CONTENT:

• Introduction:
• Active Listening:
• Build a Subconscious Bond with Mirror:
• Show Empathy by Labeling:
• Say “No” with Open Ended Questions:
  • Elegant Ways To Say No:
• Getting a “No” (at the beginning) is Good:
• Anchor the Mindset:
• Salary (or Price) Negotiation:
• Outro:

Introduction:

From bargaining with vegetable vendors to convincing your parents to get you the latest iphone, life is full of negotiations. Negotiating skills are so important that no one has to convince you to learn them. This article may look long and daunting, it may insinuate you to scroll fast through the article, but as you start reading you will find most of the article is filled with interesting examples. Don’t miss out a chance to learn something which will reap benefits throughout the life. The author of this book, Chris Voss, shares valuable negotiating techniques which he had learnt throughout his career.

Chris has spent 24 years working in the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit. And he was the FBI’s chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator from 2003 to 2007. At present, he is the CEO of Blackswan Ltd, founded by him after his time at FBI. He also teaches at the University of Southern California and Georgetown University.

Active Listening:

• An important part of negotiation involves gathering information as much as possible from the counterpart and using the information to close the deal the way you want.

• When your mind is occupied with thoughts on what to speak next, you will miss out valuable information spill out by the other party. So keep your mind clear when the other person is talking and listen actively. As the other party starts to talk, they subconsciously spill out bits of information crucial for the deal, For instance, liars try to talk convoluted and use pronouns like “him, they, we” to distance themselves from the lie. In short, they worry about getting caught, so they try too hard not to. Generally, more a person distances himself from an action, more important he is to that action. During a call, if a bank robber in the phone is always referring “we”, “they”, then there is a good chance that you are talking with the leader of the gang.

• In short, listening is so important that it is a prerequisite for any of the below techniques to be effective.

Build a Subconscious Bond with Mirror:

• Mirroring, also called isopraxism, is essentially imitation. Mirroring is repeating last (or critical) three words of what someone said to you.

• Your tone should be like “Please, help me understand” and then follow it with silence. Your tone and Silence is the key. With Mirror you are forcing your counterpart to rephrase, during which they spill out more information than the last time, which maybe enough for you to get the deal you wanted.

• The author says the only disadvantage of this technique is that people may feel awkward to use this initially, but with practice, the author claims Mirroring is very similar to Jedi mind trick”

Let’s look at mirroring in action,

Popping his head into her office, the boss said, “Let’s make two copies of all the paperwork.” “I’m sorry, two copies?” she mirrored in response, remembering not only the DJ voice, but to deliver the mirror in an inquisitive tone. “Yes,” her boss responded, “one for us and one for the customer.”

“I’m sorry, so you are saying that the client is asking for a copy and we need a copy for internal use?”

“Actually, I’ll check with the client—they haven’t asked for anything. But I definitely want a copy. That’s just how I do business.”

“Absolutely,” she responded. “Thanks for checking with the customer. Where would you like to store the in-house copy? There’s no more space in the file room here.”

“It’s fine. You can store it anywhere,” he said, slightly perturbed now. “Anywhere?” she mirrored again, with calm concern. When another person’s tone of voice or body language is inconsistent with his words, a good mirror can be particularly useful.

In this case, it caused her boss to take a nice, long pause—something he did not often do. My student sat silent. “As a matter of fact, you can put them in my office,” he said, with more composure than he’d had the whole conversation. “I’ll get the new assistant to print it for me after the project is done. For now, just create two digital backups.”

A day later her boss emailed and wrote simply, “The two digital backups will be fine.” A week of work avoided!”

Show Empathy by Labeling:

• Labeling is acknowledging your counterpart’s situation. Making them feel understood, soothes them sub consciously, making them feel conformable with you and improves the odds of a better deal for you.

• You should start with “It seems like …” or “It sounds like…” or “It looks like…” and tell the counterpart what you have understood their situation to be. You are showing empathy here. Never start with an “I” as in “I think”, because it gets people’s guard up. If label done right, it makes the other party feel understood and diffuses their tension.

• Use it either to get a “that’s right” from others, which indicates that they acknowledged that you understood them, or use it to diffuse the tension of others.

