Start with No

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Start with no: No thank you - Rated
It was the book title's strap line: `America's number one negotiating coach explains why win-win is an ineffective, often disastrous strategy and how you can beat it' that hooked me to buy the book: `Start with No'.

I have read Roger Fisher and William Ury's book `Getting to Yes', and the companion volume by Ury `Getting Past No' and I was curious to read a book that championed a different approach to negotiation.

Mr Jim Camp explains that he specifically chose his title: `Start with No' to emphasise his profound disagreement with `win-win'. He believes that `win-win' is a hopelessly misguided basis for good negotiation.

He writes that `win-win' has become cliché in our culture and in this regard he is correct. However he then fails to make a clear distinction between the `win-win' concept when expressed as a cliché, and when it may be used to refer to the clearly defined `win-win' or principled negotiation process that is set out in `Getting to Yes'.

In failing to make this distinction clear Mr Camp seriously undermines his argument as far as it applies to `principled agreement' promoted by `Getting to Yes'.

For example he states that `win-win' implicitly urges a negotiator to get to yes as quickly as possible by almost any means necessary. That may be true if a negotiator adopts an unplanned approach to negotiation that negotiator calls `win-win' but this will not be the case if he or she follows the principled negotiation process clearly laid out in `Getting to Yes'. The Fisher and Ury process specifically counsels against rushing to a settlement.

Mr Camp cites `Getting to Yes' on only two occasions in his 271 page hardback book. In the first citation he deconstructs the Fisher and Ury definition of a principled agreement and concludes that compromise is implicit in the definition and a negotiator following the `Getting to Yes' process is somehow obligated to give a concession.

Again he is incorrect. It is more likely that a negotiator who adopts an unstructured approach to a positional bargaining will make a concession that he will later regret.
In his second and final citation of `Getting to Yes' Mr Camp deals with the definition of principled negotiation. He says the definition comprises a number of words that do not say nor mean much.

Mr Camp says that negotiation is better defined as being an agreement between two or more parties where all parties have the right to veto or to say no. He implies that the choice to say `no' is somehow not available to negotiators tied into the `win-win' negotiation mindset and this may be true in the case of negotiators who adopt an unstructured approach to `win-win'. Again the negotiation model put specified in `Getting to Yes' gives a strategy to follow when it is right to say no.

Mr Camp states that it is important to ask open questions and makes this activity an important part of his system. He says that this activity has been overlooked in every other book on negotiation that he has ever seen.

Had he been familiar with the win-win `Getting to Yes' negotiation model he would have found that the model lays great store in the use of effective question in order to understand the issues.

Throughout 'Start with No' Mr Camp refers to his system and describes its parts but it is not until page 254 that he gives an overview of the system along with its 33 rules. He then suggests that only a few will be able to learn his system solely from the book and even those that do will only become adept with further training or coaching.

This is to be contrasted with Fisher and Ury's `Getting to Yes' that delivers a complete solution that can be put to immediate profitable everyday use.
Mr Camp has failed in his stated intention to show that win-win is ineffective and potentially disastrous.

However, what the book does do is highlight the inherent weakness of positional bargaining and how this can go badly wrong in the absence of an effective guiding structure be it the Camp or other system.

Had I come across Jim Camp's `Start with No' in a bookshop after perusal it would have been replaced on the shelf as the book does not deliver on its promise.

I have written this review so that other others may profit from my loss and invest their money more wisely in another book such as Gavin Kennedy's `Essential Negotiation' or even Fisher and Ury's `Getting to Yes'. Both of which are cheaper and better.

Superb, no nonsense advice - Rated
As a commission only salesman I read this book after getting negotiated out of all my commission one day by an obstinant housewife. From then on I decided that Win-win negotiation, which is pretty much what I had used that day was a very poor way to do business.

What Camp describes is a realistic and sound system that has certainly made me a much better salesperson and should benefit all readers in the sales and negotiation.

Whilst framing the other negotiators as adverseries, Camp reminds us how "Win-Win" negotiation often becomes Win-Lose as one side takes advantage of the other sides desire to do a deal at all costs.

Camp explains about emotional, monetary, and time budgets and how skilled negotiators can cause people to invest so much into a deal that they will submit to any demands to complete it. To keep the reader from that trap he describes when to say no how to avoid a bad deal.

As a book it has proved to be better than any of the sales books that I have read in the past. Superb.

