Choose Yourself! by Altucher James

Author:Altucher, James [Altucher, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS / Entrepreneurship, SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Success
ISBN: 9781619610231
Published: 2013-06-02T21:00:00+00:00

NEGOTIATION IS WORTHLESS. SALES ARE EVERYTHING.

Why? Because when someone says “yes” to you, you are in the door. Eventually then, you’ll get the girl (or guy, whatever) in bed. If you negotiate right at the door, then you might have to walk away and try the next house. That takes time and energy, and still might not work out.

In fact, not only will “bad negotiation” often result in great sales (and frankly I’d rather be in the bed than walking door to door) but, if you are a master salesman, it will also lead to the best result.

Some examples of my “bad negotiation” style that have worked out for me:

A) I sold my first business for less than other Internet businesses were going for at the same time. It was 1998, the Internet was about to go bust, but first all the stocks went up. Maybe I sold too early. It certainly seemed that way for a while. But better to sell early than go broke. Some people say, “why not go for the long run—build a business that lasts forever. Very few businesses last forever. There’s a reason it’s called “fifteen minutes of fame.” That doesn’t apply to just people. It applies to almost everything.

B) I gave 50 percent of Stockpickr to thestreet.com for no money. Blogs were written about how bad my deal was. But when someone owns 50 percent of your business, they care about what happens. They had to buy my company four months later rather than risk someone else owning 50 percent of it. For companies they only owned 10 percent of, they gave up on them. I was able to sell about four months before the market peaked. After that, it never would’ve happened. My one employee quit on me because he was so disgusted with the deal I did. At the time it didn’t seem like it was the best negotiation. In fact, it seemed like I was a horrible negotiator. And I am. But more important is to build relationships than to kill everyone and take every last dime in a negotiation.

C) I sold Claudia’s car for $1,000 less than she wanted to sell it for. But now the car is gone. We don’t have to worry about it. That was worth $1,000 to me. And we stopped paying $600 a month to park it in downtown New York City. That’s +$1,600 in my book.

D) I got my old company to do websites for New Line Cinema for $1,000 a movie—which was one two-hundredth of what we got for doing The Matrix site—even though some of the sites were the same size as that site. Why did I do that? The best designers wanted us to hire them to work on those movies. Meanwhile, they stayed late on Saturday nights to work on Con Edison sites that paid a lot better. I didn’t negotiate at all.

E) I’ve sold my books on Kindle for almost nothing. I’ve given away books for free to people who showed up at my talks or signed up for my newsletter.

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