Negotiating the Sweet Spot

The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table

By: Leigh Thompson

Narrated by: Leigh Thompson

Everybody negotiates at various points every day, be it in life or business, and it’s important to get it right.

On average, people leave about 20% of potential mutual gains untapped in any negotiation. This is akin to taking 20% of the value in any deal and dumping it into a garbage canister. Finding that hidden 20%, the “sweet spot,” is a skill that takes practice but is also one that anybody can learn.

Leigh Thompson offers best practices and tools within this book to use in daily negotiations and conflict situations. She calls these strategies “hacks” because they work but don’t require a lot of investment, training, expense, and time. You don’t have to be a CEO, senior VP, or regional brand manager to learn how to find the sweet spot in life’s negotiations.

In Negotiating the Sweet Spot, benefits include learning the following:

• Understanding where the sweet spot is in the deals you negotiate
• Adopting a big-picture mind-set when approaching any negotiation
• Seeing negotiations less as win-lose battles and more as opportunities to use problem-solving skills
• Utilizing a tool kit of “hacks” that will work in any negotiation and have been proven effective by a top expert in the field

Negotiating the Sweet Spot walks people of all skill and experience levels through simple and proven techniques that are sure to result in better outcomes for all parties and that uncover the hidden value that exists in any negotiation.

©2020 Leigh Thompson (P)2020 HarperCollins Leadership

Critic reviews

'Any relationship, be it personal, business, or otherwise, needs interactions that yield consistent win-win results if it is to succeed over time. Dr. Leigh Thompson has applied her expertise in comprehensive research to take this 'why' we recognize and explain the 'what' behind it and the 'how' to achieve it. Translating this research to application, Dr. Thompson, the educator, uses her mastery of guiding students from theoretical knowledge to effective application by providing a toolkit of easy-to-use hacks and relatable anecdotes. Negotiating the Sweet Spot will certainly spend more time open on my desk than it will sitting on my shelf.'—Stan Russell, Executive Director of Alexion Pharmaceuticals

'Thompson's Negotiating the Sweet Spot provides valuable lessons for navigating conflict in personal and business life. Each of the stories and best practices in this book leads the reader on a deeper dive into how to resolve, finesse, learn, and thrive when seated at the negotiation table of life.'—Lin Shiu Yi, Owner of Technigroup Far East and Owner and CEO Cell Viable

'Leigh Thompson has done it again. This time, she applies years of research and classroom experience to the negotiation process. Thompson distills the behavioral science into simple methods we can all use. Negotiating the Sweet Spot is a must-read for practicing attorneys and others who want to negotiate more successfully in all aspects of their lives.'—Karen McGaffey, Partner and National Environment, Energy, and Resources Practice Chair at Perkins Coie LLP

Negotiating the sweet spot

It gives core techniques that are easily understood and apply to every typo of situation. The list of hacks is great.

Fire hose

The content is worth it, but the reader sprints through the book, taking no natural breaks between chapters or paragraphs. One needs to manually pause the book where the reader should have to make sense of the content