Here is an example from the authors experience:

The author was in a high tension situation, at least three heavily armed fugitives were reported to be inside 27th floor of a high rise. With phone number to call into the apartment, the author had to talk through the door

I used my late-night FM DJ voice. I didn’t give orders in my DJ voice, or ask what the fugitives wanted.

Instead, I imagined myself in their place. “It looks like you don’t want to come out,” I said repeatedly. “It seems like you worry that if you open the door, we’ll come in with guns blazing. It looks like you don’t want to go back to jail.”

For six hours, we got no response. The FBI coaches loved my DJ voice. But was it working? And then, when we were almost completely convinced that no one was inside, a sniper on an adjacent building radioed that he saw one of the curtains in the apartment move.

The front door of the apartment slowly opened. A woman emerged with her hands in front of her.

I continued talking. All three fugitives came out. None of them said a word until we had them in handcuffs. Then I asked them the question that was most nagging me: Why did they come out after six hours of radio silence? Why did they finally give in?

All three gave me the same answer.

“We didn’t want to get caught or get shot, but you calmed us down,” they said. “We finally believed you wouldn’t go away, so we just came out.”

Say “No” with Open Ended Questions:

“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation” - Robert Estabrook

• If you had thought, how am I supposed to disagree without being disagreeable. Then it means you had known about it all along, you just didnt know that you already know. Confusing isn’t it. The answer lies in the question itself. Instead of saying “No” explicitly, you ask an open ended question like “How am I supposed to do that”. With just one question, your problem has also become your counterpart’s problem. The open question makes the counterpart to think what they just offered for you. All this without saying an explicit no. Amazing isn’t it. Whereas when asked a Yes/No question, the counterpart blurts out a subconscious answer without needing to think much.

• You should always ask open ended questions starting with “How” and “What”. “Why” is excluded from the list because it is not always suitable for every conversation, but can be used occasionally when necessary. And as always tone matters, your tone should be like you are genuinely seeking your counterpart’s help to find a solution for your problem.

Here is an example to illustrate this: Once a patient admitted to a hospital was dissatisfied with something and tried to storm out of his room. And the hospital staff couldn’t calm him down. When the doctor came, instead of saying a “No”, the doctor asked, “What do you hope to achieve by going”. By asking an open ended question, the doctor implicitly forced the patient to calm down and explain his situation, without sounding hostile

To give you another example, a small public relation firm for a big corporation was not getting paid by their client. The client always managed to evade paying on the promise of repeat business, stating it will result eventually in large revenue. But the firm hadn’t been paid a single penny. So the author advised the firm’s head to summarize their situation and ask “How am I supposed to do that?”. Even though she was skeptical, She practised and did what the author asked her to do. To her surprise, her client said “You’re right, you can’t and I apologize.” Her client explained that they were going through some internal problems, but agreed to pay within 2 days.

Elegant Ways To Say No:

Generally, you can say “No” four times before you have to say the actual word. Learn how to pull this off from an excerpt taken off the book,

1. The first step in the “No” series is the old standby: “How am I supposed to do that?” You have to deliver it in a deferential way, so it becomes a request for help.

2. After that, some version of “Your offer is very generous, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me” is an elegant second way to say “No.” The “I’m sorry” also softens the “No” and builds empathy.

3. Then you can use something like “I’m sorry but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.” It’s a little more direct, and the “can’t do that” does great double duty. By expressing an inability to perform, it can trigger the other side’s empathy toward you.

4. “I’m sorry, no” is a slightly more succinct version for the fourth “No.” If delivered gently, it barely sounds negative at all. If you have to go further, of course,

“No” is the last and most direct way. Verbally, it should be delivered with a downward inflection and a tone of regard; it’s not meant to be “NO!”

Getting a “No” (at the beginning) is Good:

• When you get a call from a salesperson, you get your guard up and you become dismissive even before hearing their proposition. A trained salesperson will mostly follow a script to get a yes from you. They follow a series of scripted questions which will start with an obvious question aiming to get a Yes from you, then moving on gradually to the actual sales question. The problem with this script is that it is trying too hard to get a yes.

• If a water purifier seller had called you and asked “Do you want to drink healthy water”, All you would want to do is shout a big No, end the call and carry on with your work. Well, the moment you sensed that was a sales call, he had a “No” waiting in your mouth. When you know the salesperson is trying to force an yes out of you, you go to defensive mode. you don’t let most of the words into your brain. If the offer terms never reaches the other person’s CPU, then how will you ever get a deal made.