How to Avoid Making Unnecessary Compromises - Rated
For various reasons, many people are convinced that any negotiation should be concluded on a win-win basis. That is, all who are directly involved walk away with something...or at least think they have. (Back to that point in a moment.) In this volume, Camp asserts that win-win is emotion-based, therefore unreliable and often self-defeating. He claims that the most effective negotiators take a decision-based approach which he explains step-by-step. "What is the poison that resides at the heart of the big lie which is win-win? You've heard of the deadly stuff. It's called [in italics] compromise....Why in the world compromise before you are certain you have to? Sometimes you do, and that's fine, but often you don't, and that's better. The key point is that with the win-win mindset, [in italics] you'll never know which it is."

Here a brief excerpt from Richard Tedlow's The Watson Dynasty in which he discusses a sales strategy used effectively by Joseph Crane who, when National Cash Register's salespersons encountered arguments and objections for which they were unprepared, recommended this response: "Why, that's just the very reason you should have one!" Crane was a great salesman from whom Thomas H. Watson Sr. learned a great deal while employed by NCR. In this instance, as Tedlow explains, "A prospect has just advanced a reason why he should not buy a register. He encounters [in the response by the NCR salesperson] not hesitation, not argument, not refutation. Rather, he is told that his reason not to buy is actually the reverse of what he thought it was. Once again, the magic lay in putting the salesman on the same side of the customer. Crane put the customer in the position of arguing with himself while agreeing with the salesman." Perhaps Camp agrees with me that the single worst mistake in any negotiation, the single most common mistake, is to argue against yourself.

According to Camp, there is a significant difference between perception and reality insofar as a win-win resolution is concerned. That is, if the other party walks away thinking that she or he has "won" something, fine. However, Camp insists, "win-win is often win-lose because it invites unnecessary compromise, because it is [in italics] emotion-based, not [in italics] decision-based, and because it plays to the heart, not to the head." He carefully organizes his material within 14 chapters which introduce, one by one, the principles and practices of his system. In the final chapter, Camp shares what he considers to be "Life's Greatest Lesson: The Only Assurance of Long Term Success" and then in his Conclusion, he offers 33 "rules to remember."

I have previously reviewed several excellent books on the subject of negotiation, each of which (to varying degree) recommends a win-win approach. Obviously, Camp totally disagrees with that approach and explains why. It remains for each reader of this commentary to consider carefully all manner of values, mindsets, strategies, and tactics which these books advocate, then decide for herself or himself which are most appropriate. My own opinion (for whatever it may be worth) is that the decision-based approach is preferable to the emotion-based approach; also that, if at all possible, the resolution of any negotiation serves the best interests of everyone involved. In the final analysis, however, "charity begins at home."

"No" means "let's get started negotiating" - Rated
was VERY impressed with Jim Camp's "Start with No." In under 300 pages, the author gets his point across succinctly and powerfully; negotiations don't begin with "Yes" (which might even be a lie) or "Maybe" which is worse than useless. They begin with "No" and giving permission for the other party to say "no."

The brilliance of the "no" can be the important "way out" in a negotiation, where one party is offered a graceful exit to avoid the sense of feeling trapped or tricked. And it's also the path to finding out what they really need or really can accept. But it's much more than that.

Camp informs the reader that previous theories of negotiation such as "Win-Win" are pure bunkum; in negotiation, sometimes someone wins and someone else loses. But the long-term outcome may be quite different--what might have been compromised into a mediocre solution by win-win can often be better for both parties when one loses at the outset. Case in point; a contract is drawn up with terms that one party can no longer fulfill. It's time to renegotiate the contract despite the terms and conditions. Why? What if the contract specified that a vendor sell at a price that would drive them out of business? If the buyer NEEDS that product, they'd better negotiate rather than fail to receive the product. Going elsewhere to find it could be more costly than the re-negotiated price.

Camp's experiences are in direct contrast to some of business guru Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People", which I thought was quite interesting. To remind you, the habits are:

1- Be Proactive
2- Begin with the End in Mind
3- Put First Things First
4- Think Win/Win
5- Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
6- Synergize
7- Sharpen the Saw

Mr. Camp actually has no issue with the majority of these habits, but he disagrees vehemently with two of the seven principles: #2--begin with the end in mind, and #4 Think Win/Win. In the case of negotiation, sometimes, Mr. Camp informs us, it's better not be so focused on the goal i.e, getting the lowest price, making that sales quota for that month) lest you appear needy. What's more, being too focused on your own goal might cause you to make dangerous assumptions or fail to realize the underlying situation. And Camp scoffs at the idea of win-win, giving the reader plenty of real-life examples where losing either was just that...losing, or was a neutral outcome (no win, but better than other potentially worse outcomes.)

I recommend this book to anyone getting ready to negotiate nearly anything, from extended bedtimes for your kids, to a refinanced mortgage to a multi-million dollar deal. Excellent material here from this experienced contrarian.