Negotiating the Sweet Spot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table

Everybody negotiates at various points every day, be it in life or business, and it's important to get it right.

On average, people leave about 20% of potential mutual gains untapped in any negotiation. This is akin to taking 20% of the value in any deal and dumping it into a garbage canister. Finding that hidden 20%, the "sweet spot," is a skill that takes practice but is also one that anybody can learn.

Leigh Thompson offers best practices and tools within this book to use in daily negotiations and conflict situations. She calls these strategies "hacks" because they work but don't require a lot of investment, training, expense, and time. You don't have to be a CEO, senior VP, or regional brand manager to learn how to find the sweet spot in life's negotiations.

In Negotiating the Sweet Spot, benefits include learning the following:

• Understanding where the sweet spot is in the deals you negotiate
• Adopting a big-picture mind-set when approaching any negotiation
• Seeing negotiations less as win-lose battles and more as opportunities to use problem-solving skills
• Utilizing a tool kit of "hacks" that will work in any negotiation and have been proven effective by a top expert in the field

Negotiating the Sweet Spot walks people of all skill and experience levels through simple and proven techniques that are sure to result in better outcomes for all parties and that uncover the hidden value that exists in any negotiation.

Leigh Thompson knows firsthand how negotiations can degenerate into lose-lose outcomes, having witnessed her parents' divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. She decided after that point to learn how to help people get better outcomes in their negotiations and is now a decorated, full professor at the prestigious Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Thompson directs several highly successful Kellogg executive education courses, including Leading High-Impact Teams, Constructive Collaboration, and High-Performance Negotiation Skills. In addition, she teaches over 2,500 executives and executive MBA students each year that span the globe from China, Hong Kong, Germany, Israel, Latin America, and Canada, as well as the United States.