Any "how to haggle" books?

[Stlbroke]

I'm looking for a book to teach me a little bit about haggling for items such as cars, furniture, or even reducing cable bills, etc.  I tend to shy away from it and when I do try I end up getting mad and once I even cancelled my cable subscription.  I think a book may help me in this area.  Any recommendations? Thank you

[Cathy]

Read Roger Dawson's Secrets of Power Negotiating.

[Adventine]

Posting to follow! I want to improve this skill too.

[Freedom2016]

...so...I'm a negotiation adviser by profession.

There are lots of books that can teach you 'tactics' ("if they do X you do Y"). Tactics can be useful if/when the relationship isn't important, but what is far more powerful is getting some grounding in the fundamental dynamics present in any negotiation, and developing a broad repertoire of skills and experience that enable you to be strategic and nimble in-the-moment - in virtually any setting. There are a number of solid books in that vein: Getting to Yes (a classic in the field), Negotiation Genius, 3D Negotiator, and Getting Past No are all good places to start.

Since you mentioned some specific negotiations:

Cars: Information is power. Before big data & search engines, the most effective way to negotiate for a new/used car was to research the model & specs you wanted beforehand, then fax (yep, pre-email) the following message to 3-6 local area dealerships 3 days before the end of the month: "Hi. I will be purchasing X car with Y features in the next 72 hours. I have sent this fax to several dealerships, including yours, and I will purchase the car from whomever gives me the best offer for the exact model I have specified." A buyer was sure to get multiple offers because dealerships were eager to meet their monthly sales quotas. This approach also avoided the psychologically withering experience of dealing with a car salesman directly. Today, big data is eliminating the need even for the fax-based kind of approach. Truecar.com is one of the best sites available today to give you information on who's paying how much for the kind of car you want to purchase.

Furniture: I'm less familiar with what happens when you're buying furniture. Are you in stores? Buying off craigslist?

Cable company: A colleague of mine outlines his approach to lowering his cable bill here: http://www.moneytalksnews.com/how-lower-your-bills-like-hostage-negotiator/

By the way, the empirical research in the negotiation field is very consistent on this point: preparation is a key variable in negotiation success. The more quality time spent preparing, the better/higher outcomes negotiators get. In other words, don't think that by winging it you'll do as well as if you give it a good amount of thought and analysis beforehand.

[CommonCents]

I thought Bargaining for Advantage was pretty good.  Read it in my negotiation class w/a Wharton professor.  Agree with Course11 that preparation/knowledge is critical, of both yourself (what's your lowest deal you can accept, what do you want, are there any other options, etc) and of the other side (what are their interests?) is key.  Practice is also important.  Try negotiating everything.  If you don't ask you won't get it.

[Freedom2016]

I had not heard of Secrets of Power Negotiation. On perusing the table of contents, I am going to suggest some caution. On casual glance, it looks to be a mix of some potentially useful stuff (though it looks like some approaches highly exaggerate a sound negotiation principle) but mixed in with some potentially risky or unhelpful behavior. I would never, for example, advise my clients to "always flinch at proposals."

Some of the book's tactics may be useful in one-off, single issue, highly transactional negotiations. I can't recommend a purely tactical approach to multiparty, multi-issue, high stakes negotiations. But then, that's not what the OP asked about. :)

OP: be careful of being out-tricked by people who are long practiced, even expert, in such tactics themselves.

CommonCents, sounds like you got some grounding @ Wharton in an interest-based / mutual gains approach to negotiation. Right up my alley. :)

[Cathy]

On perusing the table of contents, I am going to suggest some caution.

Hmm. Maybe you should read the entire book before reviewing it. That's not to say you will have a different opinion after reading it, but it's unorthodox to review a book based on the table of contents. The chapter on flinching, for example, is incredibly valuable, as it describes a technique that is used by all sorts of negotiators in various contexts, and not being able to identify it would put you at a disadvantage. Does Dawson really mean that you should always use each and every one of the gambits he discusses? Obviously not.

[Freedom2016]

Hmm. I think my comments were sufficiently guarded, Cathy, and I stand by my words of caution about the use of tactics in negotiation. Sometimes they are useful; other times they are distinctly unhelpful.

In the Preface of the book the author explicitly rejects 'win-win' negotiating and in one paragraph dismisses 30+ years of research and practice in the interest-based, mutual gains approach to negotiating. According to the author, they're all wrong because the world really is win-lose and the job of the negotiator is to win it all while making the loser feel good about losing. Hmm.

Most negotiators instinctively focus on value distribution (who gets how much of this pie?), and do a terrible job at value creation (growing the pie first). If parties think the only - or most important - or first - thing they need to negotiate is 'who gets how much,' that reflects a win-lose mentality that gives rise to (among other things) books rife with tactics to 'get more than the other guy.' Am I wrong in assuming from the preface that this book is all about techniques for value distribution?

[Guesl982374]

As stated elsewhere on this forum, I negotiate for a living. My recommendations (some are repeats in this thread) and why:

Secrets of Power Negotiating:
It’s overly simple and the author is a little pompous but it gives a good base on how many people will negotiate with you. I found that some of the tactics are useful and the vast majority are useful to know so you can easily identify and defend against them when someone is using them on you.

Getting to Yes:
If Power Negotiating was Negotiation 101; this is Negotiation 201. It dives deeper into more complex negotiations and explores the idea of win-win/growing the value vs. splitting the value of a transaction.

Bargaining of Advantage:
Best out of the three; toughest to get through; the foundation from the first two books helps to maximize what you get out of this one.