Negotiating Tips

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Negotiating tips

Transcript of Negotiating Tips

Page 1: Negotiating Tips

For more information contact:US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com

©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited.

e-mail: [email protected]

— Breaking a Negotiating Impasse —

— How Do You Deal With Deadlines —

— You Need Time To Think —

— Making Careful Concessions —

— Assess Your Negotiating Profile —

— Opening The Negotiation —

— Negotiating Under Pressure —— Negotiating Under Pressure —

— Questions During a Negotiation —

— Negotiating Via E-mail —

— Questions in Negotiating —

This eBook includes the following10 Negotiating Tips

10 Negotiating Tips

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com  ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

About Karrass

The most successful negotiation seminar in the United States was created and designed by Dr. Chester L. Karrass. Dr. Karrass brings extensive experience, advanced academic credentials in negotiation techniques, and over 45 years experience in seminar delivery no other negotiator in the country can match. After earning an Engineering degree from the University of Colorado and a Masters in Business from Columbia University, Dr. Karrass became a negotiator for the Hughes organization. There he won the first Howard Hughes Doctoral Fellowship Award in Business, and spent three years conducting advanced research and experimentation in negotiation techniques before earning his Doctorate from the University of Southern California. He then returned to Hughes as a negotiation consultant.

In 1968, Dr. Karrass used his research and experience to develop Effective Negotiating®. This powerful, pioneering seminar was designed to help business people master the strategies, tactics, and psychological insights of negotiating.

Dr. Karrass began these seminars at a time most business executives and professionals did not realize how much negotiation was a part of their daily business lives. Today, more than one million professionals, including salespeople, buyers, corporate leaders, managers, engineers, financial officers, C.E.O.s, and international business people have attended Dr. Karrass's Effective Negotiating® seminar. Many of these participants have attended the Effective Negotiating® seminar In-House at their companies, and most of the Fortune 500 corporations currently license the KARRASS program. Dr. Karrass is the author of five books on negotiation, including ‘The Negotiating Game’, ‘Give and Take’ and ‘In Business as in Life –You Don't Get What You Deserve You Get What You Negotiate’, and 'Negotiating Effectively Within Your Own Organization – Gain Acceptance for Your Ideas, Connect With Others and Resolve Differences Creatively'. Best sellers in their field.

www.karrass.com

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Breaking A Negotiating Impasse by Dr. Chester L. Karrass You did everything right, yet you find yourself at a negotiating impasse with the other party. What do you do?

Too many negotiations break down for the wrong reasons.

Negotiating impasses are not always caused by world-shattering issues or great matters of economics. In my experience, many breakdowns during negotiation are the result of simple things like personality differences, fear of loss-of-face, troubles within the organizations, a poor working relationship with the boss, or the sheer inability to make a decision. Any consideration of how to break a negotiating impasse must take into account the human factor. It may not be what you do, but how you do it that becomes the critical factor.

I have found several negotiation skills useful in averting or breaking a negotiating impasse:

1. If the negotiating impasse involves money – offer to change the shape of the money. A larger deposit, a shorter pay period, or a different payment stream works wonders – even when the total amount of money involved is the same.

2. Change a team member or the team leader.

3. Eliminate some of the uncertainty. This can be done by postponing some difficult parts of the agreement for renegotiation at a later time when you have more information.

4. Change the scope of risk sharing. A willingness to share unknown losses or gains may restore a lagging discussion.

5. Change the time scale of performance. Maybe it's OK to complete 60% over 4 months rather than 3 months. It might be easier to start slower and still complete the job within the desired timeframe.

6. Assure satisfaction by recommending grievance procedures or guarantees.

7. Move from a competitive mode to a cooperative problem-solving mode. Get engineers involved with engineers, operations people with operations people, and bosses with bosses.

8. Change the type of contract: fixed price, indexed or scaled price, time and materials, percentage of savings, percentage of increased sales, percentage of profit created.

9. Change the base for calculating percentages: a smaller percentage of a larger base or a larger percentage of a smaller but more predictable base may get things back on track.

10. Create a list of options or alternatives that need to be discussed. Or change the order of discussion.

11. Suggest changes in the specifications or terms.

Impasse breakers work because they re-engage the other party in discussions with his or her organization and team members. These icebreakers help create a climate in which new alternatives can be developed. Surprisingly, sometimes the introduction of new alternatives has the effect of making old propositions look better than ever.

