Negotiate Without Fear Quotes

“Probably the most important part of the story is that I was willing to ask. I think that many of us are discontented in different situations and become quite frustrated. I always tell people that you should never be dissatisfied; instead, you should negotiate to try to change the situation. Do not let your fear regarding the negotiation impede your willingness to ask.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Saying “take it or leave it” or “this is my final offer' are commitment tactics to try to secure closure. Both of these are very dangerous tactics to use, though, because if the other side does not accept the settlement you are proposing, you have no credible way to re-engage them. A better commitment tactic is to use ratification. Ratification is an end-game tactic that can be used to secure agreement. You literally tie your hands to increase your power. You could say something like “the board has only approved this” or “I am only authorized to go this far,” These ratification statements will provide a stickiness to the settlement that you are discussing but still allow you a back door to resume the conversation if the other side walks away.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“I always tell my clients that “no” is not the ending but the beginning of the negotiation. You should not view “no” as a wall you run into that stops the negotiation but rather as the window you climb through to begin negotiating. Negotiation starts with “no.” When you hear “no,” you can be confident that you have tested the boundary conditions; you know at what point the other side will push back.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“I suggest that even when you are pursuing a package deal approach, you should always have a few less important Storytelling Issues in a bucket ready to go. Why do you need this bucket of issues? You need to have something to add into the negotiation in case the other side puts themselves in a corner by saying, “Take it or leave it” or “This is my final offer.” Whenever they do this, you have to help them out of the corner in a face-saving way so that you can settle the deal.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“I told them that a concession made before you start the negotiation counts for zero in the relationship bank. People like to see you concede during the negotiation—not before the negotiation begins. The other side never knows about concessions you made before you started the negotiation, so they cannot appreciate this movement.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Exclusivity is a power changing issue; when your customer is exclusively using your services, or only purchasing products from your company, you gain power in the relationship. This is because the customer will become dependent on you and will lack alternative suppliers.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“The engine is never your salary; the engine is the employer's pressing business needs. The next car back has your responsibilities that will address the company's needs and goals. The next car back is filled with your differentiators that address the employer's pressing business needs. The next car back might be a bet on how your unique capabilities will address the company's needs and the performance that you will achieve. The next car back is filled with other differentiators and additional Storytelling Issues. The caboose is your salary and annual bonus. The caboose is always attached to the train and rides along, but it comes at the end of the discussion, not the beginning of the conversation.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“When completing an RFP, Option A should always be exactly what the other side asks for. You do not want someone in procurement to throw out your bid because you did not respond directly to their request, so I always suggest that my clients indicate that Option A is “in response to your bid” or “as you requested.” I also suggest that my clients highlight that Options B and C are designed to address something the client asked for or something that they have indicated was a priority in the past. You want the client to feel as though the additional two options were, in some way, requested by them.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“When you say, “We'll match it,” you are conveying a full sentence, but you only hear yourself saying half of it. So, if you or someone on your team says, “We'll match it,” then gather your team together and practice the full sentence out loud. “We'll match it … because we're no better than them.” This is the clear message that you are conveying to the other side when you say these words. If you do not like the sound of that sentence, I would avoid saying the first half of it.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Even better though, never believe what a counterparty tells you in response to any question and, instead, test it with an offer. It is not that the other side is intentionally deceiving you; it is simply that they may not be aware of their relative preferences, so a question will provoke feedback about their absolute preference.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Many negotiators ask a lot of questions because they want to uncover what the other side wants. I would argue, though, that it is not enough to know what the other side wants—what you really need to find out is what they are willing to give up to get what they say that they want. What is the value to the other side of each of the issues? It is unlikely that you will uncover this information through questions alone. You can unlock this information, however, by observing the other side's reactions to multiple offers.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“The gain frame around synergies lacks a sense of urgency and may lead the potential purchaser to think that they can do this deal sometime in the future. Instead, you want to use loss framing by highlighting the risks in the potential acquirer's business that will be mitigated by owning your company. Building your BATNA by generating other interested purchasers will also help you to create a strong loss frame because you can highlight the competitors' interest in acquiring your company and the risk to the potential acquirer if their competitor owns your business.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“I always say that if you are looking backward in the rearview mirror, you are probably not emphasizing the other side's interests. To maintain an interests focus, you want to stress the future—how can we move this ahead, how can we get this resolved to move forward, how can we work together again—this future orientation will keep you in the interests circle. If I am looking backward, it is likely that I have veered off interests and am focused on rights or even power.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“In addition, when you lead, you are in the relationship-enhancing position, but when you follow, you are in the relationship-damaging position. When you make the first offer, you come to the table, frame what is being discussed, and make an offer that establishes a strong starting point. The other side then needs to respond to tell you what they do not like about your offer. If the other side leads, they make the offer, and you have to critique their offer. When I care about my relationship with the other side, I do not want to begin by criticizing their offer. I want to make the first offer and have them react instead.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Underestimating the other side's BATNA and establishing a goal that is overly ambitious is not a problem. This will lead you to make an offer that may be too aggressive, but you can adjust in the negotiation when you recognize that your originally established goal is not attainable. Remember, you do not walk away if you are not achieving your goal. But if you overestimate the strength of the other party's BATNA, then you will set too low a goal and make an offer that is not aggressive enough.