Negotiation is not a battle, but a process of discovery — our goal is to uncover as much information as possible.
What — the art of insinuating similarity to facilitate bonding.
Goal — seek to discover and identify what our opponent wants. Keep people talking and they will reveal things they'd never had otherwise.
How — start with I'm sorry, repeat their last three words, and pause, silence.
Why — We suffer from a cognitive bias for consistency. We fear what's different and are drawn to similarities. These calibrated questions give the opponent the illusion of control while it buys us time to make them feel safe, build trust, and disarm them.
What — surface our opponent's emotions by making them say it out loud to you.
Goal — see what's behind your opponent's feelings and emotions so she'll reveal something we can use.
How — list their fears by repeating emotions back using the words it seems like, it looks like. We must pay attention, ask what they are feeling, and make a commitment to understanding their world. We are not agreeing with their ideas, just acknowledging the opponent's situation.
Why — when we closely observe a person's face, and tone of voice, our brain tends to align with them in a process called neural resonance.
What — a "No" is the beginning of every negotiation, asking too quickly for a "Yes" paints us as an untrustworthy salesman.
Goal — make them believe that your idea was theirs in the first place, don't beat them with logic.
How — purposely mislabel one of their emotions or ask a ridiculous question that can only be answered negatively. Is now a bad time to talk is better than do you have a few minutes to talk.
Why — the moment your opponent disagrees, they feel in control, and draw their own boundaries. This is because they are defining their desires by saying what they don't want.
What — "that's right" are the words leading to behavioral change.
Goal — make your opponent say "that's right". We do that by building trust and convincing them that we understand their dreams and feelings, only then we uncover what truly motivates and drives them.
How — getting to "that's right" in five steps:
Why — it creates a subtle epiphany on your opponent where he agrees on a point without the feeling of having to give in. He embraces and believes the idea is his as if the idea has suddenly come up out of his free will.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Do not compromise, do not settle. Compromise is driven by fear of losses or to avoid pain. We compromise because it is easy, to be safe.
There are no such things as win-win solutions — they satisfy neither of the two sides. Don't end up wearing different color shoes.
Make time your ally and don't get tricked by thinking that getting a good deal now is preferable than a better deal later on. We tend to rush when we see a deadline approaching. Deadlines are often arbitrary, flexible, and hardly ever trigger the consequences we think they will.
Use them in your favor, for example, some corporate salesmen work quarterly.
We're not rational actors. We're governed by emotion. All negotiations are driven by some hidden (irrational) motivations we need to uncover. Don't approach a negotiation thinking the other guy thinks like you — that's not empathy, but projection.
Both offerers making an offer over one dollar, and receivers turning down any offer below one dollar, made an emotional choice.
Usually, people don't buy "the product", but an underlying solution to a problem they might have. Not a locksmith, but security.
Decision-making is also driven by Kahneman's prospect theory. Which describes how individuals are drawn to sure things over probabilities, even when the probability is a better choice. People will take greater risks to avoid losses than to achieve gains.
Frame the negotiation in terms of the potential loss they might incur if they don't "cooperate". We tend to overvalue what's ours.
The negative emotional value of unfairness outweighs the rational value of the money.
People usually use the F word to surface injustice and put you on the defensive.
What — use open-ended, calibrated questions to guide and ease the direction of the conversation towards your goals w/o the other person noticing.
Goal — implicitly ask these questions to create the illusion of control on the other side, which will encourage them to speak at length, revealing important information along the way.
How — avoid closed requests such as "can, is, or do" — or anything that can be responded with "yes, or no" — and prefer "how, what, why (use this with caution), where, when, or who". As seen before, use labeling ("perhaps, it seems") to ease their responses.
Why — w/o accusing of anything you are pushing them to understand and solve our problem. The key idea is that by asking these questions, we are creating an environment where we are making them active participants in the problem-solving process. In other words, with this illusion of collaboration, w/o noticing, they are now vested into finding a solution to our problem — which they'll now believe to be theirs as well.
Yes is nothing without how.
The use of how questions to subtly say "no" will buy us time, while leading and stirring the conversation towards our needs.
We can't help it, we are problem solvers and we like to help, hence how will push our counterpart to articulate a solution thinking it was their idea. This is also why negotiation is known as "the art of someone else have your way".
Published on April 03, 2021