The choice of a suitable strategy and clever and surprising use provide the best chances for successful conclusion of the transaction – for both parties.

The management and strategy consultant Rainer K. Lessing from Hamburg has been giving intensive consultancy and training with the Far Eastern wisdom of Sun Tzu for more than ten years now. He offers stratagem workshops, in which management and negotiation conduct is reflected and practised. "Stratagem is a neutral, global word for the term "cunning", which normally has a negative association", says Rainer K. Lessing. "'Cunning' in Chinese has the same characters as 'wisdom' and means: "Obtaining victory by generating something clever and out-of-the-ordinary.' In this context, cunning can comprise words or deeds. 

For example according to stratagem 27: "Play the fool without losing your head." This is precisely the tactic of the famous TV inspector Columbo: "Put a good face on the matter". Or according to number 17, the bait stratagem: "Throw a brick to get a jade". This cunning is part of the repertoire of any skilful seller granting a bonus or a rebate in order to conclude a transaction.

A popular reaction by superiors in salary negotiations is reference to limited budgets. Some bosses even then symbolically pull our their empty trouser pockets and make use of stratagem 32: "Simulate the distress of an empty city". Or they refer to the fact that the salary structure in the company no longer fits with stratagem 3: "Kill with someone else's knife", like the saying in the west "put a front man up for something."

The conclusion drawn by the workshop participants was very positive. The practical negotiation training in groups with role play on the basis of real cases from practice which were prepared from the midst of the participants.

As a technical highlight, each of the four negotiation teams was accompanied in the seminar by the use of an App on Apple's iPhone mobile telephone, an American high technology. This sensational innovation, the "Business Excellence 36" App, which is completely ready for use, was professionally used by the participants for their teamwork. It was developed for strategic negotiation management, preparation and recording of the results with Sun Tzu's 36 stratagems.

From May 2010, this iPhone and iPad implementation jointly produced by Rainer K. Lessing and Marcus Krefft, CEO from Seemay Inc. USA, will be available in German and English. Further language implementations will follow. In this way, the new generation of negotiation managers builds a bridge across 2,500 years in local and international projects.

With this strategic negotiation language, which is standardised world-wide, in various native languages, the users increase their negotiation efficiency securely into a new dimension. Their objective will be to make use of the absolutely new kind of software technology to raise hidden profit potentials on both sides of the negotiations.

As the result of the seminar, some Young Professionals have already been able to take along specific ideas for their next forthcoming negotiations. In Berlin, the first regular strategy meetings have already been started by participants of the YP's with the objective of an intensive exchange of experience with the 36 Chinese stratagems.