Try to pre-plan a face-saving way to reopen discussions should an impasse occurs. If you set the stage before the impasse sets in, you can better handle the problem.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

How Do You Deal With Deadlines? by Dr. Chester L. Karrass Deadlines force action. It's no accident that tax returns are filed on April 15, that Christmas presents are bought on December 24th, or that political lobbyists get bills passed just before adjournment. We accept many deadlines that are part of our daily lives. Work starts at 9AM and stops at 5PM, airplanes leave at their scheduled time, bills are due on the 10th of the month. We respond to many deadlines almost without awareness. Deadlines pressure you into making an either-or choice. You can choose to accept the deadline, or ignore it and live with the consequences. Be skeptical of deadlines. Sometimes they are real and sometimes they can be negotiated. Many deadlines are not as real as you might think they are. Hotels will let you stay beyond 1PM without charge. Bids due on the tenth may be accepted on the eleventh. The offer that was to expire on June 1 is usually available on June 2. Newspaper reporters miss their deadlines, but I've yet to run into a blank column in a newspaper. Of course, when you are negotiating, there is a risk in not believing a deadline. The more you know about the other party and their organization the better you will be able to determine if a deadline is real. Remember—time is power. Most of us go into a negotiation with a self-imposed weakness. We are always aware of the time pressure on ourselves. That knowledge makes us less effective than we could be. What we should concentrate on are the deadlines that constrain the other party. If you have deadlines, there are probably deadlines on the other person. These three questions will help guide you out of the deadline trap: * What self-imposed or organization-imposed deadlines am I under that make it harder for me to negotiate? * Are the deadlines imposed on me by myself, or my organization, real? Can I negotiate an extension with my own people? * What deadlines are putting pressure on the other party and their organization? Be wary and skeptical when a deadline is impacting your ability to negotiate the best agreement. Time limits have a way of hypnotizing us. We tend to accept them even when we shouldn't. That's why you should put a deadline on any offer you put on the table. It may help motivate the other side to make the decision you want.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

