83. The Law of Greater Power

The person with the greater power, real or imagined, will get the better deal in any negotiation.

Your ability to recognize both your power and the power of the other person is critical to your success in negotiating. Often you have more power than you know. Often the other party has less power than he or she appears to have. You must be clear about both.

The first corollary of the Law of Greater Power is People will not negotiate with you unless they feel you have the power to help them or hurt them in some way.

In a negotiating session, you must have something the other person wants, or you must be able to withhold something he or she wants, for the other person to take you seriously. You must continually think ...

Get The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable: Laws of Business Success now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.