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June 25 - August 11, 2018
be dispassionate; emotion destroys negotiations. You must force yourself to be calm. Second, prepare, even for five seconds. Collect your thoughts. Third, find the decision-maker.
focus on your goals, not on who is right.
Fifth, make human contact.
acknowledge the other party’s position and power, valuing them.
more of whatever you value: more money, more time, more food, more love, more travel, more responsibility, more basketball, more TV, more music.
In a negotiation, you should not pursue relationships, interests, win-win, or anything else just because you think it’s an effective tool.
Think of yourself as the least important person in the negotiation. You must do role reversal, putting yourself in their shoes and trying to put them in yours.
You need to tap into the other person’s emotional psyche with empathy, apologies if necessary, by valuing them or offering them other things that get them to think more clearly.
The right answer to the statement “I hate you” is “Tell me more.” You learn what they are thinking or feeling, so that you can better persuade them.
trade off items that one party values but the other party doesn’t. Trade holiday work for more vacation, TV time for more homework, a lower price for more referrals.
Name their bad behavior when they are not consistent with their policies.
Being real is highly credible, and credibility is your biggest asset.
Ask, “What is really preventing me from meeting my goals?” To find the real problem, you have to find out why the other party is acting the way they are.
My most common opening in a negotiation is “What’s going on?”
establish a relationship with the other person—you start out informal and chatty. Second, it is a question—questions are a great way to collect information. Third, it focuses first on the other party and their feelings and perceptions, instead of on “the deal.” Fourth, it consists of small talk to establish a comfort level between us.
Common enemies bring parties closer together and make the negotiation easier.
Mutual needs are also good (although with less psychological impact) if you can find them at the start of negotiations.
“Power,” or “leverage,” is greatly overrated as a negotiation device.
Negotiation is the process of meeting your goals when dealing with another person.
party realizes you care about their feelings, they will listen more, making them more persuadable.
effective negotiation becomes as natural as talking. It is not something done at a table or in a formal setting. It is your life.
You negotiate to meet your goals. Everything else is subservient to that.
The mere act of setting a goal has been shown to increase performance by more than 25 percent.
“What do you want at the end of this meeting that you don’t have now?”
Studies show that adversarial negotiators make about half as many deals as do more cooperative, problem-solving negotiators.
The most important asset you have in any human interaction is your credibility. If people don’t believe you, it’s hard to convince them of anything. Your credibility is more important than your expertise, connections, intelligence, assets, and looks.
Here is my entire negotiation course in three broad questions. 1. What are my goals? 2. Who are “they”? 3. What will it take to persuade them?
you need enough power to meet your goals, but not more.
women stereotypically tend to be better negotiators than men.
women listen more. They collect more information. And more information leads to better persuasion and better results.
When you have less power, you learn to use tools that are more subtle, less noticeable, even invisible to those with raw power.
The subtler tools are ultimately more effective.
You can’t even use substantive issues to persuade effectively unless and until the other party is ready to hear about them.
when people are angry, confused, or uncertain, they physiologically hear less.
In the absence of trust, you need a mechanical substitute to give them an incentive not to cheat. It can be a monetary structure as above. It can be money in escrow or potential negative opinions by third parties. It
When you ask someone for their perceptions first, you value them, so they are then much more interested in listening to what you have to say.
Explaining your perceptions is the last thing you should do. First, learn their perceptions.
Try turning your statements into questions. Instead of saying, “This isn’t fair!” try saying, “Do you think this is fair?” Instead of saying to your son, “Clean your room!” try saying, “Could you tell me why your room isn’t clean?”
“Help me out here, I’m confused…”
“Please tell me where I’m wrong here.”
Here are the basic components of effective communication: (1) always communicate, (2) listen and ask questions, (3) value, don’t blame them, (4) summarize often, (5) do role reversal, (6) be dispassionate, (7) articulate goals, (8) be firm without damaging the relationship, (9) look for small signals, (10) discuss perceptual differences, (11) find out how they make commitments, (12) consult before deciding, (13) focus on what you can control, and (14) avoid debating who is right.
blaming people reduces performance and motivation.
Sum up what you think you are hearing with some frequency, and play it back to the other side in your own words.
“you’re telling me that I should transfer my balance from your card with its 17.9 percent APR to the other bank offering me 11.6?” This made it crystal clear for the Citbank rep. Lori got an 8.9 percent rate. Framing paints them a picture.
“Well,” Lina said, “it used to be that American Express had this slogan, ‘Membership has its privileges.’ But now I find that nonmembers have more privileges than members. So you must have changed your slogan to ‘American Express: Nonmembership has its privileges.’ Who do I talk to about that?”
First, compliment them. “That’s excellent!” you should say, without sarcasm. “When I brought this idea up a few minutes ago, I was hoping someone else would endorse it. Glad to see we agree!”
When people don’t return phone calls or emails, try not to get upset. Just keep a list of the dates and times of your calls. When you get enough of a record, email them, saying,
“Gee, we called you fourteen times in the past two weeks; we were hoping to reach you. Is there something else we can do?”
Instead, execute and focus: what are my goals, what standards should I use, what are their needs, can I invoke any common enemies, can I form a vision of a relationship, who is their decision-maker, etc.
“I really like you guys, I’ve been buying from you for some time. But now some of your competitors are offering us more value. We’d like to stay with you. What should we do?” The same threat to leave is inherent, but you are asking for their help. How do we stay in business together? It is framed in the context of a relationship. And it opens the way for more creative solutions.
