Product Description

Think win-win is the best way to make the deal? Think again. It’s the worst possible way to get the best deal. This is the dirty little secret of corporate America.

For years now, win-win has been the paradigm for business negotiation—the “fair” way for all concerned. But don’t believe it. Today, win-win is just the seductive mantra used by the toughest negotiators to get the other side to compromise unnecessarily, early, and often. Have you ever heard someone on the other side of the table say, “Let’s team up on this, partner”? It all sounds so good, but these negotiators take their naive “partners” to the cleaners, deal after deal. Start with No shows you how they accomplish this. It shows you how such negotiations end up as win-lose. It exposes the scam for what it really is. And it guarantees that you’ll never be a victim again.

Win-win plays to your emotions. It takes advantage of your instinct and desire to make the deal. Start with No teaches you how to understand and control these emotions. It teaches you how to ignore the siren call of the final result, which you can’t really control, and how to focus instead on the activities and behavior that you can and must control in order to negotiate with the pros.

Start with No introduces a system of decision-based negotiation. Never again will you be out there on a wing and a prayer. Never again will you feel out of control. Never again will you compromise unnecessarily. Never again will you lose a negotiation.
The best negotiators:
* aren’t interested in “yes”—they prefer “no”
* never, ever rush to close, but always let the other side feel comfortable and secure
* are never needy; they take advantage of the other party’s neediness
* create a “blank slate” to ensure they ask questions and listen to the answers, to make sure they have no assumptions and expectations
* always have a mission and purpose that guides their decisions
* don’t send so much as an e-mail without an agenda for what they want to accomplish
* know the four “budgets” for themselves and for the other side: time, energy, money, and emotion
* never waste time with people who don’t really make the decision

Start with No offers a contrarian, counterintuitive system for negotiating any kind of deal in any kind of situation—the purchase of a new house, a multimillion-dollar business deal, or where to take the kids for dinner. It is full of dozens of business as well as personal stories illustrating each point of the system. It will change your life as a negotiator. If you put to good use the principles and practices revealed here, you will become an immeasurably better negotiator.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25001 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-15
• Released on: 2002-07-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
Start with No, by negotiation coach Jim Camp, is a tenaciously contrarian guide to the art and science of give-and-take that proposes a viable alternative for today's prevailing "win-win" approach. Beginning with an inverse premise--that having the right to say "no" and veto any agreement is actually the key to favorably concluding the various deals and transactions we face every day--Camp's procedure counters the common emotion-based urge to compromise ("a defeatist mind-set from the first handshake") with a series of less intuitive decision-oriented actions. "My system teaches you how to control what you can control in a negotiation," Camp writes. "When you do so, you can and will succeed (understanding that success sometimes means walking away with a polite good-bye)." Emphasizing the importance of this underlying attitude, his method combines related steps like defining a mission, understanding the adversary, assessing fiscal and emotional investments, preparing an agenda, and tracking behavior. Each is fully explained, as are associated skills such as how to structure a question to elicit a truly helpful response (e.g., "What else do you need?" vs. "Is there anything else you need?"). Despite its unorthodox manner, if diligently applied, the route that Camp details here may indeed produce winning results. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
Negotiation coach Camp has been under the radar since 1989, helping clients reach deals at Motorola, Merrill Lynch and IBM. He now brings his advice to the general public. Asserting that the term "win-win" has become a clich‚, he suggests readers enter into every negotiation knowing that if the offer doesn't meet their expectations, they should walk away. He also advocates leaving emotions out of negotiations. "Whether we like it or not, it really is a jungle out there in the world of business, and it's crawling with predators." Camp's solid advice will help people control negotiations and prepare themselves for anything.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Claiming to be a negotiating coach and not a consultant, Camp has developed a system of negotiating that rejects the common concept of "win-win" and that urges people to get to an agreement as quickly as possible by any means, which in the author's view usually results in "win-lose." We learn that we cannot control the other party in the negotiations but can control and discipline our own actions and decisions. Concentrate not on winning but on the fundamentals of sound decision making. While his ideas are contrary to conventional negotiating wisdom, Camp counsels us to have a good, strong mission and purpose and to know the other party's real pain (why they are negotiating). Also, we learn to assess all the budgets involved, including our time and energy, money and emotional investment as well as our opponent's; to deal only with the real decision-maker; and to have a clear agenda for every contact. This is an excellent book with valuable insight. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A new way of negotating
This book truly opened my eyes to a new way of negotiating. It does require discipline, study, and practice to make it work and I'm willing to do it. It's well written, witty, and informative. Thanks, Jim Camp!

Just Say NO to any other negotiation book
This book teaches that there is no such thing as a win-win deal. Read this book before you dismiss this deeply entrenched assumption. A win-win is most often and win-settle, with you ending up on the short side of the stick. Buy any of Jim Camp's stuff. You will never be disappointed.

Its really a contrarian & counterintuitive approach
This is the first book that I studied on this topic - Negotiation. I wish I had known some of the techniques described in this book, long time back. All along, I have been focusing more on the "Win-Win" kind of negotiations. This book was an eye-opener for me. I liked the 33 rules in the last chapter. That gives a quick summary of the whole book.