The Work Smarter Guide to Negotiation: The Insider's Guide to Negotiating Like a Pro (Work Smarter Series)

Ditch the scripts and tricks for a smarter approach


Kirk Kinnell is a hostage negotiator and counter-terrorism expert with decades of experience. Jim Houghton has conducted complex M&A deals worth hundreds of millions. Despite their dramatically different backgrounds, they share the philosophy that negotiation is not a zero-sum game and that trust, integrity and fairness are essential to achieving a successful outcome.

This book combines their vast knowledge to show you how to prepare for and conduct negotiations in almost any environment. What holds true for ending a siege or keeping a hostage alive could be the key to getting your toddler off to bed or agreeing a pay rise with your boss. Their invaluable advice will help you be resourceful and calm amid the stress and volatility of real-world negotiations.

In business, this equates to winning repeat business and making more profit. In our personal lives, it means family harmony and better communities. If you are booking a wedding caterer or finding a builder for that long hoped-for renovation, it means seeing eye to eye and helping everyone get what they need on terms acceptable to them. And in hostage situations, it means saving lives. These techniques work at the highest level, and they will work for any situation you might face.

The Work Smarter series:
The 'Work Smarter' series of books provide shortcuts, tips and life-hacks for the development of essential business skills. The books bring together accomplished industry experts who have learned their trades at the coalface. They teach the skills ambitious businesspeople need in order to tip the playing field in their favour. It is the pirate equivalent of business advice; the antidote to conventional wisdom; 'smarter' practice over 'best practice'.

For the past twenty years, JIM HOUGHTON has been one of the foremost deal leads in the international marketing services industry. He's negotiated deals from every angle and in all the major international industry hubs, and is a partner at Waypoint Partners. Previously, as the European corporate development lead for the world's then largest and most acquisitive holding company, Omnicom Group, Jim delivered more than forty transactions. Seeing the value unintentionally being left on the table by both sides, Jim moved to M&A advisory and has successfully led transactions with buyers and sellers from across the globe, acting on both the sell side and buy side.
M&A in the marketing services industry offers the perfect storm of big businesses and private equity investors crashing together with passionate owner-managers in the pursuit of rapid international expansion and wealth. Big egos and high stakes make for intense and complex negotiations, and Jim has an enviable track record at finding paths that get these deals done.

KIRK KINNELL brings the skills of hostage negotiation into the corporate world and everyday life. He joined the police in 1987 and worked in hostage negotiation for over two decades. In that time he was deployed on hundreds of hostage and crisis incidents, including as lead negotiator when UK nationals had been kidnapped overseas. He was made Head of Hostage Negotiation and Armed Policing in Scotland in 2015. Kirk was also a leading member of the UK National Negotiator Group and Global International Negotiators Working Group. His global counter-terrorism strategy and training programme was adopted by the nations in the group and is still used today.
Kirk lectures on negotiation at universities and conferences all over the world, including Harvard Business School and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris (HEC). He has instructed at the Hostage Crisis Negotiator Course of the FBI, trained the Philippine National Police and delivers training to the private sector on corporate negotiations, listening and influencing skills, leadership and conflict resolution through his specialist consulting firm, Negotiated Resolutions.