Entrepreneur's Startups Summer 2020

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Are you serious about wanting to be a better negotiator? Then learn to play poker. A good poker player is almost always a good negotiator. Consider the lessons poker teaches you: • Use a “poker face” to conceal your emotions.• It isn’t so much the hand you’re dealt as what the other players think you’ve got. If you get a great hand and show too much enthusiasm, the other players will fold early and leave you with a small pot, but if the other players think you have only a mediocre hand, they’ll stay in the game and leave a lot more money on the table.• Likewise, if you truly have a mediocre hand, by making the other players think you’ve got something better, they’ll yield to their insecurity and fold…

WANT MORE HOW-TO ADVICE? PICK UP OUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE, START YOUR OWN BUSINESS, AT ENTREPRENEUR.COM/SYOB. If you’re in business, you’re a negotiator. You have no choice. Business doesn’t happen unless two or more people enter into a transaction. This can be as simple as buying inventory or as complicated as a merger of two public companies. Without transactions, business doesn’t happen, and every transaction involves a certain amount of negotiation. If I had to pick one of the scariest challenges facing every first-time entrepreneur, it would be learning how to negotiate. Nobody (except perhaps a lawyer) likes to negotiate—it’s confrontational, it involves a certain amount of “playacting,” and it may put you in the position of thinking you’re “putting something over” on another human being. In a big company, you had the luxury…

You can never get a bargain on something you really, really want. In any negotiation, the side that needs the deal more is the side that gives up the most—precisely because they need the deal and can’t afford to have the other side walk away. Winning the most points in a negotiation is almost always a function of: (1) not needing the deal as much as the other side does, (2) convincing the other side they need the deal more than you do, or (3) a combination of 1 and 2. Nervous about negotiating? Here’s a great way to practice. Go to collectibles shows and look for items you don’t feel strongly about—you can take them or leave them. When you find one, approach the dealer and offer him 50 percent of…