Taste Note - Amazon Business Negotiating Best Sellers
Bargaining for Advantage: Systematic Negotiation for People With Scruples
A Kurums Book Taste review of Bargaining for Advantage for dealmakers who want a complete negotiation system - preparation through commitment - grounded in research and honest about ethics.
Why this book fits Kurums
Getting to Yes gives you the philosophy and Voss gives you the tactics; Shell - who runs Wharton's negotiation workshop - gives you the system: six foundations of effective negotiation, a four-stage process, and the only serious treatment of ethics in the popular negotiation shelf. It is the book that turns negotiation from episodes into a discipline.
For the Kurums Law audience the fit is direct: contract renewals, settlements, and vendor terms are exactly the information-driven bargaining Shell systematizes, and his situational matrix explains why the right style in one deal is malpractice in another.
What the book argues
The six foundations come first: your bargaining style (know whether you are naturally competitive or cooperative - both win, differently), your goals (specific, written, optimistic targets outperform 'do my best' by wide margins in the research), authoritative standards (the leverage of the other side's own numbers, policies, and precedents), relationships (reciprocity as the engine of concessions), the other party's interests (their problem is your toolkit), and leverage - which Shell reframes memorably: the party with the most to lose from no-deal has the least leverage, and leverage shifts constantly as facts change.
The process half runs four stages: preparation (the situational matrix - how much does the relationship matter versus the stakes - dictates style: tacit coordination, transaction, relationship, or balanced concerns), information exchange (probe before you propose), opening and concession-making (who should open, when anchoring pays, and how concession patterns signal), and closing with commitment devices that make agreements stick beyond the handshake.
The ethics chapters are the book's distinction: Shell maps the three schools honestly - poker players (rules of the game), idealists (never deceive), pragmatists (deception costs compound) - and forces you to choose your school before the pressure chooses for you. His minimum standard: know the law of fraud, and know that your reputation is the longest-lived asset you bring to every table.
Key ideas, translated to your desk
Write the target, not the walkaway
People who set specific, justified, ambitious targets systematically outperform those who only know their bottom line. Write both - but negotiate toward the target.
Use their standards against their position
The other side's published pricing, policies, and past deals are your best arguments. Authoritative standards let them concede without losing face.
Leverage is about who fears no-deal
Reassess it at every development: new alternatives, deadlines, and public commitments move leverage in real time, and most negotiators price it only once.
Use it at work
- Build a one-page preparation sheet from the six foundations and make it mandatory for every negotiation above a threshold.
- Before the next renewal, collect the counterparty's own standards - price lists, published SLAs, precedent deals - as your argument file.
- Classify upcoming negotiations on the situational matrix and assign style deliberately instead of by habit.
- Pick your ethics school explicitly and write the three tactics you will not use - before the deal pressure arrives.
Read it if
- You negotiate contracts, settlements, or renewals as a recurring part of the job.
- You want one complete system rather than a bag of tactics.
- The ethics of hard bargaining actually concern you and you want them treated seriously.
You can skip it if
- You need a quick tactical refresher - Voss travels lighter.
- You never negotiate stakes beyond routine purchasing.
- Academic thoroughness reads as slow to you; this is a course, and paced like one.
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