When Negotiating, Take Advice From the Other Side But Do Not Offer Them Comments When we are negotiating, those who can offer the best evaluation of how we are doing may well be the people on the other side of the table, that is, those with whom we are negotiating. Rarely will they offer us tips on how we could… read more →
When a Deal is Not Possible Mobus Creative Negotiating teaches you how to size up the negotiating situation you are facing, because you should approach haggling with someone you will never see again entirely differently from building a strategic relationship. One of the alternatives you have to consider is that a deal may just not be possible. An unfortunate example… read more →
“When ‘Yes’ Means ‘Not a Chance’” “When ‘Yes’ Means ‘Not a Chance” was the headline on an article by Kara Alaimo in the July 31, 2016 print edition of the New York Times . The article makes a point important for every negotiation: what the other side is saying is not necessarily what they actually mean. A good negotiator is always… read more →
Why Go Out of Your Way to Cooperate with the Other Side In many negotiating situations, it makes sense to ask for a concession from the other side each time you offer to do something for them. Mobus Creative Negotiating teaches how to be creative and insistent in concession-making: how many different things you can ask for and what arguments… read more →
Rationality Does Not Come Naturally In a famous set of 1970s experiments, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that many highly intelligent people are irrational. In one study, they had people read a description of a person and then asked which was more probable: that the person described was a bank teller or that she was a feminist and a… read more →
Why Every Company Should be Afraid, Very Afraid Our title is inspired by a recent New York Times article: $1 Billion for Dollar Shave Club: Why Every Company Should Worry In the modern world, companies disappear in a blink of an eye. “Creative destruction” is the name given to technological change that destroys companies and sometimes entire industries. Think of… read more →
Money May Not Be What Really Matters to the Other Side An important part of being a successful negotiator is figuring out what really matters to the other side – which they may not know. The common error is to assume the other side wants money and money alone, when in fact other things may matter more to them.… read more →
Announcement: New Joint Program, “Negotiating with Competitive Advantages” We are pleased to announce our new partnership with Jaynie L. Smith’s company, Smart Advantage Inc. We’ll be working together to present the new program, Negotiating with Competitive Advantages. In this program, sales and marketing professionals will develop their competitive advantages and practice using them to close more deals, more profitably. … read more →
Beware Experts Who Confuse and Conceal On July 18, the World Bank announced it had appointed as its Chief Economist Paul Romer from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Romer has been involved in a nasty fight with eminent economists for his article attacking “mathiness” in economics – a variant on Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness.” In the pages of… read more →
When Does Cooperation Work? What makes cooperation possible – why don’t people take advantage of the other side at the first chance they get? The answer to that was found by people we usually deride, namely, the traditional economists who study “rational economic man.” Robert Aumann was co-awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on cooperation. What… read more →
In our last webinar we referred to the work of one of today’s leading business thinkers, Adam Grant, and his book, GIVE AND TAKE. When opening the Op-Ed section of today’s Sunday New York Times, I was interested to see a piece by Dr Grant titled: “Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ is Terrible Advice” What struck me is that his… read more →
How to Make Concessions More Successfully We have shown that those who make concessions readily – givers – can be the least successful negotiators but they can also be the most successful ones. The difference is how you make those concessions: are you a passive Giver who never looks out for himself or are you an active Giver who helps… read more →
How to Make Giving a Route to Success We saw that Adam Grant of the Wharton School wrote in his book Give and Takeabout how takers are the most successful engineers. That that may be no surprise, the next result of Grant’s research may be. He found that the engineers with the lowest productivity are givers, but the ones with… read more →
Mobus Takeaways from Recent Conferences: ISM and ATD The Mobus team is back in LA after a successful round of conferences. In Indianapolis, we exhibited our services at the International Institute for Supply Management (ISM) conference. Alan Mullaly, former CEO of Ford Motor Company, spoke about how much he appreciated his suppliers. While heading up Boeing and later Ford,… read more →
The core of negotiation is how do you compromise, or what’s called the process of give and take. And specifically, what kind of balance should you strike between giving and taking? To put that question in a broader context, negotiating has a competitive side and a cooperative side. Some people may seem hyper-competitive, but the very reason they are negotiating… read more →
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” Might have been the title of an eye-opening workshop at last week’s national convention. The actual title was: Is the Risk in Your Supply Chain Getting Ready to Bite You in the …….? (The Key Steps for Identifying and Mitigating Supply Chain Risks.) Two leaders in the field, Carrie Ericson, VP… read more →
Supply chain professionals, eager to keep up with the latest trends in the market would do well to attend the ISM (Institute of Supply Chain Management) annual conference. Coupled with a large trade show, attendees can see the latest services being offered to supply chain organizations, as well as the most recent trends in the procurement world. This year’s annual… read more →
What’s the secret to negotiating success? First, we will take a look at the conventional approach. Then we’re going to see what new research has to say. As the conventional approach says, even experienced negotiators fall into certain traps: They make inopportune remarks, revealing information that undermines their position. The first rule of negotiating is “Shut up!” To make the… read more →
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