“You don’t get what you deserve—you get what you negotiate”

“You don’t get what you deserve—you get what you negotiate” has been popularized by author and lecturer Dr. Chester L. Karrass. The line does not appear in the first edition of his book The Negotiating Game (1970), but it’s on the back cover of the 1992 edition. Karrass also titled a book “In business as in life—you don’t get what you deserve you get what you negotiate” (1996).
 
“You don’t get what you deserve—you get what you negotiate” is a slightly different form of the older saying “you get what you bargain(ed) for.”
 
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The negotiating game
Author: Chester Louis Karrass
Publisher: New York, World Pub. Co. [1970]
 
26 June 1986, Aberdeen (SD) American News, “Out & About,” pg. 8D, col. 3:
JOAN COLLINS: “I believe you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve.”
 
Google Books
Insider’s Guide to Environmental Negotiation
By Dale M. Gorczynski
Chelsea, MI: Lewis Publishers
1991
Pg. ?:
The old saying in negotiations is “You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”
 
Google Books
The Negotiating Game:
How to Get What You Want
By Chester Louis Karrass
New York, NY: HarperBusiness
1992
Back Cover:
IN BUSINESS, YOU DON’T GET WHAT YOU DESERVE, YOU GET WHAT YOU NEGOTIATE.
Now more than ever, successful people are turning to Karrass and The Negotiating Game.
 
Google Books
A World Waiting to Be Born:
Civility Rediscovered
By M. Scott Peck
New York, NY: Bantam Books
1993
Pg. 307:
Underneath the picture of Dr. Chester L. Karrass, the ad states in huge type:
 
IN BUSINESS,
YOU DON’T GET
WHAT YOU DESERVE.
YOU GET
WHAT YOU NEGOTIATE.
 
21 April 1993, Cedar Rapids (IA) Gazette, pg. 2, col. 1 ad:
IN REAL ESTATE, YOU DON’T GET WHAT YOU DESERVE…YOU GET WHAT YOU NEGOTIATE.
(Kelly Bemus, “The East Side Specialist”—ed.)
 
OCLC WorldCat record
“In business as in life—you don’t get what you deserve you get what you negotiate”
Author: Chester Louis Karrass
Publisher: Los Angeles : Stanford Street Press, ©1996.
Edition/Format:   Book : English
Summary:
Whether negotiating a critical agreement, closing a deal, or advancing one’s goals, almost every interaction involves some kind of negotiation, yet so few understand the process.
 
Google Books
Renegotiating Health Care:
Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration
By Leonard J. Marcus, Barry C. Dorn and Eric J. McNulty
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
2011
Pg. 93:
In his airline seat-pocket advertising, Chester Karrass (1970) and his company, claiming to have designed the most successful negotiation seminar in the United States, pronounce, “In business, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”