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“While we are conscious of our strengths and acutely cognizant of our weaknesses, we generally know far less about the other side. Typically, we are aware of our counterparty's strengths because they openly share this information with us, telling us how much others want to work with them and how our competitors desire their business. However, we often do not know much about their weaknesses. So while our own weaknesses are very salient to us, we know very little about the vulnerabilities of the other side. This information asymmetry may lead us to fail to establish aggressive goals because our goal should be based on the weakness of the other side's alternatives.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“When you have other alternatives, though, you can choose how you will behave. BATNA gives you power in negotiations and in making choices about your own behavior. You are much less likely to feel forced to do something if you have robust outside alternatives.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“I said that it was critical that the incumbent supplier recognize that there was competition and that other suppliers could do the work. Once the RFP was sent, the company noticed that the incumbent supplier's behavior improved dramatically. The supplier was on time with deliverables, their work was better than before, and they were much more responsive than in the past. My client was delighted, thanked me for my work, and asked me to send them my invoice. I stressed to them that we were not finished, though. They were surprised and reiterated that their incumbent supplier was now “behaving,” and they were so happy that they had done the RFP. I repeated that we were not finished yet and added, “You have to cut off a thumb.” They replied, “What thumb? We do not want to cut off a thumb.” I explained that we had to award some piece of business to someone else; if we gave all of the business back to the incumbent, we would only reinforce their perception that my client had no other alternatives.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“You want to build your BATNA through the RFP and determine which set of suppliers you will advance to the negotiation phase. Then you want to take control of the negotiation and establish the starting point by making the first offer. You should never discuss the supplier's bid. Instead, you should highlight the intense competition the RFP process generated and the number of other suppliers who are interested in working with you. You want to use the RFP to highlight competition and then start the conversation.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Too often, we explore one option and then, if it does not work out, we focus on developing another alternative; however, this limits our power. To maximize your power, you want to engage in simultaneous BATNA development, building your options at the same time, before you begin to negotiate, rather than one at a time.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Your biggest source of power in any negotiation comes from your Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) (Fisher, Ury, & Patton, 1981). Your BATNA is your best outside option; it is Plan B. Your BATNA reveals what are you going to do if you do not get an agreement with the other side. Your BATNA has nothing to do with the deal on the table; it is the other deal you will do if you do not complete this deal.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Remember that there is no such thing as a salary negotiation. You should never open a negotiation with only Contentious Issues on the table. You want to make certain that you have lots of Storytelling Issues included because this will help you secure more on the Contentious and Tradeoff Issues.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“If all you do is to reduce price, then all you do is not get paid a lot of money. As you think about expanding footprint in a customer's account, you want to consider how you can create barriers to switching from your company to someone else's (pre-payment, rebates, exclusivity, and embeddedness), how you can know more about the customer's business than others (embeddedness and exclusivity), and how you can incent the customer to give you more work (volume incentives in the form of volume discounts and rebates).”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Similar to the rebates we discussed earlier, pre-payment creates a strong barrier dissuading a customer from switching to a competitor. I do not think that you will get prepayment 100% of the time, but I think you can successfully obtain this 25–35% of the time if you ask for it all of the time. When you ask, I would encourage you to make it a first concession issue rather than a first offer issue. I will offer a price that I know the other side will react to by saying it is “too high.” In response, I concede to lower my price if they pay me in advance.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Similar to the rebates we discussed earlier, pre-payment creates a strong barrier dissuading a customer from switching to a competitor. I do not think that you will get prepayment 100% of the time, but I think you can successfully obtain this 25–35% of the time if you ask for it all of the time.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Exclusivity does not change the competitive landscape (your competitors are still out there), but it changes the customer's perception of the competitive landscape because they are uncertain about competitors they have not used for a while. This uncertainty makes these competitors less attractive, weakening the customer's perception of their alternatives, and giving you more power. Because exclusivity is a power changing issue, procurement executives are often the “exclusivity police” and try to avoid single-source relationships.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“The second footprint expansion issue is a volume incentive—you want to incent your customers to give you more of their business. You get the behavior that you reward, not what you desire (Kerr, 2008); if you want a customer to give you more of their business, you need to reward them for doing so.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Consider, though, how the insight sessions, industry updates, and briefings for the CEO and CFO before the analyst calls will help meet the customer's business needs and will also link to the objective of building relationships with the CEO and CFO over the next six months; likewise, the coaching sessions and prep before the board meetings will cement the partner's relationship with the CFO even further. Meeting with the CEO and CFO before analyst calls to brief them on issues that they might need to discuss will give the partner the opportunity to provide essential information when they need it the most, creating a dependency on the partner and cementing his relationship as a trusted adviser to the company's leadership team. People are often focused on trying to get their customers to like them. I always advise my clients that it is nice if your customers like you, but essential that they need you. You want to include negotiable issues that position you to create this type of dependency.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes

“Information is a significant source of power in any negotiation; the more you know about the other side's interests, objectives, and options, the more power you have. Likewise, the more information you have about your own interests, options, and priorities, the more power you have in the negotiation. Information is not the biggest source of power in a negotiation, but it is the source of power over which you have the most control.”
― Victoria Medvec, Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes