Harvey Mackay Quotes

So much of life is a negotiation - so even if you're not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you.

I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person or persons into a win-win situation.

We're all negotiators.

The first principle of contract negotiations is don't remind them of what you did in the past - tell them what you're going to do in the future.

Never make too good of a deal. It sounds a little counterintuitive, but the deals that are too good of a deal for you in the long run will end up hurting you. A lot of people in our business don't realize that. They think their job is to go in a room and negotiate the highest price.

Conciliation is not capitulation, nor is compromise to be deemed equivalent to imbalanced concession.

All training is negotiation, whether you're training dogs or spouses.

The capability of negotiating... is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

Soft words and hard arguments.

You cannot just dictate at negotiations. You must also listen.

Negotiators run the risk of achieving agreement and then having to take yes for an answer when they are emotionally accustomed to confrontation.

A huge amount of negotiations and diplomacy has nothing to do with bartering or arguing but is just trying to get everyone [doing the negotiating] on the same page. It takes yours, days, even weeks sometimes.

When you negotiate a deal, you clearly know a lot about the other person.

When I'm arguing, I'm competing. I'm trying to win a game. And if that's what's called for, it's just a reaction.

How do you convince somebody to host a stranger for the weekend? That's not a trivial thing. It's not something I think you can throw technology at, marketing at, or sales at. We threw design at it because that's all we knew, and in doing so, I feel like we brought a human touch to it, which is so needed.

The sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually, 'That's right.' Before you convince them to see what you're trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, 'That's right.'

Any relationship that you have is about negotiation - anything - whether there is a written contract or not.

Business deals are successfully negotiated every day throughout America. The common thread is a mutual desire to reach an accord. And the media business is no different.

A deal is like chasing a girl. You work on it until she says, 'Yes,' for a date.

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect.

I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that's not a solution is a waste of time.

You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.

Solutions must be based on compromises.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.