About Karrass

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About Karrass
The most successful negotiation seminar in the United States was created and designed by Dr. Chester L.
Karrass. Dr. Karrass brings extensive experience, advanced academic credentials in negotiation techniques, and
over 45 years experience in seminar delivery no other negotiator in the country can match. After earning an
Engineering degree from the University of Colorado and a Masters in Business from Columbia University, Dr.
Karrass became a negotiator for the Hughes organization. There he won the first Howard Hughes Doctoral
Fellowship Award in Business, and spent three years conducting advanced research and experimentation in
negotiation techniques before earning his Doctorate from the University of Southern California. He then
returned to Hughes as a negotiation consultant.
In 1968, Dr. Karrass used his research and experience to develop Effective Negotiating®. This powerful,
pioneering seminar was designed to help business people master the strategies, tactics, and psychological
insights of negotiating.
Dr. Karrass began these seminars at a time most business executives and professionals did not realize how much
negotiation was a part of their daily business lives. Today, more than one million professionals, including
salespeople, buyers, corporate leaders, managers, engineers, financial officers, C.E.O.s, and international
business people have attended Dr. Karrass's Effective Negotiating® seminar. Many of these participants have
attended the Effective Negotiating® seminar In-House at their companies, and most of the Fortune 500
corporations currently license the KARRASS program. Dr. Karrass is the author of five books on negotiation,
including ‘The Negotiating Game’, ‘Give and Take’ and ‘In Business as in Life –You Don't Get What You
Deserve You Get What You Negotiate’, and 'Negotiating Effectively Within Your Own Organization – Gain
Acceptance for Your Ideas, Connect With Others and Resolve Differences Creatively'. Best sellers in their field.
www.karrass.com
For more information contact:
US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited.
e-mail: mail@karrass.com
Breaking A Negotiating Impasse
by Dr. Chester L. Karrass
You did everything right, yet you find yourself at a negotiating impasse with the other party. What do you do?
Too many negotiations break down for the wrong reasons.
Negotiating impasses are not always caused by world-shattering issues or great matters of economics. In my experience, many
breakdowns during negotiation are the result of simple things like personality differences, fear of loss-of-face, troubles within the
organizations, a poor working relationship with the boss, or the sheer inability to make a decision. Any consideration of how to break
a negotiating impasse must take into account the human factor. It may not be what you do, but how you do it that becomes the critical
factor.
I have found several negotiation skills useful in averting or breaking a negotiating impasse:
1. If the negotiating impasse involves money – offer to change the shape of the money. A larger deposit, a shorter pay period, or a
different payment stream works wonders – even when the total amount of money involved is the same.
2. Change a team member or the team leader.
3. Eliminate some of the uncertainty. This can be done by postponing some difficult parts of the agreement for renegotiation at a later
time when you have more information.
4. Change the scope of risk sharing. A willingness to share unknown losses or gains may restore a lagging discussion.
5. Change the time scale of performance. Maybe it's OK to complete 60% over 4 months rather than 3 months. It might be easier to
start slower and still complete the job within the desired timeframe.
6. Assure satisfaction by recommending grievance procedures or guarantees.
7. Move from a competitive mode to a cooperative problem-solving mode. Get engineers involved with engineers, operations people
with operations people, and bosses with bosses.
8. Change the type of contract: fixed price, indexed or scaled price, time and materials, percentage of savings, percentage of increased
sales, percentage of profit created.
9. Change the base for calculating percentages: a smaller percentage of a larger base or a larger percentage of a smaller but more
predictable base may get things back on track.
10. Create a list of options or alternatives that need to be discussed. Or change the order of discussion.
11. Suggest changes in the specifications or terms.
Impasse breakers work because they re-engage the other party in discussions with his or her organization and team members. These
icebreakers help create a climate in which new alternatives can be developed. Surprisingly, sometimes the introduction of new
alternatives has the effect of making old propositions look better than ever.
Try to pre-plan a face-saving way to reopen discussions should an impasse occurs. If you set the stage before the impasse sets in, you
can better handle the problem.
