CHAPTER 1

The Three Keys to Success

Be Confident, Be Prepared, and Be Willing to Walk Away

You can have anything you want—if you want it badly enough. You can beanything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold tothat desire with singleness of purpose.

—Abraham Lincoln

In writing this book, we interviewed women from all walks oflife—corporate executives, lawyers, investment bankers, publishers,politicians, entrepreneurs, writers, musicians, actresses, agents, journalists,philanthropists, athletes—all very successful. Most have strongcollaborative skills, many are extremely persuasive, and some excel at takingthe negotiating situation they find and creating a different one that bettersuits their needs. Interestingly, almost universally they listed the same threequalities as being critical to success as a negotiator: confidence, preparation,and a willingness to walk away. These three qualities do not fall neatly withinone of the convince, collaborate, or create categories, butrather, they are central to all three approaches. They are attitudes that youbring to negotiating. They form the underpinnings that enable someone toeffectively use each of the three approaches.

BE CONFIDENT: WHY MEN DON'T ASK FOR DIRECTIONS

Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Classhas nothing to do with money.... It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It'sthe sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.

—Ann Landers

Susanna Hoffs had just put together the Bangles, which would become the dominantall-female rock band of the 1980s, garner four platinum albums, and see two oftheir many hit singles, "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Eternal Flame," make it tothe top of the charts. She was performing with the band at a local club. MilesCopeland, the manager who had engineered the earlier success of the Go-Go's,approached them after the show to talk about representing them. Rather thanacting as if she should be grateful for his interest, Susanna says, "I took theposition that he should want to work with us because we were going places." Ithelped, of course, that at the time she had no idea who Miles Copeland was, andtherefore she didn't know she should be nervous. Because of the confidence withwhich Susanna and the other Bangles approached those negotiations, they wereable to work out a favorable deal to have Miles manage the group.

Confidence is the secret weapon in negotiating. Almost every woman weinterviewed pointed to it as the key to their success as a negotiator. To gainagreement from others, you need to persuade them that what you are proposing isbased on an accurate understanding of the facts, is fair, and is mutuallybeneficial. Studies have shown that whether someone believes what you saydepends more on how you say it than on what you actually say. Put another way,to be truly persuasive, whatever you say, you must say with confidence.

You can take several steps to build your confidence. Erin Noonan, chiefoperating officer for Americas Sourcing at Barclays Capital, recommends readingbooks and taking classes on negotiating, which she "has done plenty of" over thecourse of her career. Understanding the negotiating process will add to yourself-confidence. Often you will instinctively know the right thing to do, andall you need is confirmation. One of the nicest things anyone said about myfirst book, Get More Money on Your Next Job, which dealt withnegotiating in the employment context, came from a young woman who told me thatreading it gave her the confidence to ask a prospective employer to pay for herMBA. She told me, "It affirmed that what I was doing was okay."

Practice

You gain confidence through practice. Put the skills you learn from this book touse on a daily basis. Practice the active listening and purposeful questioningskills we discuss in Chapter 3 until you master them. Try using them atthe dinner table with your husband and children. When others ask you forsomething, or you hear them ask someone else for something, try to use thecollaborative skill of determining the underlying interests he or she is tryingto satisfy.

Like driving a car, negotiating is a skill that must be learned. After readingthe driver's manual and receiving your learner's permit, you don't just get intothe car for the first time and know how to drive. You attend a driver'seducation class, you take driving lessons, or a parent or friend teaches you.While taking lessons, you also practice driving. You practice turning. Youpractice merging into traffic. You practice parallel parking, and then youpractice parallel parking some more. Similarly, to master the art ofnegotiating, you must not only learn how; you must also practice. The more youpractice, the more comfortable you will become. Remember how nervous you werethe first time you drove on a highway? By now, you no longer even give it asecond thought. Like driving, once you have done it enough, negotiating simplybecomes second nature.

Find out about the People on the Other Side

Another way to boost your confidence is to learn as much as you can about thepeople with whom you will be negotiating. As Judge Kathy Roberts, a professionalmediator and former U.S. magistrate, put it:

It is amazing that people don't do research about their adversaries. This isparticularly important for women...