10:00am | Exactly one month has passed in 2012 and it is hard to swallow that we are still in dire economic times. If you add up the expenses you spent last month, would you be able to make the following — and rather audacious — statement: “I saved over $1400 on everything from auto repairs to groceries by negotiating”?

Meet Nancy James Fox, Long Beach’s own negotiator and the woman who owns the former quote. She opines that negotiation training is essential, particularly for the entities that would be seemingly unable to access such training: small businesses and non-profit and arts organizations. The global recession has impacted these specific sectors to the point which, unlike large corporations, they have to cut what are deemed as non-operation costs, such as negotiation training, which provide benefits that are often difficult to measure.

Fox maintains that most people don’t need that corporate level of training to start making better deals right away — and this week, she wants to prove it. Her negotiating business, Negotiation Fox, opened this week in Long Beach and she plans to change the local landscape of small business, non-profit, and the arts. Her approach is rather simple, despite counterparts who claim that costs such as negotiation training are excessively luxurious during trying financial times. “False. Negotiation is an essential life skill [that is not relegated to corporate America]. It includes everything from closing a business deal to deciding who’s going to walk the dog.”

According to Fox, everything can be negotiated — the key being, of course, the fact that one has to ask. Fox says her workshops, running half- or full-day, give people the skills and confidence to get more in every situation, whether business or personal.  “We espouse a win-win negotiation strategy that improves your bottom line, and your relationship with the other side.”  Fox learned the value of negotiating in a thirty-year career that included leadership roles in luxury consumer goods and the arts community, most recently as the Executive Director of the Long Beach Symphony.   

In other words: let’s make a deal — and it better be a good one.