Never Split The Difference, Chris Voss

Never

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Negotiation Tips you'll learn today on The Sales Podcast...

• Get your opponent off his game
• Add warmth when they are trying to bulldoze you
  • Apologize
  • Use their first name
• Asking open-ended questions is one of the FBI's most potent negotiating tools
• Allow them to talk to make them feel in control
• Give them the chance/opportunity to solve YOUR problems
• The fundamentals, i.e., the basics, i.e., the old school stuff still works...it might be the only thing that does work
• Learn to say "no" without sounding like you're saying no
• Ask open-ended questions that make the prospect think they are being "dishonest and unfair"
• To win in sales, you must know people, which means you must know how batshit crazy we all are
• "Getting To Yes"
  1. Separate the person—the emotion—from the problem
  2. Don't worry about what they're asking for, focus on their interests to determine what they really want
  3. Work together to create win-win options
  4. Create mutually agreed-upon standards for evaluating those possible solutions

Feeling is a form of thinking." ~Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman

[I]t is self-evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish, and that their tastes are anything but stable." ~Daniel Kahneman

• We suffer from up to 150 cognitive biases
  • Unconscious
  • Irrational
  • Distort how we see the world

• "Thinking Fast and Slow"
  • System 1: our animal mind is fast, instinctive, and emotional
  • System 2: slow, deliberate, logical
  • System 1 steers System 2
• Learn how to guide and affect System 1 in your prospect to get them to tell their System 2 how to answer to your benefit
• We must address the animal in the room
  • Not quid pro quo rational bargaining
  • Not logical problem solving
  • Focus on emotions and emotional intelligence
  • Calm people down
  • Establish rapport
  • Gain their trust
  • Get them talking and describing their true needs
  • Prove your empathy
  • It must be easy to teach, learn, and apply
• People want to be understood and accepted

Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there."

• Listening is not passive
• Listening is the most active thing you can do
• "Tactical Empathy" became his secret weapon
• Life is negotiation
• It's two parties trying to get "I want"
• It's two distinct, vital life functions
  • Information gathering
  • Behavior influencing
• Negotiation is communication with results
• Conflict is inevitable
• It's crucial to know how to engage without damaging
• Disarm, redirect, and dismantle in a positive way that builds the relationship

You get what you ask for, you just have to ask correctly."

• Connect better, influence them, achieve more
• Negotiation is the heart of collaboration
• Surprises are always possible, so use your skill to reveal them
• Enter with an open mind, gather new information to refine your guesses
• Seek to discover facts and the truth, i.e., The New ABCs of Selling include, Always Be Curious
• Question assumptions
• Test your hypotheses
• Don't go in with blind faith or arrogance, thinking you know it all
• Listen to the overuse of personal pronouns—we/them or me/I. The more they downplay themselves, the more important they probable are, and vice versa.
• Don't get too close. Allow some distance between you and the worst-case scenario
• Having a team listen in for clues is always recommended
• To disarm your prospect and make them feel safe, focus on them and what they have to say. This is how you quite the schizophrenic in your mind, and in theirs!
• You must identify what your prospect needs by truly listening. He calls it active listening.
• Through active listening, the prospect will feel heard, their emotions will be validated, and they'll trust you, which means you can then have a real conversation.
• MSU is not the way to win at sales. You know, "Making Shit Up." (It's related to sin #1 of The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling.)

Be a people mover to excel at solving problems.

• Being in a hurry makes prospects feel unheard.
• It undermines trust.
• Control yourself. Control your energy. Control your voice. Your actions influence the feelings and perceived intentions of the prospect.
• This helps you connect at the instinctive, gut-level of your prospect.
• Radiate warmth and acceptance
• Stick with the positive/playful voice most of the time
• Convey that you are easygoing and good-natured
• Smile
• When we get our prospects into a positive frame of mind, we all think faster, are more likely to collaborate to solve the problem at hand
• Talk slowly, clearly, with a downward inflection to convey that you're in control
• Mirroring can help us copy each other to comfort one another
• We fear what's different and are drawn to what is similar
• As a shortcut, just repeat the last three—or most critical three—words
• Mirroring has been shown to beat positive reinforcement by up to 70% when used by waiters
• Keep it simple
• Get into the head and under the skin of your prospects with emotional control, dialogue, influence, and persuasion
• Be flexible and willing to change your approach as new information presents itself
• You must be able to get inside the head—and under the skin—of your "opponent"

Being right isn't the key to negotiating. Having the right mindset is."

