— Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
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How To Spot The Liars And Ensure Follow-Through From Everyone Else
This question tends to have the positive effect of making the other side take a good look at your situation. This positive dynamic is what I refer to as “forced empathy,” and it’s especially effective if leading up to it you’ve already been empathic with your counterpart. This engages the dynamic of reciprocity to lead them to do something for you.
forces your counterpart to consider and explain how a deal will be implemented. A deal is nothing without good implementation.
The Rule of Three is simply getting the other guy to agree to the same thing three times in the same conversation. It’s tripling the strength of whatever dynamic you’re trying to drill into at the moment. In doing so, it uncovers problems before they happen. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. When I first learned this skill, my biggest fear was how to avoid sounding like a broken record or coming off as really pushy. The answer, I learned, is to vary your tactics. The first time they agree to something or give you a commitment, that’s No. 1. For No. 2 you might label or summarize what they said so they answer, “That’s right.” And No. 3 could be a calibrated “How” or “What” question about implementation that asks them to explain what will constitute success, something like “What do we do if we get off track?” Or the three times might just be the same calibrated question phrased three different ways, like “What’s the biggest challenge you faced? What are we up against here? What do you see as being the most difficult thing to get around?”
“My name is Chris. What’s the Chris discount?”
“Your offer is very generous, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me” is an elegant second way to say “No.” This well-tested response avoids making a counteroffer, and the use of “generous” nurtures your counterpart to live up to the word. The “I’m sorry” also softens the “No” and builds empathy.
How To Get Your Price
“I can pay $ 30,000,” I said. “And I can pay it up front, all cash. I’ll write a check today for the full amount. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I just can’t pay any more.”
“It’s a beautiful truck. Really amazing. I can’t tell you how much I’d love to have it. It’s worth more than what I’m offering. I’m sorry, this is really embarrassing. I just can’t do that price.”
“Wow, your offer is very generous and this is the car of my dreams,” I said. “I really wish I could do that. I really do. This is so embarrassing. I simply can’t.”
“I am so grateful. You’ve been very generous, and I can’t thank you enough. The truck is no doubt worth more than my price,” I said. “I’m sorry, I just can’t do that.”
If you have identified yourself as an Accommodator, stick to your ability to be very likable, but do not sacrifice your objections. Not only do the other two types need to hear your point of view; if you are dealing with another Accommodator they will welcome it.
when it comes to negotiating, the Golden Rule is wrong. The Black Swan rule is don’t treat others the way you want to be treated; treat them the way they need to be treated.
when you feel you’re being dragged into a haggle you can detour the conversation to the nonmonetary issues that make any final price work.
“What else would you be able to offer to make that a good price for me?” And if the other side pushes you to go first, wriggle from his grip. Instead of naming a price, allude to an incredibly high number that someone else might charge.
And so when someone puts out a ridiculous offer, one that really pisses you off, take a deep breath, allow little anger, and channel it—at the proposal, not the person—and say, “I don’t see how that would ever work.”
Ackerman plan. Before you head into the weeds of bargaining, you’ll need a plan of extreme anchor, calibrated questions, and well-defined offers. Remember: 65, 85, 95, 100 percent. Decreasing raises and ending on nonround numbers will get your counterpart to believe that he’s squeezing you for all you’re worth when you’re really getting to the number you want.
How To Create Breakthroughs By Revealing The Unknown Unknowns
conventional questioning and research techniques are designed to confirm known knowns and reduce uncertainty. They don’t dig into the unknown.
The party who feels they have more to lose and are the most afraid of that loss has less leverage, and vice versa. To get leverage, you have to persuade your counterpart that they have something real to lose if the deal falls through.
Using your counterpart’s religion is extremely effective in large part because it has authority over them. The other guy’s “religion” is what the market, the experts, God, or society—whatever matters to him—has determined to be fair and just. And people defer to that authority.
Similarities as shallow as club memberships or college alumni status increase rapport. That’s why in many cultures negotiators spend large amounts of time building rapport before they even think of offers.
Every engineer, every executive, every child—all of us want to believe we are capable of the extraordinary. As children, our daydreams feature ourselves as primary players in great moments: an actor winning an Oscar, an athlete hitting the game-winning shot. As we grow older, however, our parents, teachers, and friends talk more of what we can’t and shouldn’t do than what is possible. We begin to lose faith. But when someone displays a passion for what we’ve always wanted and conveys a purposeful plan of how to get there, we allow our perceptions of what’s possible to change. We’re all hungry for a map to joy, and when someone is courageous enough to draw it for us, we naturally follow.
You’re going to have to embrace regular, thoughtful conflict as the basis of effective negotiation—and of life.
genuine, honest conflict between people over their goals actually helps energize the problem-solving process in a collaborative way.
Appendix: Prepare A Negotiation One Sheet
When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion—you fall to your highest level of preparation.
SECTION I: THE GOAL Think through best/ worst-case scenarios but only write down a specific goal that represents the best case.
my advice is to just stick with the high-end goal, as it will motivate and focus your psychological powers, priming you to think you are facing a “loss” for any term that falls short. Decades of goal-setting research is clear that people who set specific, challenging, but realistic goals end up getting better deals than those who don’t set goals or simply strive to do their best.
SECTION II: SUMMARY Summarize and write out in just a couple of sentences the known facts that have led up to the negotiation.
You must be able to summarize a situation in a way that your counterpart will respond with a “That’s right.” If they don’t, you haven’t done it right.
SECTION III: LABELS/ ACCUSATION AUDIT Prepare three to five labels to perform an accusation audit.
extract information from your counterpart, or defuse an accusation: It seems like _________ is valuable to you. It seems like you don’t like _________. It seems like you value __________. It seems like _________ makes it easier. It seems like you’re reluctant to _________.
SECTION IV: CALIBRATED QUESTIONS Prepare three to five calibrated questions to reveal value to you and your counterpart and identify and overcome potential deal killers. Effective negotiators look past their counterparts’ stated positions (what the party demands) and delve into their underlying motivations (what is making them want what they want).
What are we trying to accomplish? How is that worthwhile? What’s the core issue here? How does that affect things? What’s the biggest challenge you face? How does this fit into what the objective is?
QUESTIONS TO USE TO UNEARTH THE DEAL-KILLING ISSUES What are we up against here? What is the biggest challenge you face? How does making a deal with us affect things? What happens if you do nothing? What does doing nothing cost you? How does making this deal resonate with what your company prides itself on?