• That’s why the author says its best to get a “No” at the beginning rather than trying to force a “Yes”. Instead of asking “Do you have time to talk?” you can ask “Is it a good time to talk?”. You get a “No” and their complete focus

• Making the person say “No” lowers down their guard, and they would start listen to your offer. Saying “No” subconsciously gives them the sense of control. It makes them available to listen. This not only works for the sales pitch, it can also be used in any form of negotiations

Let’s see an example from the book,

FUND-RAISER: Hello, can I speak with Mr. Smith?

MR. SMITH: Yes, this is he.

FUND-RAISER: I’m calling from the XYZ Committee, and I wanted to ask you a few important questions about your views on our economy today. Do you feel that if things stay the way they are, America’s best days are ahead of it?

MR. SMITH: No, things will only get worse.

FUND-RAISER: Are you going to sit and watch President Obama take the White House in November without putting up a fight?

MR. SMITH: No, I’m going to do anything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen.

FUND-RAISER: If you want do something today to make sure that doesn’t happen, you can give to XYZ Committee, which is working hard to fight for you.

The “No”-oriented script got a 23 percent better rate of return in comparison to “Yes” oriented script.

Anchor the Mindset:

• Before giving bad news or revealing your exact offer, you have to first anchor their expectation down. You make them expect the worst news and hit them with bad news. This will look positive to them, as the information they received wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be.

• Let’s see how the author delivered bad news to a set of contractors, who on average were paid $2000 per day, can be paid only $500 a day.

I knew exactly what they would do if I just told them straight out: they’d laugh me out of town. So I got each of them on the phone and hit them hard with an accusation audit. “I got a lousy proposition for you,” I said, and paused until each asked me to go on. “By the time we get off the phone, you’re going to think I’m a lousy businessman. You’re going to think I can’t budget or plan. You’re going to think Chris Voss is a big talker. His first big project ever out of the FBI, he screws it up completely. He doesn’t know how to run an operation. And he might even have lied to me.” And then, once I’d anchored their emotions in a minefield of low expectations, I played on their loss aversion. “Still, I wanted to bring this opportunity to you before I took it to someone else,” I said. Suddenly, their call wasn’t about being cut from $2,000 to $500 but how not to lose $500 to some other guy. Every single one of them took the deal. No counteroffers, no complaints. Now, if I hadn’t anchored their emotions low, their perception of $500 would have been totally different. If I’d just called and said, “I can give you $500 per day. What do you think?” they’d have taken it as an insult and slammed down the phone.

In this example,

1. Did you notice how the author starts by saying bad things about himself? Why did he say such things? Because it is important to focus, not only on what would help you complete a deal, but also to focus on what might hinder the deal and take care of it. If the author hadn’t said such things, the contractors would have said it which would build the tension further, but the author cleverly took the sting and started with how they would possibly reject. Starting with what the counterpart could use to disagree with you, reduces its effect and makes it less of a barrier in deal negotiation. It also does the job of anchoring here.

2. Also, the author exploits the fear of missing out by saying “Still, I wanted to bring this opportunity to you before I took it to someone else,” By referring that the opportunity can go to others, the Author lures them to go on with the deal by triggering their fear of missing out. Is there any other human tendency which might come in handy in future? Yes, there are!

   • Certainty Effect - People are drawn towards sure things over probabilities, even though the probability is a better choice
   • Loss Aversion - People take greater risk to avoid a loss than to achieve gain

Salary (or Price) Negotiation:

• It is generally better to let the other side start. If you hadn’t done your homework, you might ask for a salary well below the market standard. For example, once a Novelist was approached to write a story for a Hollywood movie, he accepted to write and asked for a salary of $150 per week (this is in 1944). While the producer had already planned to pay him $750 per week. If he had let the producer go first, then the novelist could have got 5 times what he had wanted. Luckily the produce took pity on him and called an agent to represent the Novelist during negotiations. It may not be the case for you, remember life is unfair (to those who are unprepared)

• Letting the other side start also has a disadvantage. The counterpart might start with an anchor, offering well below market average. You should be psychologically ready to tackle the anchor.