You Need Time To Think by Dr. Chester L. Karrass If you are going to make the most of the negotiation skills you learned at my Effective Negotiating Seminar, and maximize your opportunities to craft truly creative, both-win agreements, build some thinking time into your negotiations. Never go into a negotiation without first considering how to give yourself time to think. Build a thinking buffer to keep yourself from being pushed into a decision. Many American business people conduct negotiations like a Ping-Pong tournament. Buyer and seller, engineer and consultant, two division managers -- all are in a big hurry. A few quick slashes and returns, and it's over. Other cultures, like Europeans and Asians, take a different approach. They are not so hasty. They recognized the obvious: The person who has time to think, thinks better! Look at the diplomatic world. Diplomats conduct negotiations with short sessions and long recesses. A question raised one week may not be answered until weeks later. Demands and offers are usually made in writing to give both parties time to respond in a sensible way. Quick deals are rare. The suggestions that follow are effective. They work. 1. Get the other party to present their position before breaking for the day. 2. Arrange to get an important surprise visitor or phone call at some crucial point. 3. Take a restroom break. 4. Get thirsty or hungry. 5. Change a member of the negotiating team. 6. Don't have the back-up evidence available. 7. Plead ignorance. Ask for time to learn more about it. 8. Have your expert unavailable. 9. Load down the other party with documents, data, or drawings. 10. Use an interpreter or third party. Interpreters can be technical people, lawyers, your boss, or translators. In any case, they can slow things down. 11. If you are on a team, develop rules among your people on how questions will be fielded. Sometimes it is best to have all questions directed only to one person, to give others time to think about the answers. 12. Recess and caucus frequently. It is remarkable what we humans see in hindsight. Giving yourself time to think changes hindsight to foresight and it will make you a better negotiator.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Making Careful Concessions by Dr. Chester L. Karrass In most negotiations, both sides move from their original positions. Each side compromises by making some concessions to reach an agreement. Careful concessions help guide you towards a mutually satisfying agreement. Here are a few things I try to keep in mind when making concessions: 1. Never give a concession without obtaining one in return. Don't give concessions away free or without serious discussion. A concession granted too easily does not contribute to the other party's satisfaction nearly as much as one that they struggle to obtain. 2. Concessions that are poorly made can serve to further separate the parties rather than bring them together. A concession may serve to raise the aspiration level of the other party if it is interpreted as a signal of your weakness. How a concession is made is as important as the value of the concession. 3. Never lose track of how many concessions you have made. The overall number is important and can provide bargaining leverage. Keep a written record of your concessions. 4. Flexibility is like money in a checking account. Do not use up your "bank account of flexibility." Every concession should bring you closer to some goal. If you use up all of your potential concessions your bank account is down to zero and deadlock is harder to avoid. 5. Don't feel constrained to stick with a concession on a specific issue. The whole agreement is more important than individual issues. Indicate to the other party that all concessions you give are tentative and based on a satisfactory overall agreement (i.e. "tie a string"). Some people tend to stick to interim concessions when they should not. They fear that their integrity may be questioned if they retreat from concessions they have made. Such rigidity can be costly.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Assess Your Negotiating Profile by Dr. Chester L. Karrass Negotiation is one of the most difficult jobs a person can do. It requires a combination of diverse traits and skills. The process of negotiating demands not only good business judgment but also a keen understanding of human nature. I know of no other area in business where the alchemy of power, persuasion, economics, motivation, and organizational pressure come together in so concentrated a fashion and so narrow a time frame. Nowhere is the return on investment potential so high! Here are some of the attributes I look for in a good negotiator: • An ability to negotiate effectively with members of their own organization and win their confidence. • A willingness and commitment to plan carefully; know the product/project, the rules and the alternatives; and the courage to probe and check information. • Good business judgment; an ability to discern the real bottom-line issues. • The ability to tolerate conflict and ambiguity. • The courage to commit oneself to higher targets and to take the risks that go with it. • The wisdom to be patient and thereby to wait for the story to unfold. • A willingness to get involved with the other party and their organization—that is, to understand all the various personal and business issues. • A commitment to integrity and mutual satisfaction. • An ability to listen open-mindedly. • The insight to view the negotiation from a personal standpoint—that is, to see the hidden personal issues that could affect the outcome. • Self-confidence based on knowledge and planning. • A willingness to use experts; an understanding of how a team might be valuable in the negotiation. • A stable person; one who has learned to negotiate with oneself and to laugh a little; one who doesn't have too strong a need to be liked so they can feel free to disagree when the need arises. Common sense and research tell us that skilled negotiators create better agreements. We are not born with these skills, it takes practice and persistence, but they can be learned!

