“The adversary is not the person across the table; the adversary is the situation.” Chris Voss
Doing all you can to show the other side that you are negotiating in good faith.
The idea is to demonstrate that you are not here to deceive or exploit the other side—sometimes showing deference can be key.
* Becoming genuinely interested in what drives the other side.
Understanding their goals, motivations, wants, and fears will help you navigate
the negotiation effectively. An authentic connection with your negotiating
partner will help lead to an optimal outcome for both parties.
* Building trust-based influence through the use of tactical empathy, or deliberately influencing the other side’s feelings.
By appealing to your counterpart’s emotions, you can build rapport, mutual understanding, influence, and—ultimately—deals.
* Work to deactivate negative feelings—fear, suspicion, anger, aggression, and distrust.
From a neurological standpoint, this means trying to defuse activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that houses those feelings.
* Aim to magnify positive emotions.
People are actually smarter when they’re in a positive frame of mind. Building trust, comfort, and rapport will help you accomplish your goals.
TECHNIQUES OF NEGOTIATION
Achieving your goals in a negotiation requires the adoption of a positive, collaborative mindset, but it also requires command of a certain set of skills. Perhaps the most important of these is the way you employ your voice.
In the negotiating room, there are three main tones of voice:
* Assertive
This voice is declarative, straight up, and delivered like a punch in the nose. (Always counterproductive.)
* Playful/accommodating
This voice is a bearer of truths delivered gently. It promotes collaboration. This should be your go-to voice in negotiations. (Use it approximately 80 percent of the time.)
* Late-night FM DJ
This voice is straightforward with a soothing, downward lilt. It’s best employed when establishing points of negotiation that are immovable. (Use it approximately 10 to 20 percent of the time.)
In addition to the three tones of voice, master these two essential inflections:
* Inquisitive
Speak with an upward inflection, as if you’re asking a question. This tone should convey genuine curiosity and interest in the other person’s point of view. This should be your default inflection.
* Declarative
Speak with a downward inflection, as if you’re stating a fact. Your voice will inspire your counterpart to feel the same kinds of emotions that you are expressing by activating an empathetic response from their brain’s mirror neurons.
MIRRORING
Mirroring, or the repetition of key words used by your negotiating partner, is another essential negotiating tool. In most situations, you should identify one to three key terms for mirroring (but never use more than five). The technique can be especially effective when you’re repeating words that your counterpart has just spoken.
Mirroring lets the other side know you’re paying attention to what they’re saying and treating their views with the close consideration they believe they deserve.
An example of mirroring might look something like this:
* Your negotiating partner: “I’ve had a really difficult year, and it seems like you’re discounting all of the financial and personal stress I’ve been under.” * You: “Financial and personal stress?”
LABELING
Labeling is used to give voice to the other side’s feelings. Good labels take the form of:
* “It seems like…” * “It looks like…” * “You look like…”
At its core, labeling is designed to let the other side know that you understand their feelings, to help build relationships, and to gather information.
DYNAMIC SILENCE
Dynamic silence can magnify the impact of your mirrors and labels. By taking a beat after you mislabel, for example, you give the other side the opportunity to set you straight, potentially revealing more information than you could have gotten by asking direct questions.
CALIBRATED QUESTIONS
Calibrated questions are how and what questions structured for maximum effect. They are designed to change the power dynamic of the negotiation and force consideration of your position into the equation. In other words, they allow the other side to see things from your side of the table and allow everyone to keep their sense of autonomy.
Calibrated questions often sound like this:
* “How am I supposed to do that?” * “What’s going to happen if I do that?”
These questions also help cultivate the illusion of control in your counterpart. They can serve the same purpose as why questions while sounding less accusatory. Why questions tend to trigger a defensive posture.
STRATEGIES OF NEGOTIATION
ACCUSATIONS AUDIT
In preparing for a negotiation, you’d be well served to perform an accusations audit, during which you’ll create a comprehensive list of all the negative assumptions, thoughts, and feelings you think the other side may be harboring against you.
