Product Description

Communicate Your Way to Success with Cheetah Negotiations! Get what you want, FAST! Become a Cheetah Negotiator. Project Managers spend their days in continual negotiations - project team members, project sponsors, project customers, and suppliers. You will learn how you can get what you not only want, but truly deserve with this step by step method for setting up and conducting successful negotiations focused on mutual gain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #932909 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-01
• Released on: 2005-03-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 201 pages

From the Inside Flap
About Cheetah Learning

Headquartered in Carson City, Nevada, Cheetah Learning has training centers around the world and is a proven global leader in Project Management Performance Improvement and Project Manager Professional Development. Cheetah was founded in 1999 with the commitment to enable people to achieve significant bottom line improvements, FAST.

Cheetah Learning created the patent-pending Accelerated Exam Prep methodology that is the basis of our highly successful Cheetah Exam Prep™ for the PMP® course, which has benefited thousands of Project Managers.From negotiations to Project Management leadership, our proven accelerated learning techniques empower people and the organizations they serve to achieve superior results, FAST. A PMI® Registered Educational Provider and an authorized IACET Training provider, we deliver courses at our training facilities, at client locations, and online.

From the Back Cover
You don't need to wait years to pursue your goals or to get what you want.

You can achieve your goals faster than you've ever imagined.

You can get what you want, fast.

Become a Cheetah Negotiator! We'll teach you to...

• Assess personality types and their effect on negotiations • Discover your innate strengths and personal challenges for negotiating in professional and personal situations • Clarify what you want and gather clues about what the other party wants • Recognize common negotiation traps and counteract them using nonviolent communication tactics • Prepare for negotiation meetings and set the table for success • Talk money and finalize a mutually beneficial contract

Cheetah Negotiations is a way for you to prepare for the many styles of negotiations you encounter daily. The process ensures you negotiate with other people fairly and effectively — in a way that helps you develop long-term, growing relationships.

Cheetah Learning is a proven global leader in using accelerated learning techniques for Project Manager Professional Development.

About the Author
Michelle LaBrosse has a full-figure personality. She is a rocket scientist — yes, you read that right — a bona fide rocket scientist. When she woke up and realized she no longer enjoyed being a rocket scientist but instead had a deep and genuine love of learning (and laughing), she set out on a new path — to bring the love and joy of learning to professionals. Michelle found that most traditional educational environments sucked the life force out of people’s desire to learn — especially her own. Being into research (reference her early career as a rocket scientist), she began to study how to make learning faster, easier, and a lot more fun.

Using current methods on accelerated learning, project management, and negotiations, LaBrosse has grown her company, Cheetah Learning, into the profitable, market leader in Project Management training in four years. So how did Michelle generate this level of success so quickly in a market in recession? Well, it certainly did not come from behaving the way "good girls" do. Says LaBrosse: "We’re easy, we’re fun, and we’re fast." Michelle has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Syracuse University, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Dayton, and is currently enrolled in Harvard Business School’s three-year Owner President Management program for entrepreneurs. Michelle was profiled in the book, Rich Dad’s Success Stories, by Robert Kiyosaki and is a member of the Women President’s Organization.

Linda Lansky is an integral part of the Cheetah Learning Team. She is a certified coach for the Cheetah Exam Prep for the PMP. Linda’s project management experience comes from over twenty years in Information Technology & Quality Management in the semiconductor industry. Linda is a member of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), PMI and received her training certificate from Langevin Learning Services. Linda is the lead designer on the creative collaboration team for the development of new Cheetah Learning courses. Back at her ranch in northern California, Linda enjoys her horses, cattle, dogs, family, and a home vineyard and fledgling winery — not necessarily in that order.

Customer Reviews

Great reference
Michelle's book on negotiation techniques is well worth the money. I bought two copies and sent one to my son in Law School and the other to a friend. For those people seeking their Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, Cheetah is the BEST place to take the exam prep class. I did and passed the first time. Read the book and apply her proven techniques for winning your own negotiation sessions.