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Opening The Negotiation by Dr. Chester L. Karrass Many people stumble at the opening of their negotiation. This can set the stage for a less than optimum outcome. Here are just a few points I find helpful to keep in mind when I start a negotiation. 1. Don't set your initial offer near your final objective. Give yourself room to negotiate. It doesn't matter what you are negotiating—hours on a project, scope-of-work, specifications, price, who's going to do what, etc. When you start any negotiation you must assume the other party will always put their maximum positions on the table first. Equally important is the fact that they probably will not disclose to you the minimum they are willing to accept. Don't be shy about asking for everything you might want and more during a negotiation. 2. Give yourself enough time to negotiate. Before you start make sure you have allowed a realistic amount of time for the negotiation process to take place. Hours, weeks or months—it will frequently take longer than you expect. Rushing through the negotiation almost always works against you. 3. Don't assume you know what the other party wants. It is far more prudent to assume that you do not know and then proceed to discover the realities of the situation by patient testing and questioning. If you proceed to negotiate a deal on the basis of your own untested estimate, you are making a serious mistake. 4. Do not assume that your aspiration level is high enough. It is possible that your demands are too modest, or too easy to achieve. The other party may not know what they want or may have a set of values quite different from your own. 5. Finally, never accept the first offer. Many people do if the offer is as good as they expected or hoped to get. There are two good reasons not to accept: First, the other party is probably willing to make some concessions. Second, if you take the first offer, the other party is often left with the feeling that they were foolish for starting too low. In any case, the negotiator who takes the first offer too fast makes a mistake.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Negotiating Under Pressure  by Dr. Chester L. Karrass    The current economic climate and the threat of war is creating pressure on many negotiators. Decisions are being delayed. Buyers are being asked to bring costs down. Salespeople are being asked to increase volumes and margins. Manufacturing people are being asked to increase plant efficiencies. Engineers and managers are being asked to do more with less. You may be feeling negotiating pressure from a variety of sources. Now, more than ever, you must remember that in any negotiation there are pressures and problems on BOTH sides. Yet we almost always focus on our own problems and pressures and forget about the other party. One of the key concepts discussed in the Effective Negotiating Seminar you attended was "you've got more power than you think." Just the RECOGNITION of the pressures on the other party will increase your power and strengthen your negotiating position. You know your needs—your pressure. The other party has needs, which they feel as their pressure. Remember to ask yourself—"WHAT'S ON THEIR SHEET?" This will help you identify the other party's pressures. Then try to use the negotiation as a tool to help you find opportunities for a Both-Win solution—an agreement that takes the pressure off both you and the other party.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Questions During a Negotiation by Dr. Chester L. Karrass Negotiation is a process of discovery. Questions are raised and answers given, statements made and rebuttals offered. During a negotiation there often is great pressure placed on you to provide quick statements and sensible answers to hard questions. The trouble is most of us need time to think. We often find we get our best answers in the car driving home. “Why didn’t I say . . . ?” Here are a few negotiating techniques to help you improve your ability to handle questions during a negotiation. Perhaps the most important thing you can do when negotiating is to write down in advance the questions most likely to arise. Get one of your associates to play the role of a devil’s advocate and have them raise a host of hard questions likely to emerge in your upcoming negotiation. The more time you have to think about answers to these questions the better your answers will be. The suggestions that follow work in any question-and-answer situation. Those of you who have faced a barrage of questions will recognize their value. 1. Give yourself the time you need to think. Quick answers are risky. 2. Never answer until you clearly understand the question. 3. Recognize that some questions do not deserve answers. 4. Answers can be given that satisfy part of a question rather than all of it. 5. If you want to evade a question, provide an answer to a question that was not asked. 6. Some answers can be postponed on the basis of incomplete knowledge or not remembering. 7. Make the other party work for answers. Get them to clarify the question. 8. When the other person interrupts you, let them talk. 9. Correct answers in a negotiation are not necessarily good answers. They may be foolish. 10. Don’t elaborate. You may disclose more information than is necessary. The art of answering questions lies in knowing what to say and what not to say. It does not lie in being right or wrong. There are few yes-or-no answers. I’ll never forget observing one witness at a series of senate hearings. For almost two days the witness sat before the senators and was asked a barrage of questions about where, and to whom the money went. Hardly a question was answered. The witness never quite understood the question, so he kept answering questions that were never asked. He smiled a lot, never got angry, and remained confused to the end. It was the senators that finally gave up.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Negotiating Via E-mail? by Dr. Chester L. Karrass E-mail is a common component of today’s negotiations. It is, quite simply, an efficient way to communicate. However, e-mail brings new dynamics to your negotiation. Here’s what the research has turned up. E-mail negotiations: * appear to take longer than face-to-face negotiations. * provide less satisfaction than face-to-face negotiations. * are perceived as less fair than face-to-face negotiations. * are more impersonal, allowing less rapport to be established. * are less diplomatic and often use blunt, misconstrued messages. * lead to more deadlocks, misinterpretations, and mistrust. It would be wise to adopt a few key negotiating techniques to help overcome some of these potential negotiation problems. The lack of a strong personal relationship with the other party is the big one. This can lead to hostility and a greater risk of deadlock. Face-to-face negotiations provide an opportunity to ask many clarifying questions, build rapport, observe non-verbal indicators (i.e. body language) and tone of voice indicators. E-mail is good for transmitting factual information, but it’s not the best medium for observing or expressing feelings, attitude, emotions or tone. It is harder to get a feel for how strong the other person’s position is or how much pressure they’re under. Best e-mail Negotiating Practices 1. Use a ‘blended’ negotiation. Start the negotiation with a personal telephone call. Talk informally and use this as an opportunity to plan your negotiation. As the negotiation proceeds, supplement your e-mails with an occasional ‘real time’ telephone call or actual face-to-face meeting. 2. In your e-mails share personal information about yourself and invest some time developing a personal relationship with the other party. Use ‘non-task’ chatting about personal items. Maybe e-mail pictures to each other so you can see what the other person looks like. 3. Establish some common areas of interest – same professional association, same college, lived in the same state or city, etc. Discover what you have in common. The more areas of common interest the better. This helps develop trust, encourages honesty and builds rapport. 4. Try using some ‘emoticons’ (symbols to express emotion). ;-) for wink, :-) for smile, :-I for indifference, or :-( for unhappy. !! can express anger, excitement, happiness as well as urgency – be careful. 5. Frequently summarize, list any concessions you have made and provide assurances: “What we have achieved so far….” “Susan, we’ve made great progress. . .” 6. Include positive signals and refer to the relationship: “Bob, thanks for your flexibility on this issue . . .” 7. E-mails provide a wonderful way to create a record of your negotiation. Build folders for your e-mail correspondence – remember the power of record keeping. 8. Be careful when replying and forwarding e-mails. Understand the power of copying to other people (i.e. other departments, management, team members). How much information are you forwarding (e.g. just your last e-mail, or the last seven e-mails and all associated replies and attachments)? Is this what you want to do? 9. One final test – do you want to press the send button? Is this what you want to say (i.e. proof read, is the tone right)? Ask yourself, can I wait until tomorrow to send this (i.e. it might be wise to think about it overnight)? Don’t shoot off a quick reply when you are angry. Most of us live to regret it. E-mail negotiations are not inherently good or bad – just different than face-to-face negotiations. Since almost all of us use e-mail, we need to be careful not to let this medium impede the negotiating process.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

