Negotiation has never been a pure science. Fortunately, though, its blend of logic and emotion, of gut feel and calculation, can be learnt - provided that you know where to start.

Instant Negotiation will help you to hone your negotiating skills whether you are buying, selling or searching for common ground. Whatever your objective - a product or an idea, a pay deal or the best price - the creative, effective and easy to use techniques in this book will help you to:

• Understand strategy and develop tactics to help you reach your goal
• Learn when to trust intuition and when to rely on logic
• Discover the benefits of win-win without losing out
• Know when to push and how to realize that you need to take a step back

Packed with proven tips and helpful advice, the book also includes a comprehensive range of over 70 self-development exercises that will help you to improve your negotiation skills - fast!

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It's hard to imagine business - or even life - without negotiation. Practically every business interaction from the largest corporate merger to a meeting to decide the site of a new bicycle shed depends on negotiation. In fact it's rare to find any human transaction at all where there isn't some room for discussion and modification of terms.

The good negotiator has to call on a whole raft of skills. He or she needs to be an effective communicator, combining the abilities to sell and to listen. The negotiator must be able to balance tactical and strategic considerations. Good negotiators know their business and their company inside out - and know just as much about the other side too. As if this isn't enough, good negotiators also need flexibility - the ability to explore what is possible, changing goal from a hypothetical summit to a more reachable hill.

There is good news and bad news here. Many of the skills of negotiation cannot be learned without practice. But this doesn't mean that you have to plunge a virgin negotiator into a corporate merger. Every day you are negotiating - at home, on the way to work, in the office. Negotiation is a natural part of life. With the Instant approach of gradually building a toolkit of techniques it is possible to use everyday life as you negotiating workshop, integrating new skills piece by piece.