Never Split the Difference Quotes

“There are three voice tones available to negotiators: 1.​The late-night FM DJ voice: Use selectively to make a point. Inflect your voice downward, keeping it calm and slow. When done properly, you create an aura of authority and trustworthiness without triggering defensiveness. 2.​The positive/playful voice: Should be your default voice. It’s the voice of an easygoing, good-natured person. Your attitude is light and encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile while you’re talking. 3.​The direct or assertive voice: Used rarely. Will cause problems and create pushback. ■​Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. Mirroring is the art of insinuating similarity, which facilitates bonding. Use mirrors to encourage the other side to empathize and bond with you, keep people talking, buy your side time to regroup, and encourage your counterparts to reveal their strategy.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Here are some of the key lessons from this chapter to remember: ■​A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find. ■​Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously. ■​People who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible. ■​To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. ■​Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built. ■​Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“It’s just four simple steps: 1.​Use the late-night FM DJ voice. 2.​Start with “I’m sorry . . .” 3.​Mirror. 4.​Silence. At least four seconds, to let the mirror work its magic on your counterpart. 5.​Repeat.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“It was an iterative process, not an intellectual one, as we refined the tools we used day after day. And it was urgent. Our tools had to work, because if they didn’t someone died.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Our techniques were the products of experiential learning; they were developed by agents in the field, negotiating through crisis and sharing stories of what succeeded and what failed. It was an iterative process, not an intellectual one, as we refined the tools we used day after day. And it was urgent. Our tools had to work, because if they didn’t someone died.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“The systematized and easy-to-remember process has only four steps: Set your target price (your goal). Set your first offer at 65 percent of your target price. Calculate three raises of decreasing increments (to 85, 95, and 100 percent). Use lots of empathy and different ways of saying “No” to get the other side to counter before you increase your offer. When calculating the final amount, use precise, nonround numbers like, say, $37,893 rather than $38,000. It gives the number credibility and weight. On your final number, throw in a nonmonetary item (that they probably don’t want) to show you’re at your limit.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“That’s why people who statistically have no need for insurance buy it. Or consider this: a person who’s told he has a 95 percent chance of receiving $10,000 or a 100 percent chance of getting $9,499 will usually avoid risk and take the 100 percent certain safe choice, while the same person who’s told he has a 95 percent chance of losing $10,000 or a 100 percent chance of losing $9,499 will make the opposite choice, risking the bigger 95 percent option to avoid the loss. The chance for loss incites more risk than the possibility of an equal gain.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“But allow me to let you in on a secret: Life is negotiation. The majority of the interactions we have at work and at home are negotiations that boil down to the expression of a simple, animalistic urge: I want.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there. By listening intensely, a negotiator demonstrates empathy and shows a sincere desire to better understand what the other side is experiencing.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Every negotiation, every conversation, every moment of life, is a series of small conflicts that, managed well, can rise to creative beauty. Embrace them.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

“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 company prides itself on? It’s often very effective to ask these in groups of two or three as they are similar enough that they help your counterpart think about the same thing from different angles. Every situation is unique, of course, but choosing the right mix of these questions will lead your counterpart to reveal information about what they want and need—and simultaneously push them to see things from your point of view. 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 are worried that __________.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“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 more than five labels and spend a little time role-playing it. 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 like _________ makes it easier. It seems like you’re reluctant to _________. As an example, if you’re trying to renegotiate an apartment lease to allow subletters and you know the landlord is opposed to them, your prepared labels would be on the lines of “It seems as though you’re not a fan of subletters” or “It seems like you want stability with your tenants.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“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’re going to have to have something to talk about beyond a self-serving assessment of what you want. And you had better be ready to respond with tactical empathy to your counterpart’s arguments; unless they’re incompetent, the other party will come prepared to argue an interpretation of the facts that favors them. Get on the same page at the outset. You have to clearly describe the lay of the land before you can think about acting in its confines. Why are you there? What do you want? What do they want? Why? 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.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“That’s why some negotiation experts say that many people who think they have “win-win” goals really have a “wimp-win” mentality. The “wimp-win” negotiator focuses on his or her bottom line, and that’s where they end up.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Would it be a bad idea for me to take you to your favorite steak house and we just have a few laughs, and we don’t talk business?”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“As we’ve seen, when you recognize that your counterpart is not irrational, but simply ill-informed, constrained, or obeying interests that you do not yet know, your field of movement greatly expands.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“They are simply complying with needs and desires that you don’t yet understand, what the world looks like to them based on their own set of rules.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“The other side might not be able to do something because of legal advice, or because of promises already made, or even to avoid setting a precedent.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“But when someone displays a passion for what we’ve always wanted and conveys a purposeful plan of how to get there, we allow our perceptions of what’s possible to change.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“The reason for that is something called the “paradox of power”—namely, the harder we push the more likely we are to be met with resistance.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“I feel ___ when you ___ because ___,” and that demands a time-out from the other person.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Please don’t allow yourself to fall victim to “strategic umbrage.” Threats delivered without anger but with “poise”—that is, confidence and self-control—are great tools. Saying, “I’m sorry that just doesn’t work for me,” with poise, works.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Instead of naming a price, allude to an incredibly high number that someone else might charge. Once when a hospital chain wanted me to name a price first, I said, “Well, if you go to Harvard Business School, they’re going to charge you $2,500 a day per student.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“You can do this directly by saying, in an encouraging tone of voice, “Let’s put price off to the side for a moment and talk about what would make this a good deal.” Or you could go at it more obliquely by asking, “What else would you be able to offer to make that a good price for me?”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“First, deflect the punch in a way that opens up your counterpart. Successful negotiators often say “No” in one of the many ways we’ve talked about (“How am I supposed to accept that?”) or deflect the anchor with questions like “What are we trying to accomplish here?” Responses like these are great ways to refocus your counterpart when you feel you’re being pulled into the compromise trap.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“The most important thing to get from an Assertive will be a “that’s right” that may come in the form of a “that’s it exactly” or “you hit it on the head.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“accusation audit—“I know you think I don’t care about costs and taking profits from the company”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“I’m sorry but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Your offer is very generous, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me” is an elegant second way to say “No.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It