Questions In Negotiating by Dr. Chester L. Karrass Questions are mind-openers and can lead both parties in a negotiation to a more active involvement with each other. This greater involvement is the key element to more satisfactory negotiations. During a negotiation, involvement helps improve the probability of an agreement, and acts as a catalyst to help you discover “Both-Win” potentials that may not have been visible at the start of your negotiation. The most direct route to understanding is through good questions. The trouble is most of us think of our best questions after the negotiation is over – while we’re in the car going home or lying in bed the night after the negotiation. You will discover more information and gain better understanding if you use “open-ended” questions. These are questions starting with:

• What, Where, When, How; • Or, Help me understand; Explain to me; Describe to me; • Be careful of “Why” – it may sound like a challenge.

Question-asking ability can be improved by following a few, rather easy “dos and don’ts.” First, let’s look at the “don’ts”:

1. Don’t ask antagonistic questions unless you want a fight. 2. Don’t ask questions which question the honesty of the other party. It won’t make him or her honest! 3. Don’t stop listening in your eagerness to ask a question. Write your questions down and wait. 4. Don’t act like a lawyer. A negotiation is not a courtroom trial. 5. Don’t pick just any time to ask a question. Wait for the right time. 6. Don’t ask a question just to show how smart you are. 7. Don’t cancel out your teammates’ good question by asking your question before their question has been answered.

These “don’ts” have one thing in common. They are communication barriers. They block information flow. Now the “dos”:

1. Do get your questions ready in advance. Few of us are bright enough to think fast on our feet. 2. Do use every early contact as a fact-finding opportunity. The best questions and answers come months before the

negotiation, not at the negotiating table. 3. Do have a brainstorming question-asking session among your own people. You’ll be surprised at the number of interesting

questions they will raise. 4. Do have the courage to ask questions that pry into the other person’s affairs. Most of us don’t like to. 5. Do have the courage to ask what may appear to be dumb questions. 6. Do ask questions like a “country boy.” You will find this attitude encourages good answers. 7. Do ask questions of the other person’s assistant, production person, engineer, technicians, etc. 8. Do have the courage to ask questions that may be evaded. This in itself tells a story. 9. Do take frequent recess periods to think of new questions. 10. Do be quiet after you ask a question. 11. Do be persistent in following up your question if the answer is evasive or poor. 12. Do ask some questions for which you already have the answers. They can help you calibrate the credibility of the other

person. Questions and answers can be looked at as a negotiation in their own right. Every question has the character of a demand. Every answer is a concession. Those who demand better answers are more likely to get them. This added information helps you conduct your negotiation and create better outcomes.

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For more information contact: US Sales at 323-866-3800 or KARRASS Worldwide Sales in the UK at 44 1202 853210 www.karrass.com ©2012 KARRASS LTD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without expressed written permission of KARRASS LTD. is prohibited. e-mail: [email protected]

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