Rules of thumb for a competitive negotiation: 

•   Stick to your planned target and walk away points. 
•   You are likely to get a better overall deal if you make a larger number of concession moves, but smaller in magnitude. 
•   Do not reveal your target until you reach close to it during the negotiation. 
•   Never reveal your walk away point. 
•   Get the other party to make big concessions. 
•   Keep your concessions few, slow and small. This calls for patience of the negotiator. 
•   Manage the other party?s impressions of your concerns. If you are liberal in showing your big concerns, your position becomes weaker. Hence, conceal your greatest concerns, and divert attention to lesser concerns as you negotiate. 

We noted in this section that effective negotiators are not born and learnt their skills through experience and training. As an effective negotiator you should have very clear  goals, but should also compromise or revise your goals in the light of new information. You should learn to view issues independently without linking them in a sequence. Linking can undermine a negotiation if an impasse is reached on one issue. Instead of taking a single, rigid position on an issue, you should review many more options for a position compared with an average negotiator.