Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

by Chris Voss

SECTION I: THE GOAL Think through best/worst-case scenarios but only write down a specific goal that represents the best case.

Bottom line: People who expect more (and articulate it) get more. Here are the four steps for setting your goal: ■ Set an optimistic but reasonable goal and define it clearly. ■ Write it down. ■ Discuss your goal with a colleague (this makes it harder to wimp out). ■ Carry the written goal into the negotiation.

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.

Anticipate how your counterpart feels about these facts you’ve just summarized. Make a concise list of any accusations they might make—no matter how unfair or ridiculous they might be. Then turn each accusation into a list of no ...

There are fill-in-the-blank labels that can be used in nearly every situation to 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 li...

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.

There will be a small group of “What” and “How” questions that you will find yourself using in nearly every situation. Here are a few of them:

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 IDENTIFY BEHIND-THE-TABL...

You’ll want to tailor your calibrated questions to identify and unearth the motivations of those behind the table, including: How does this affect the rest of your team? How on board are the people not on this call? What do your colleagues see as their main challenges in this area?

QUESTIONS TO IDENTIFY AND DIFFUSE DEAL-KILLING ISSUES Internal negotiating influence often sits with the people who are most comfortable with things as they are. Change may make them look as if they haven’t been doing their job. Your dilemma in such a negotiation is how to make them look good in the face of that change.

Think about their perceived losses. Never forget that a loss stings at least twice as much as an equivalent gain.

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 ...

Be ready to execute follow-up labels to their answers to your calibrated questions.

Having labels prepared will allow you to quickly turn your counterpart’s responses back to them, which will keep them feeding you new and expanding information. Again, these are fill-in-the-blank labels that you can use quickly without tons of thought: It seems like __________ is important.

It seems you feel like my company is in a unique position to __________. It seems like you a...

SECTION V: NONCASH OFFERS Prepare a list of noncash items possessed by your counterpa...

Ask yourself: “What could they give that would almost get us ...