YES AND NO QUESTIONS
When it comes to a line of questioning, there are three types of yes answers :
* Yes as a commitment (used to agree) * Yes as a confirmation (used to affirm commitment) * Yes as counterfeit (used tactically by someone who doesn’t trust you, feels trapped, or wants you to go away)
Often, a no can be much more valuable than a yes. In certain circumstances, people feel safe and protected by a no.
So, a question like “Is this a good idea?” may be better phrased as “Is this a ridiculous idea?”; “Can you agree to do it this way?” could be better presented as “Do you think it’s unreasonable if we can both agree to take things in this direction?” When answering a yes question, people are going to feel that every piece of information they provide is another commitment to be made.
Avoiding yes in favor of no helps ease the other side’s fear of commitment. Here again, a negative emotion is being deactivated. And don’t forget that no is equally valuable to your own cause. After saying no, use dynamic silence to let it sink in, demonstrating to your partner that you stand by your word.
DEFEATING FEAR OF LOSS
One of the primary negative emotions that can derail a negotiation is the fear of loss. Neuroscience teaches us that fear is a dominant factor in human decision-making.
Use your skills to try and figure out what the other side is scared of losing. Know that people will begin to talk about a deal being “fair” once they feel backed into a corner. Fairness, in this moment, becomes the end all/be all of the negotiation. People will even walk away from a good deal if they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly. If you get the sense that the people across the table think you’re being unfair, encourage them to speak their minds about it. Then ask for a few examples of how you’ve allegedly been mistreating them. You may find that the other side’s idea of fairness will result in something that’s totally unfair for you.
The key to negotiation may be deference, but that doesn’t equate to subservience.
Do whatever you can to deactivate this fear of loss—remember your mirrors and labels—and keep your negotiation grounded, collaborative, and positive.
BARGAINING STRATEGIES
When negotiating, it’s always best to steer clear of a bargaining situation. But sometimes it’s unavoidable. Below are the stages of the Ackerman system. It’s paramount to employ tactical empathy between each round:
* Establish a target price for the goods you want to buy. * Make an initial offer at 65 percent of your target price. * Assuming no deal, raise your price by 20 percent. * Assuming no deal, raise your price by 10 percent. * If still no deal, raise by another 5 percent. * Your final offer should be an odd number, and you should be prepared to include some non-monetary compensation to show them you’re committing all of your available resources.
The point of the Ackerman system is to make the other side feel that every price increase is creating a real burden for you. Resist the temptation to set an anchor price that is unreasonably low. Lowball offers can create negative emotions like resentment, and the deal will be doomed from the start.
Preferable to back-and-forth bargaining are the kinds of collaborative efforts that make for great negotiations. By the time the other side asks you to make the first offer, you should have elicited enough information from them to know what a great deal would look like in their eyes.
Alternatively, set a range for yourself that’s dictated by the market price and by what you can actually afford. Again, the goal is to build as much rapport as possible with your counterpart. Even when bargaining, the benefits of trust-based influence will outweigh a zero-sum approach.
DECODING BODY LANGUAGE AND SPEECH PATTERNS
We all have one way of telling the truth. If you can identify how your counterpart looks and sounds when he or she is being honest with you, then you’ll be able to detect any deviations from that pattern that may signal a lie.
When decoding body language and speech patterns, keep the following in mind:
* The Pinocchio Effect
People who are being dishonest tend to use more words and effort than necessary to communicate their point.
* The 7-38-55 Rule In interpersonal communications, 7 percent of a person’s effort is conveyed via spoken words, 38 percent by tone of voice, and 55 percent through body language. All of which is to say, your tone of voice is more than five times as important as what you’re actually saying. If your counterpart’s tone of voice and body language indicate that he or she is about to lose their bearings, harness the power of your late-night FM DJ voice—remember those mirror neurons?—to soothe your counterpart and slow down the pace of the negotiation.
FIND THE BLACK SWANS
Black swans are pieces of innocuous information that, if revealed, can change the course of the whole negotiation. In many ways, negotiation is all about finding the black swans. To discover them, you must open your mind, maintain an endless curiosity, and be on the lookout for surprises.
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