• If you are forced to reveal your price first, then you can start with something like this “At top places like X Corp, people in this job get between $130,000 and $170,000”. You get the benefit of not revealing your price and also you get to anchor the counter part’s mindset by saying the highest salary range possible.

• Establish a range - You are more likely to get what you wanted if you name your price in a range, with the lowest end being what you actually wanted

• Use Odd numbers more. For example, when you offer something like $37,352, it would feel more like a well thought out proposition.

• If the deal you are offered is not up to your expectation, you can also ask something which benefits you without affecting counterpart. For example, you can ask for ** non-monetary** items in the salary negotiation, like asking for more paid holidays. In the book, the author gives an example where the author accepted to talk in Bar Association for a very low fee when they offered to feature him on the front page of the Bar magazine. The association offered something valuable to the author with no extra effort from their side. The magazine had to feature someone on the front page, this way both sides got what they wanted

• In price negotiation, you can always benefit by knowing counterpart’s deadline. For example, A car salesperson will have a quarterly target, so you are more likely to get steep discounts just before the quarter ends. Your counterpart could try to use the same tactics to get a better deal from you, but don’t give in to that. Remember deadlines are always flexible, you can always postpone deadlines without major negative repercussions.

• At any time, if the negotiation is not going in the direction you wanted, you can always take a detour by saying “Lets put the price off to aside for a moment and talk about what would make this a good deal” or “What else would you be able to offer to make that a good price for me?”. You can you use the same when the counterpart has put in big anchor in front of you.

I know this has been a lengthy (and hopefully informative) read so far, Let’s see a final example incorporating most of what you have learnt today,

It was a desperate situation, because Farouq, a Georgetown MBA student, needed $600 to hold big alumni event in Dubai and MBA Dean was his last stop. At the meeting, Farouq told the dean about how excited the students were about the trip and how beneficial it would be for the Georgetown MBA brand in the region. Before he could even finish, the dean jumped in. “Sounds like a great trip you guys are planning,” she said. “But money is tight and I could authorize no more than $300.” [Anchor against you] Farouq hadn’t expected the dean to go so quickly. But things don’t always go according to plan. “That is a very generous offer given your budget limits, but I am not sure how that would help us achieve a great reception for the alums in the region,” Farouq said, acknowledging her limits but saying no without using the word. Then he dropped an extreme anchor. “I have a very high amount in my head: $1,000 is what we need.” As expected, the extreme anchor quickly knocked the dean off her limit. “That is severely out of my range and I am sure I can’t authorize that. However, I will give you $500.” Farouq was half-tempted to fold—being $100 short wasn’t make-or-break—but he remembered the curse of aiming low. He decided to push forward. The $500 got him closer to the goal but not quite there, he said; $850 would work. The dean replied by saying that she was already giving more than what she wanted and $500 was reasonable. At this point, if Farouq had been less prepared he would have given up, but he was ready for the punches. “I think your offer is very reasonable [Second “No”] and I understand your restrictions, but I need more money to put on a great show for the school,” he said. “How about $775?” The dean smiled, and Farouq knew he had her. “You seem to have a specific number in your head that you are trying to get to,” she said. “Just tell it to me.” At that point Farouq was happy to give her his number as he felt she was sincere. “I need $737.50 [Odd number] to make this work and you are my last stop,” he said. She laughed. The dean then praised him for knowing what he wanted and said she’d check her budget. Two days later, Farouq got an email saying her office would put in $750.

Outro:

• To sum up, Negotiation is not a showdown of two person trying to prove their dominance to each other, instead it is the process of extracting information from your counterpart as much as possible, understanding them and giving a slight hidden push to move their thought process towards where you want them to be. By asking correct questions in a calm pleasant tone and showing empathy, you make your counterpart to think what you want them to think.

• Proper tone, body language, giving proper pause is also as essential as the techniques which you had seen today.

• There is lots of information to take in here, instead of trying out all techniques at once, practice and trial with one technique at a time.

• Also not all the points can be used in a single conversation. So don’t force yourself to use every technique you remember, thinking somehow it will give you a hidden advantage. it will only break the flow of the conversation. So use only when necessary.

• And one more thing, reading this doesn’t make u magically better in negotiation, practising this will!

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