For more information contact:
US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited.
e-mail: mail@karrass.com
How Do You Deal With Deadlines?
by Dr. Chester L. Karrass
Deadlines force action. It's no accident that tax returns are filed on April 15, that Christmas presents are bought on December 24th, or
that political lobbyists get bills passed just before adjournment. We accept many deadlines that are part of our daily lives. Work starts
at 9AM and stops at 5PM, airplanes leave at their scheduled time, bills are due on the 10th of the month.
We respond to many deadlines almost without awareness. Deadlines pressure you into making an either-or choice. You can choose to
accept the deadline, or ignore it and live with the consequences.
Be skeptical of deadlines. Sometimes they are real and sometimes they can be negotiated.
Many deadlines are not as real as you might think they are. Hotels will let you stay beyond 1PM without charge. Bids due on the tenth
may be accepted on the eleventh. The offer that was to expire on June 1 is usually available on June 2. Newspaper reporters miss their
deadlines, but I've yet to run into a blank column in a newspaper.
Of course, when you are negotiating, there is a risk in not believing a deadline. The more you know about the other party and their
organization the better you will be able to determine if a deadline is real.
Remember—time is power. Most of us go into a negotiation with a self-imposed weakness. We are always aware of the time pressure
on ourselves. That knowledge makes us less effective than we could be. What we should concentrate on are the deadlines that
constrain the other party. If you have deadlines, there are probably deadlines on the other person. These three questions will help guide
you out of the deadline trap:
* What self-imposed or organization-imposed deadlines am I under that make it harder for me to negotiate?
* Are the deadlines imposed on me by myself, or my organization, real? Can I negotiate an extension with my own people?
* What deadlines are putting pressure on the other party and their organization?
Be wary and skeptical when a deadline is impacting your ability to negotiate the best agreement. Time limits have a way of
hypnotizing us. We tend to accept them even when we shouldn't. That's why you should put a deadline on any offer you put on the
table. It may help motivate the other side to make the decision you want.
For more information contact:
US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited.
e-mail: mail@karrass.com
You Need Time To Think
by Dr. Chester L. Karrass
If you are going to make the most of the negotiation skills you learned at my Effective Negotiating Seminar, and maximize your
opportunities to craft truly creative, both-win agreements, build some thinking time into your negotiations.
Never go into a negotiation without first considering how to give yourself time to think. Build a thinking buffer to keep yourself from
being pushed into a decision.
Many American business people conduct negotiations like a Ping-Pong tournament. Buyer and seller, engineer and consultant, two
division managers -- all are in a big hurry. A few quick slashes and returns, and it's over. Other cultures, like Europeans and Asians,
take a different approach. They are not so hasty. They recognized the obvious: The person who has time to think, thinks better!
Look at the diplomatic world. Diplomats conduct negotiations with short sessions and long recesses. A question raised one week may
not be answered until weeks later. Demands and offers are usually made in writing to give both parties time to respond in a sensible
way. Quick deals are rare.
The suggestions that follow are effective. They work.
1. Get the other party to present their position before breaking for the day.
2. Arrange to get an important surprise visitor or phone call at some crucial point.
3. Take a restroom break.
4. Get thirsty or hungry.
5. Change a member of the negotiating team.
6. Don't have the back-up evidence available.
7. Plead ignorance. Ask for time to learn more about it.
8. Have your expert unavailable.
9. Load down the other party with documents, data, or drawings.
10. Use an interpreter or third party. Interpreters can be technical people, lawyers, your boss, or translators. In any case, they can slow
things down.
11. If you are on a team, develop rules among your people on how questions will be fielded. Sometimes it is best to have all questions
directed only to one person, to give others time to think about the answers.
12. Recess and caucus frequently.
It is remarkable what we humans see in hindsight. Giving yourself time to think changes hindsight to foresight and it will make you a
better negotiator.
For more information contact:
US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited.
e-mail: mail@karrass.com
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US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited.
e-mail: mail@karrass.com