You Can Negotiate Anything

Herb Cohen, a professional negotiator and consultant, presents a practical guide to negotiation as a universal life skill. His central premise is that negotiation is not a specialized talent reserved for diplomats or businesspeople but an everyday activity that occurs whenever someone uses information and power to affect behavior. Cohen defines negotiation as "the use of information and power to affect behavior within a 'web of tension'" (16), arguing that learning to negotiate well determines both professional success and personal satisfaction.

Cohen opens by illustrating the ubiquity of negotiation through personal and workplace examples. He recounts how his nine-year-old son disrupted a family restaurant outing so thoroughly that the family resolved never to take him to a restaurant again, demonstrating that even a child can shape outcomes. At work, subordinates negotiate with bosses, bosses negotiate for employee commitment, and peers negotiate for cooperation across organizational lines. Cohen identifies three elements present in every negotiation: information, time, and power. People typically perceive the other side as holding an advantage in all three, but Cohen insists that power is rooted in perception.

To demonstrate that almost everything is negotiable, Cohen constructs a hypothetical scenario in which a family shops for a refrigerator at a one-price store like Sears. The posted price of $489.95 appears fixed, but Cohen reveals it was the product of internal compromise among marketing, financial, and advertising departments. He contrasts such negotiable prices with what he calls "sacred givens," like the Ten Commandments. Two forms of perceived power disadvantage constrain the buyer: the power of precedent, which makes people assume they cannot negotiate at a one-price store, and the power of legitimacy, by which printed signs and forms carry unquestioned authority. Cohen illustrates the latter with the observation that roughly 90 to 95 percent of Holiday Inn guests obey the posted checkout time without question. He then outlines consumer negotiation tactics including generating competition by referencing rival outlets, expressing dissatisfaction with product features, requesting discounts for floor-model imperfections, bundling purchases, and deploying ultimatums and "nibbles," which are small last-minute requests whose success depends on the seller's prior time investment.

Cohen devotes significant attention to power, cataloguing 14 sources available to any negotiator. These include the power of competition, legitimacy, risk taking, commitment, expertise, knowledge of the other side's real needs, investment, the capacity to reward or punish, identification, morality, precedent, persistence, persuasive capacity, and attitude. He grounds each source in vivid anecdotes. He recounts how a prisoner in solitary confinement obtained a cigarette from a guard by threatening to injure himself and blame the guard, demonstrating that even the most constrained person can exercise power through awareness of options. He describes how President Jimmy Carter's patient persistence at the isolated Camp David retreat, where entertainment was virtually nonexistent, ultimately led Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to sign a peace agreement after 13 days. Cohen's overarching counsel on power is to cultivate a detached, game-like attitude, summarized as "care, but not that much" (88).

Turning to time, Cohen argues that most concessions occur at or near deadlines, which are far more flexible than people assume. He recounts a formative experience in which he was sent to Tokyo for a 14-day negotiation and inadvertently revealed his departure date. His Japanese hosts spent 12 days on cultural activities and compressed all substantive bargaining into the final hours, producing a lopsided result. He draws a parallel to the Vietnam War peace talks, where North Vietnamese negotiators rented a villa outside Paris on a two-and-a-half-year lease while American representative Averell Harriman rented a hotel room week to week. Cohen advises concealing one's real deadline, recognizing that the other side always has a deadline of its own, and exercising patience.

On information, Cohen stresses that negotiation is a continuous process, not a single event, and that information gathering should begin long before formal encounters. During the early process stage, people share more freely because they do not yet feel defensive. He explains that an initial "no" is a reaction, not a fixed position, illustrating with polling data on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon: initial opposition stood at 92 percent, but within a year, support for impeachment grew to 60 percent as the public received additional information. During formal negotiations, Cohen advises watching for clusters of behavioral cues and paying attention to concession patterns, which reveal the other side's true limits more reliably than stated positions.

Cohen introduces two negotiating styles along a continuum from competitive to collaborative. He labels the competitive approach "Soviet style," not as a geographic designation but as a behavioral pattern characterized by extreme initial positions, limited authority, emotional tactics, treating concessions as weakness, stinginess, and ignoring deadlines. He illustrates with the Soviet Union's purchase of Long Island property at roughly half its appraised value and the bidding war for television rights to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, where the Soviets pitted the three American networks against each other and sold the rights to NBC for $87 million. He emphasizes that "a tactic perceived is no tactic" (138): Once recognized, manipulative maneuvers lose their power.

Cohen advocates the collaborative Win-Win approach as the preferred strategy whenever relationships are ongoing. He argues that because people's needs are unique, outcomes need not be zero-sum. Rather than dividing a fixed pie, parties should ask how to enlarge it. He contends that money serves primarily as a scorekeeping mechanism and that satisfying dollar demands alone does not produce happiness. He recounts how filmmaker Howard Hughes and actress Jane Russell resolved a $1 million contract dispute by restructuring it into a 20-year, $50,000-per-year arrangement that solved Hughes's cash-flow problem while giving Russell tax advantages.

Three activities underpin Win-Win negotiation: building trust, gaining commitment, and managing opposition. Cohen argues that trust must be cultivated before formal negotiations begin, calling it "the universal lubricant" (166) without which no lasting agreement is possible. He distinguishes between idea opponents, who disagree on issues but not personally, and visceral opponents, who oppose one as a person. With idea opponents, sharing information and repackaging terms can produce outcomes exceeding both sides' expectations. Visceral opponents, created by public attacks on a person's dignity, are nearly impossible to convert. Cohen recommends replacing judgmental "you" statements with "I" statements that express personal feelings without evaluation.

Cohen critiques compromise as a default strategy, arguing it often leaves both sides dissatisfied. He illustrates with a father who splits a leftover potato in half for his two sons without learning that one wanted only the skin and the other only the inside. He acknowledges that compromise is sometimes necessary but stresses that in continuing relationships, the initial goal should always be mutual satisfaction.

In practical applications, Cohen addresses telephone negotiations, which lack visual feedback and encourage impersonal interaction. He advises being the caller, preparing thoroughly, and always writing the memorandum of agreement afterward, since its author gains interpretive authority. He advocates escalating within organizational hierarchies when lower-level personnel cannot resolve problems, because higher-ranking officials have greater authority to make exceptions. The book closes with Cohen's argument that personalizing oneself is essential in an impersonal world. He contrasts New York Mayor John Lindsay, who failed because he negotiated on behalf of the abstract entity "the City of New York," with Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who succeeded by approaching individuals personally. Cohen affirms that every reader possesses the power to change their own life and the lives of others, urging active engagement rather than passive existence.