How to Confront—and Get Your Way—Without Confrontation

• It's like a Jedi mind trick...to disagree without being disagreeable
• You can't always go head-to-head with the type A personalities
• Follow these four steps
  1. Calm, soothing late-night FM DJ voice
  2. "I'm sorry..."
  3. Mirror (i.e., help me understand)
  4. Pause silently so the mirroring can work its magic
  5. Repeat
• The goal is to convey, "Please help me understand."
• Mirroring gets them to reword their request, whereas "What do you mean by that?" comes across as confrontational
• You'll feel weird at first. Do it anyway. It works and it'll become second nature to you, once you experience the benefits.
• Be conversational and build rapport. That's the key to good negotiation.
• Study Oprah
  • Smile to ease the tension
  • Convey empathy, thus security
  • Downward inflection of the voice
  • Ask the right questions, and avoid the wrong ones
• Review
  • Prepare
  • Expect surprises
  • Seek to reveal their surprises
  • Avoid assumptions: question to test your hypotheses
  • Negotiation is not a battle. It's a process of information discovery.
  • You will silence the negative voices in your head by focusing completely on the other person.
  • Go slow.
  • Smile.
  • Three voices:
    1. Late-night FM DJ voice
    2. Positive/playful voice should be your default
    3. Direct/assertive
  • Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words.

Don't Feel Their Pain, Label It

• It's hard to separate people from their problems when their emotions are the problem.
• Emotions are one of the key reasons that communication breaks down.
• Identify and influence their emotions.
• Emotions become your tools, your means to a successful negotiation, not an obstacle.
• Become a psychotherapist. Listen more. Talk less.
• The more you know about your prospects, the more power you have.
• Being empathetic means you understand their world, not that you agree with it.
• "Tactical Empathy" (Sidebar: name your stuff so you seem smart and savvy.) is going beyond just understanding their world to the point that you hear and understand what is behind their feelings to increase your influence.
• Neural resonance disappears when we communicate poorly.
• Implement Sun Tzu's concept of "the supreme art of war"...to subdue the enemy without fighting.
• Labeling is a way of validating someone's emotion by acknowledging it.
  • "It looks like you don't want to get ripped off."
  • "It looks like you don't want to look like you caved to your boss."
  • "It seems like you don't want a budget surprise to derail your project down the road."
• When we get our prospects to think logically and rationally to name a fear or a concern, it lessens the raw intensity
• Notice their words, tone, and body language.
• Notice how their demeanor changes in response to your questions.
• Once you spot the emotion you want to highlight, label it verbally. (Avoid saying "I'm hearing" or "I'm detecting" or "I've noticed...." Keep the focus on them, i.e., "It looks like..." or "It seems like..." or "It sounds like...."
• This will help you get more than a "yes" or "no" out of them, and you can always back away with, "I didn't say that was happening, just that it seemed like it was."
• Then be quiet and listen.
• Labeling is powerful because it invites the other person to reveal himself. (Sidebar: You can also throw out a simple mistake and have them correct you, but that's for a later discussion.)
• People are deeper than what they show.
• Labeling a negative can diffuse it while labeling a positive can enhance it.
• Anger is rarely productive.
• We want to tease out the negative feelings.
• We want to de-escalate angry confrontations.
• Labeling helps the prospect acknowledge their feelings rather than continue to act them out.
• Go directly at negative dynamics fearlessly, but deferentially.
  • "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
  • "Look, I'm an asshole."

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

• Observe the negativity without reaction or judgment. Label it consciously and replace it with positive, compassionate, solution-based thoughts.
• Empathy is a powerful mood enhancer.
• Label the fears. Bring them to the light so you can address and minimize them to clear the air and make straight the path.
• This may take time. There may be many layers of fear.
• Labels help to uncover and identify the primary emotion driving almost all of our behaviors. Once we acknowledge that emotion, almost everything else is nearly miraculously solved.
• Do not deny the negative, that only makes it worse.
  • "I hope you don't think I'm an asshole..."
  • "I don't want this to sound harsh..."
• This is one reason I've succeeded in selling so much Keap and HubSpot. I've always replied to people who ask "How long will this take to implement?" with, "This will be the hardest 90 days of your business career, assuming you spend one to two hours per day for 90 days straight working on this."
• By labeling their fear and bringing it to light, they know what they are in for, they know I'm in it with them, and they can make an informed, confident decision to dive in.
• Defense attorneys call this "taking the sting out."
• In sales, we call this "accentuating the negative."
• Voss calls it an "accusation audit." List everything bad your opponent could say about you.

• No communication is always a bad sign
• "We acknowledge that you believe you were promised this work."
• "What else is there you feel is important to add to this?"
• Focus on clearing the barriers to agreement first
• "Yes" is often meaningless that hides deeper objections...and "maybe" is even worse

Pushing hard for 'yes' doesn't get you any closer to a win; it just angers the other side. ~

• Getting a "No" helps to clarify what you really want by eliminating what you don't want
• "No" is safe for the prospect. It maintains the status quo...temporarily
• "No" starts the negotiation
• There are complexities and subtleties in every conversation
• Don't take what people say literally

Sales Growth Tools Mentioned In The Sales Podcast

• Order "Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In"
• Order "Thinking, Fast and Slow"
• Order "Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In"