I bought my first car in 1987. It was the shortest negotiation in my life. My dad offered to sell me his 1981 Datsun 280ZX for its “Blue Book” value, $5,500. I said, “OK.” End of negotiation. “Wait a second,” some of you might say. “Didn’t you once write that first...
We needed some extra tile to fully renovate the kitchen in our new vacation home, so we asked the seller about it, and he offered to sell it for around $800. After doing some Internet research and asking the opinion of a flooring shop owner, I told the seller a...
President Barack Obama said on Feb. 9, “I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts (in the stimulus bill), knowing that I was going to want some, and then let (the Republicans) take credit for all of them. And maybe that’s the lesson...
“He doesn’t get it. He believes his business is worth $50 million when it’s highly unlikely any buyer will pay more than $25 million based on his financials. How can I help him reset his expectations without seeming too negative regarding the sale of a business he...
“It’s your turn,” he said. “I conceded on the close date and it’s time for you to move and extend the royalty term.” This “reciprocity” standard – it is “fair and reasonable” for you to do this for me because I did something like this for you in the past – can be...
I recently reached a dead-end in a negotiation largely involving one major price issue. I didn’t want to come down – and my counterpart wouldn’t go up. And I knew he had reached his end point, because he had already gone back to his boss twice for more, and we had a...
Filmmaker and Phoenix native Steven Spielberg was 13 when, as he tells it, a “local bully gave me nothing but grief all year long. He would knock me down on the grass, or hold my head in the drinking fountain, or push my face in the dirt and give me bloody noses when...
“How much authority should we give our front-line negotiators,” I was recently asked. “They constantly ask for more, but the more we give the more they use. On the other hand, they aren’t taken seriously if we don’t give them enough.” This is a challenging strategic...
You’re the CEO of a company employing a quarter of the city’s employees. Your company provides a significant portion of the city’s tax revenue but neither you nor your company is active in the community’s political affairs. Recently, you decided to expand your...
