what they would tell me as I greeted them at the door (most thanked me more kindly on the way out).

Women in top-scale computer sales were rare in those days, but when they began to turn up in numbers from the late 80s, they were more determined than their male colleagues, and regarded training as a weapon to overtake their male (and their female) rivals.

Learning quickly, as you do, I got them talking by handing out a few written questions and asking people randomly around the room what they would do in this or that situation, or what they thought of this or that piece of wisdom about sales negotiation. In an hour or two, there was no time for much else.

Attendees kept asking for copies of the questions, which got me thinking. Why not reach a larger market still by presenting the questions in book form? In 1981, my at the bargaining table seminar formed the basis of the manuscript for Everything is Negotiable, which I submitted to Century Hutchinsons enthusiastic commissioning editor, Vivien James. When Random House bought Business Books in 1982, it kept Everything is Negotiable on its list (thank you Mr Random) and it has gone through a second (1989), third (1997), and now a fourth edition.

But not everybody was enthusiastic about Everything is Negotiable in 1982. One reviewer in one business magazine predicted unkindly that it would be remaindered within months, a fate, happily, that did not come to pass! Random House brought out a paperback edition under its Arrow imprint and it has gone on from strength to strength.

Sadly, for him, the reviewers own magazine was itself remaindered before Everything is Negotiable reached its second edition, and I thank the tens of thousands of professional negotiators who purchased Everything is Negotiable for proving that one bad reviewer did not a prediction make.

For this fourth edition, I have reviewed everything in the previous three editions, plus adding selected new material from my negotiating experiences through 1972 to 2007 for many modest and major clients. I have also simplified the content by returning to the practical style of the first two editions, saying goodbye to the donkey sheep, fox and owl attributes, and to a few other well-loved characters too.

As always, you are invited to contact me with questions about the content of Everything is Negotiable via email (gavin@negweb.com). I shall endeavour to reply within a few days, if Im not too busy deal making.

Over the years, Everything is Negotiable generated many clients for Negotiate Ltd (now managed by Florence Kennedy). It is gratifying that these enquiries often came from readers, whose managers had given them a copy of Everything is Negotiable many years ago and, now that they were the bosses, wanted their own team introduced to the approach.

It is a fact, not an affected sense of public modesty, that I acknowledge that my writing has always been more than a solo effort. Clients provided me with many opportunities to work on their negotiating problems, some of which (heavily disguised) I draw upon.