Product Description

Learn all you need to know about negotiating from preparing your argument and briefing a team to establishing the right atmosphere and closing a deal. "Negotiating Skills" not only shows you how to start from a strong position and find common ground with other people but also provides practical techniques for you to use when talking and bargaining. Power tips help you to handle real-life situations and develop first-class negotiating skills that will dramatically improve results and relationships. This innovative series covers a wide range of management and personal development topics. Each title is a comprehensive yet compact source of easy reference for all those in or aspiring to a position of responsibility with a focus on developing and enhancing professional management practice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1332744 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 72 pages

Amazon.com Review
It's true that negotiating skills are learned over a lifetime, but this itty-bitty handbook aims to distill a lifetime's worth of deal-making lessons into 72 snazzily laid-out pages... and often even succeeds. Neatly divided into the three phases of a negotiation--preparation, conducting, and closing--it covers all aspects of the bargaining process, including identifying your own objectives and assessing the opposition's, choosing a strategy and creating the right atmosphere, making and/or responding to a proposal, strengthening your position while weakening the other party's (nicely, of course), and moving to a close, handling a breakdown in progress, and even using a mediator or going to arbitration if you have to. On every page, boxed tips, checklists, flow charts, and mini case studies walk you through the entire process. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do you just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking, and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy

About the Author
Tim Hindle is founder of the London-based business language consultancy, Working Words, which helps international companies to compose material in English and communicate their messages clearly to their intended audiences. A regular business writer, Tim Hindle has been a contributor to The Economist since 1979 and was editor of EuroBusiness from 1994 to 1999. As editorial consultant and author, he has produced a number of titles including Pocket Manager, Pocket MBA and Pocket Finance, and a biography of Asil Nadir, The Sultan of Berkeley Square.

Customer Reviews

Getting started in the negotiating world
Tim Hindle's book is an easy-to-use introduction to negotiating. This is the first book on negotiating that I've read. It is divided into three main chapters: Preparing, Conducting and Closing. It has a common sense approach and offers lots of tips including countering tactics for leading questions, intimidation, bluffing, threats or insults. It contains graphics and photographs in a clean design that help convey the ideas. I found the book was written for high level business negotiators, but most of the tips would be helpful in dealing with car dealers, gas stations, banks, stores, utility companies, or even a significant other. The book is a handy size for tucking away and reading a few pages at a time. It was an easy read.

For managers, but could be useful for anyone to read...
Tim Hindle is the founder of Working Words, a consulting firm specializing in business communications. He knows what it takes to negotiate and then close a deal. Negotiating Skills shows you how to start from a strong position and then find common ground. It also provides practical techniques to use when bargaining. The power tips included are helpful. You will find tips like:

"Do not concede ground unless you receive something in return." -pg. 49 "Be flexible-it is a sign of strength, not of weakness." -pg. 11

If you have been in a car accident and can't solve the case with your insurance company, you might want to look at the Arbitration section. If you need a third party, a mediator could also be useful. A section on body language enables you to determine the attitude of the person you are negotiating with.

A nice handy guide which you could give out to all the managers in your company. It would also be a nice gift for anyone who makes proposals to obtain new business. You will feel pretty confident after reading this book.

~The Rebecca Review

Compact And Useful Negotiation Guide
This book is a very good introduction to negotiating. Though it is geared to business to business negotiations, it contains many useful tenants valuable in any type of negotiation, including home and car purchases, and to a limited extent job offers.

I found many of the important bullet points to be especially succinct and well written, and recommend this guide for them alone. The text is generally well illustrated, though a few of the diagrams are a bit superfluous and less than helpful.

This is an excellent compact guide and is handy as either an introduction or a refresher course on negotiating. I recommend it along with the rest of the series.