Fresh approach to project negotiations
This book is a very good complement to other books covering negotiations in general. It covers negotiations soft skills, including personality assessments. It focuses on projects, but can be used in other contexts. There are many useful tools and templates.

Spock Would Love This
Cheetah Negotiations: How to Get What You Want, Fast by Michelle LaBrosse, PMP and Linda Lansky, PMP. MAKLAF Press LLC, Carson City, NV, 2005 ISBN: 0-9761749-2-8.

Spock, Sarek, Tapal and Tuvok would all agree, as would all Trekkies everywhere, that this book is the essence of logic. Its message is simple and clear and it is presented in a manner which is equally simple and clear. Although authors LaBrosse and Lanksy don't anywhere specifically say it in these words, after reading their little (169 pages) book, one is certainly left with the impression that there is little that is magic or hidden in the fine art of successful negotiations.

This book presents a comprehensive look at negotiating and is equally useful, whether you are entering negotiations on a multi-million dollar development contract, a pay raise with your boss, a difficult divorce, or your child's latest gift request list. How can it do that? By keeping things simple. The authors break negotiating down into four basic elements and then carefully walk you through each one of them, explaining it, showing you how to do it, providing tools, techniques and templates for you to use, giving you exercises to practice practical application, and throwing in some tips, hints and examples to guide you.

They begin at the beginning, a very good place to start. The first element is knowing who you are and knowing with whom you are negotiating. The authors present a very welcome and much overdue simplified explanation of the Myers-Briggs personality types. Finally, not only is Myers-Briggs understandable, but you can see its practical and useful application. Know your own personality type, know the other guy's or gal's personality type, and you will then have a pretty good idea about how your personalities will interact. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that knowing in advance how the other side is likely to react gives you a bit of an edge. Add in some techniques for speed-reading the personality types with whom you're dealing and, therefore, how to best present certain issues to them so you can manage their reactions, and you begin to appreciate that this book presents some pretty powerful and useful techniques.

Next they turn to the heart of the matter: what do you want, what do the other guys/gals want, and how to get prepared for the actual negotiations. Naturally, it is not enough to simply know what you want, you must know what it is you absolutely cannot surrender. What is your GUAL (Get Up And Leave) point? What is your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)? What is the ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement)? What is the impact of the importance of your relationship with the other party? All these are explored and explained. In addition, they also take you through preparing for negotiations, the importance of physical exercise, stretching and breathing, techniques for stress relief, roles to play during negotiations and when (e.g., good cop, bad cop), and even the physical aspects of the negotiating/meeting room environment.

The third element focuses on the actual negotiations themselves. The authors take you through and explain the five "scenes" that are common to every negotiation: planning, introduction, bargaining, agreement and closure. Project Management Professionals (PMPs) will easily and intuitively recognize and identify with these. This section of the book is probably the most tip-filled area, covering such techniques as when and how to use, and the impact of, permission-based questions, building commitment, consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, likeability, scarcity as well as handling and countermeasures for a whole array of other negotiation tactics (e.g., threats, insults, bluffing, intimidation, emotional appeals, lying, extreme demands, etc.). This is a very useful section all by itself.

The final element is putting it all together. It is here that money issues, and strategies for dealing with them, are addressed. Also covered is the importance of papering and codifying the agreement, including what must be included in the agreement as a minimum to make it binding and enforceable (sort of Introduction to Contracts 101). It closes with taking you through an entire negotiation process from start to finish, using all of the tools and techniques and templates that have been introduced in the book, and then does it again by allowing you to follow a sample or case study negotiation process applying all of the book's tools, techniques and templates.

It is rather amazing that the authors have been able to cram such a comprehensive overview of the negotiating process, as well as insights, tips, hints and templates, tools and techniques, into what is a relatively short book. The logic of the approach and presentation is impressive. All project management staff, whether negotiating contracts with suppliers, staff availability with functional authorities, scope and budget changes with sponsors, etc., would benefit from reading and applying the lessons learned from this book. Buy it and keep it handy in your library.

Reviewed by Frank Townson, PMP
PMI-OVOC Chapter