Quotes & Sayings About Business Negotiation

According to Free Trait Theory, we are born and culturally endowed with certain personality traits - introversion, for example - but we can and do act out of character in the service of "core personal projects."
In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly. Free Trait Theory explains why an introvert might throw his extroverted wife a surprise party or join the PTA at his daughter's school. It explains how it's possible for an extroverted scientist to behave with reserve in her laboratory, for an agreeable person to act hard-nosed during a business negotiation, and for a cantankerous uncle to treat his niece tenderly when he takes her out for ice cream. — Susan Cain

Rennie can see what she is now: she's an object of negotiation. The truth about knights comes suddenly clear: the maidens were only an excuse. The dragon was the real business. So much for vacation romances, she thinks. A kiss is just a kiss, Jocasta would say, and you're lucky if you don't get trenchmouth. — Margaret Atwood

Policy makers and business leaders take note: money matters. But often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table - so that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash. — Daniel H. Pink

Note to the wise: whenever someone insists that he wants to buy something from you, but tells you there's no real value in it yet, two things are happening: he's lying, and you're being taken. — Mike Stackpole

Earn the Right - Ensure you put this chunk of Sales Tetris in place first and all the other pieces just take their own positions naturally. — Chris Murray

One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to "have skin in the game" and take the payout in stock that he would agree to hold for at least a year." Jobs resisted. Finally, they compromised: Jobs would take $120 million in cash and $37 million in stock, and he pledged to hold the stock for at least six months. — Walter Isaacson

Why do customers (and that includes you and me) find it so difficult to recall more than a couple of occasions when they felt that they were treated exceptionally by the salespeople who dealt with them? — Chris Murray

It is always amazing to see how wide a spectrum of results can be obtained from replicating an identical negotiation with different principal actors; it makes no difference whether there subjects are inexperienced or whether they are senior executives and young presidents of business firms. That is an important lesson to be learned here. — Howard Raiffa

Once war was considered the business of soldiers, international relations the concern of diplomats. But now that war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent, the free sport of kings has become the forced and internecine business of people, and diplomatic codes of honor between nations have collapsed. Peace in no longer serious; only war is serious. Every man and every nation is either friend or foe, and the idea of enmity becomes mechanical, massive, and without genuine passion. When virtually all negotiation aimed at peaceful agreement is likely to be seen as 'appeasement,' if not treason, the active role of the diplomat becomes meaningless; for diplomacy becomes merely a prelude to war an interlude between wars, and in such a context the diplomat is replaced by the warlord. — C. Wright Mills

If customers don't trust you to help them at the beginning of the sales process, they certainly won't trust you with their money at the end of it. — Chris Murray

Although all the major industrial countries and a multitude of business units participate in the world trade in chemicals, the forces of free competition do not rule the world markets. The techniques of business diplomacy frequently supplement and in some instances have supplanted independent decision making by separate producers in response to free market forces. The geographic and industrial areas within which particular companies will operate, the scale of their output, the prices of their products, the use or nonuse of their technology, have increasingly become objects of negotiation, subjects of national and international agreement. More and more the conference table has been taking the place of the market as a regulator if the chemical industries. — George W. Stocking

So much of life is a negotiation - so even if you're not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you. — Kevin O'Leary

In the early stages of negotiation software, on your smartphone, there may be programs that listen to the pitch of a voice, or that test for stress. You'll just ask the program, 'Was he lying? Was he eager to do business with me?' Maybe the computer will be right sixty per cent of the time. — Tyler Cowen

Executing the solution means gaining customer commitment and delivering on your promises — Chris Murray

Great selling involves helping people to make great buying decisions. — Chris Murray

Solving the problem means helping the customer to understand why you're the best person for the job — Chris Murray

Never Underestimate. Just as in any other negotiation, watching before acting is as important as listening before speaking. It's doubly important in China, however, where customs are time-honored and breaches of protocol not so quickly forgiven. — Irl M. Davis

In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed. — Margaret Thatcher

In many instances, the words "sell" and "influence" are completely interchangeable. — Chris Murray

Every day's a negotiation and sometimes it's done with guns. — Joss Whedon

Three rules of good negotiation:
1. Know what the other party wants.
2. Listen carefully.
3. Don't let your emotions get in the way of a good deal. — Betty Liu

The single and most dangerous word to be spoken in business is no. The second most dangerous word is yes. It is possible to avoid saying either. — Lois Wyse

Focusing on Earning the Right will have an incredible effect on the success of every single sales call that you will make from this day on. — Chris Murray

Earning the Right is a commitment to be the sales professional that your customer really needs — Chris Murray

The only thing certain about any negotiation is that it will lead to another
negotiation . — Leigh Steinberg

Asking the appropriate questions means understanding exactly what your customer is trying to achieve — Chris Murray

The commitment gap is the massive distance between "yes" and "maybe — Chris Murray

The first thing to decide before you walk into any negotiation is what to do if the other fellow says 'no'. — Ernest Bevin

The ability to close sales effectively has never been confined to the last few moments of the conversation. — Chris Murray

There's just something fascinating to me about watching a business interaction unfold, and the negotiation. And how everything is negotiable in life. — Kether Donohue

We're all somebody's prospect; we're all somebody's customer. — Chris Murray

Everybody sells something to somebody every day, whether it's a product, a service or just a case of making sure that they get their own way. — Chris Murray