So what is your view of the the French? Is your view of this magnificent county and its people shaped by those Inspector Clouseau movies that you used to watch while you were growing up? If it was, then it’s time to get over it and move on – they negotiate much differently than you do.

I believe that by now we all probably have somewhat of a love / hate relationship with Donald Trump (“The Donald” if you like). No matter how you feel about the guy, you have to give him credit – he’s done quite well for himself. What’s interesting is that as caught up in himself as he often seems to be, he is more than willing to give credit where credit is due when it comes to negotiating. When you are talking about negotiating with Donald Trump, then you are really …

So how many times has this happened to you: there you are happily negotiating along and then all of a sudden *bang* you run into an immovable deadlock. Some issue or some condition that neither you nor the other side of the table seem to be able to see eye-to-eye on just brings everything to a screeching halt. Hmm, what’s a negotiator to do? All too often negotiators bump heads for awhile trying to convince the other side to change their minds and then give up when this turns out …

The thought of having to negotiate with someone for something can be quite intimidating. I mean, we live in the world of Amazon’s one-click purchasing, no haggle car buying, and we visit the home of low-low prices, we don’t HAVE to negotiate for most of the things that we want. Or do we?

If only there was some book, some DVD to watch, or some class that you could take that would provide you with access to all of the secrets of those master negotiators whom we are always reading about. You know the ones, they negotiate the billion dollar business deal, the hostage negotiations, they settle the labor strikes, and they come up with solutions to lawsuits before they hit the courts. Just what are their secrets?