3 Brilliant Negotiating Tips I Learned From Steve Jobs

By Peter Cohan via Inc.com

In June 2007, when Apple’s first iPhone was sold, cell phones were already a big market. But by 2009, Apple ended up with 30 percent of it.

How did Jobs convince AT&T to give Apple a groundbreaking deal in exchange for the exclusive right to service the iPhone in the U.S.? When he worked at telecommunications consulting firm, Adventis, Raj Aggarwal met with Jobs twice a week for several months.

In an August 15 interview with me, Aggarwal explained how Steve Jobs persuaded AT&T to provide service for the iPhone with an unprecedented revenue sharing agreement. According to the Harvard Business School case, Apple Inc. in 2010 AT&T, the exclusive U.S. operator for the iPhone, agreed to an unprecedented revenue sharing agreement — Apple got about $10 a month from each iPhone customer’s bill — which gave Apple control over distribution, pricing, and branding.”

Aggarwal, whose Adventis consulting stint with Jobs occurred in “early 2005,” said that Jobs was able to pull off the AT&T deal because of his personal involvement in the details of the iPhone, his efforts to build relationships with carriers, his willingness to make demands that others perceived as outrageous, and his nerve to bet major resources on that vision.

Here is how you can apply Jobs’ three strategies to your start-up.

1. Dig into the key details.

A great entrepreneur has to balance the urge to dive into all the details to ensure the start-up runs perfectly and the need to delegate work to the people she hires. But there are times when you have to dig into the details - especially when your start-up’s future depends on getting them right….