Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator.
Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner.
Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.
Key Takeaways
Tactical Empathy sincerely empathizing with their counterparts situation, and then getting them to empathize with your situation. Giving and receiving empathy is the key to walking away from a negotiation with the best possible price, best possible salary or the best possible contract, while making the other party feel like they were treated fairly.
Psychotherapy 101 During a psychotherapy session, a psychiatrist will encourage a patient to talk while listening intensely. occasionally the psychiatrist will jump in to help clarify what the patient is saying and feeling. Psychiatrists do this because they know that their patient will be less defensive and less opposed to change if they can make them FEEL heard. The same principle applies to a negotiation.
During a negotiation, your counterpart will be uncomfortable negotiating with you and resist your counteroffers until you demonstrate you understand their world and can empathize with their cars and concerns.
If you can get your counterpart to say “That’s right” then you know you’ve made them feel heard and you know they’ll be more receptive to any offers or counteroffers that you make from that point forward.
A negotiation doest truly start until you hear the words, “That’s right.”
- The best way to get your counterpart to say the words, “That’s right,” is to listen to the emotion behind your counterparts words.
- Your goal is to spot some cares and concerns related to the negotiation and then summarize those cares and concerns with a cons statement that starts with…”it seems like.” or “it sounds like..”
- It seems like your really concerned about_____. It sounds like___is really important to you.
- The beauty of using these statements is that if you’re wrong, you don’t damage the conversation since you can follow up with, well I didn’t say that’s how it was, it just seems that way.
- If your counterpart confirms your summary statement with “that’s right” then it’s time to get them to empathize with your situation.
The best way to get someone to empathize with your situation and start thinking of ways in which they can help you is to ask Calibrated Questions.
Calibrated Questions are open-ended questions that start with ‘how’ or ‘what’ and are calibrated to direct your counterparts focus towards your problem. They turn your negotiation from a confrontation to a problem-solving session.
The ultimate Calibrated Question: How am I supposed to do that?
- As if you were saying “I value your intelligence, can you please help me solve my problem?”
Common responses to calibrated questions:
1. Creative solution so that both of you get what you value most.
2. Raise or lower their initial demand to accommodate you.
If they take option 2, but still give you an offer that doesn’t met your needs, you simply respond with a slightly different calibrated question.
- That’s very generous of you..This technique of politely countering every offer with some version of how am I supposed to do that?
Bonus Insights
In every negotiation there are between 3-5 pieces of information that if they were to be uncovered, would change everything.
Mirroring The key to revealing hidden deadlines, hidden fears or hidden motivations, is mirroring. Mirroring is the act of taking your counterparts words and turning them into questions.
- If someone says “Im not sure about this”…you could say, “sorry what about this are you not sure of?”
- If someone says “Im used to seeing more detail here” you could ask…”When you say more detail, what exactly are you referring to?”
Social science shows that we like people more when they talk like us. When people like you more, they trust you more, and they feel safe talking to you. Mirroring is the closet one gets to a Jedi Mind Trick.
Personal Action Plan #1
When you want your counterpart to reveal more information, ask them questions using 1-3 keywords they’ve recently used. Doing so will make them more comfortable talking to you and willing to reveal more and more information.
Opportunity to Save Face when you’re trying to do business with someone, but they give you the silent treatment and don’t respond to your emails, what should you do? The best way to get someone to respond to your emails is to write them the following one sentence email:
- Have you given up on this project? Giving up on a project looks bed, therefor the person you are writing will be eager to defend themselves and save face.
- Behavioral psychology research has shown that we are twice as likely to act when we fear losing something than when we stand to gain something.
- When you send someone an email “Have you given up?” they fear losing rapport with you and they’re eager to respond.
We can use this principle in negotiation when our counterpart seems cold and standoffish. If we let them know how their body language and behavior is being perceived by saying sentences like:
- It seems like you don’t care about what I have to say.
- It seems like you’ve given up on this deal.
- You’ll quickly get their attention and get them re-engaged in the negotiation.
- The key is to avoid direct threats and use indirect observations.
- Instead of saying, “You’ve given up, haven’t you,”…or, “You just don’t care anymore, do you?”
- You should say, “IT SEEMS LIKE you’ve given up on this negotiation or IT SEEMS LIKE you don’t care anymore.
- Say your statement as if a neutral 3rd party would who’s watching the negotiation on TV and then give them a chance to correct the negative observation and save face.
Personal Action Plan #2
When you feel like your counterpart is being cold or standoffish, or trying to bully you, vocalize your observation as objectively as possible and give them a chance to save face. Your counterpart doesn’t want to look bad, so they’ll try hard to repair their image and treat you with more respect going forward.
