Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss
Lessons from a former FBI agent on negotiations
Background
Never Split The Difference is written by Chris Voss, an FBI hostage negotiator turned writer, lecturer, and academic. He details his lessons on how to best negotiate and more importantly, he relates these lessons to a business context.
Voss argues that everything in life is a negotiation — if you’re trying to get a dinner reservation at a sold-out restaurant, trying to get that free upgrade on your next flight, or even trying to decide who gets the last piece of cake, you are negotiating.
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.
Anytime you want something, you are most likely negotiating. And Chris argues that negotiations have two phases:
Information gathering
Behavior influencing
Information gathering
Don’t talk, listen
When you think about a negotiation, odds are that you are thinking about a suave salesman winning over a client or a hardball corporate raider shoving a deal down an opponent’s throat. Chris argues that neither of these tactics are optimal!
Negotiation is not an act of battle; it is a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.
There are often a few pieces of hidden information that are key to each negotiation. In order to uncover those pieces of information, you need to shut up and listen to your counterpart.
Instead of prioritizing your argument — in fact, instead of doing any thinking at all in the early goings about what you’re going to say — make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. In that mode of true active listening … you’ll disarm your counterpart. You’ll make them feel safe … safe enough to talk and talk and talk some more about what they want.
Again, information is your friend so let the other person do as much talking as possible early on.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Another way to disarm your counterpart is to use mirroring.
By repeating back what people say, you trigger this mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting.
Chris suggests you build this into your everyday conversations. It will be awkward at first but try simply repeating back the last 3 words someone said. They will keep giving you more and more information, like magic!
Labeling
Labeling allows you to spot emotion without making your counterpart defensive.
Once you have spotted an emotion you want to highlight, the next step is to label it aloud. … labels almost always begin with roughly the same words: It seems like… It sounds like… It looks like…
Labeling an emotion is more likely to get you an actual response than just a yes or no. And if they disagree with your label, you can say, “I didn’t say that was what it was. I just said it seems like that.”
This is especially true for negative emotions.
Whenever I was dealing with the family of a hostage, I started out by saying I knew they were scared. And when I make a mistake — something that happens a lot — I always acknowledge the other person’s anger. I’ve found the phrase “Look, I’m an asshole” to be an amazingly effective way to make problems go away. This approach has never failed me.
The next time you get into a tense conversation, try labeling the other person’s emotion (or your own) and see if you can turn that emotion into something positive.
Behavior influencing
Now that we have gathered our information, we can try to influence our counterpart’s behavior.
Accusation audits
The idea of an accusation audit is to bring up everything negative your counterpart could say.
The first step of doing so is listing every terrible thing your counterpart could say about you… This idea of an accusation audit is really, really hard for people to get their minds around.
This strategy reminds me a lot of Eminem’s rap battle in the 8 Mile movie. Just like how Papa Doc could no longer make fun of Eminem for living in a trailer park, proactively bringing up perceived grievances disarms your opponent. It will also help show that you can see their perspective and will usually lead to your counterpart arguing on your behalf.
Ask NO questions
Most sales books tell you to ask questions that get your counterpart to say YES. Voss, on the other hand, coaches us to ask questions that get our counterpart to say NO.
Voss argues that NO questions do the following:
Allows the real issues to be brought up
Protects people from making ineffective decisions
Slows things down so people can freely embrace their decisions
Helps people feel safe and secure in their decision
Moves everyone’s efforts forward
Try taking a look at your scripts and switching those YES questions to NOs.
Get to ‘That’s right!’
Voss argues that until your counterpart says “That’s right!” you don’t have a deal. Saying “That’s right!” shows that they are bought into the solution. Preferably, you can get them to say “That’s right!” twice before the end of the meeting.
Voss gives us several tactics to do this:
Effective pauses — Leave some empty space for them to chime in.
Minimal encouragers (Yes, OK, Uh-huh, I see) — Force them to come to the conclusion themselves.
Mirroring — Gets them to keep talking.
Labeling — Asking, “it seems like you aren’t happy with this deal” lets them voice any concerns.
Paraphrasing — Sometimes you just need to say something in a different way.
Summarizing — This is the best way to get to the second “That’s right!”
Compromises
Compromises are often the worst case result of a negotiation, as you can tell from the title of the book.
Voss uses the example of a husband and wife arguing whether the husband should wear brown shoes or black shoes to a wedding. The compromise is that he wears one of each color!
Remember this example when you want to compromise.
Be aware of ‘fair’
Using the word “fair” is dangerous in a negotiation. There are three use cases and only one of them is good.
Defensive — “We just want what’s fair.” This immediately implies that the other party has been unfair and it makes them defensive.
Offensive — “We’ve given you a fair offer.” Same as above but a different party is describing the fairness.
Constructive — “I want you to feel like you are being treated fairly at all times. So please stop me at any time if you feel I’m being unfair, and we’ll address it.” By saying it upfront, you haven’t accused anyone of being unfair and you have implicitly said that your counterpart perceives you as being fair unless they specifically say otherwise.
Anchoring
You can bend your counterpart’s reality by anchoring their starting point to something extreme. Before you make an offer, emotionally anchor them by saying how bad it will be.
Once you start using anchoring, you will notice how many establishments use anchoring against you on a daily basis.
Calibrated questions
Use calibrated, open-ended questions. It will make the other party feel like they are in control and let them come up with a solution themselves. All without you having to reveal any information!
Chris’s go-to questions are:
What about this is important to you?
How can I help to make this better for us?
How would you like me to proceed?
What is it that brought us into this situation?
How can we help solve this problem?
What’s the objective? What are we trying to accomplish here?
How am I supposed to do that?
Notice they are all “What” or “How” questions.
They each let the other party come up with a solution. In other words, you need their intelligence and advice on how to solve the problem. It strokes their ego! And now they are using their mental resources to solve your problems for you.
Calibrated questions will also make your counterpart think the final solution is their idea. To know if your counterpart is actually bought into the solution, summarize the final outcome for them.
Linking back to our earlier section, if they respond with “That’s right!” then they are bought in.
If they respond with, “You’re right!” or “I’ll try” then they are not actually bought in. This would be a perfect opportunity to use labeling (“It seems like you aren’t happy with the final solution.”) or calibrated questions (“What can we improve to make this more exciting for you?”) to get to a “That’s right!”
Yes / No
Types of YES
There are three types of yes:
Counterfeit yes — wants to say no but yes is the easier escape route
Confirmation yes — an innocent, reflexive yes to a simple question
Commitment yes — I actually want to do business with you
Avoid the first two types and seek out the third.
Types of NO
No has even more meanings:
I am not yet ready to agree
You are making me feel uncomfortable
I do not understand
I don’t think I can afford it
I want something else
I need more information
I want to talk it over with someone else
Understanding what type of NO you are dealing with will increase your odds of getting to a YES.
If you’re playing hardball
Lastly, Voss gives us a formula to use if you are in a hardball negotiation. He calls it the Ackerman model:
Set your target price (your goal).
Set your first offer at 65% of your target price.
Calculate three raises of decreasing increments (to 85%, 95%, 100%).
Use lots of empathy and different ways of saying “No” to get the other side to counter before you have to increase your offer.
When calculating the final amount, use precise, non-round numbers like, say, $37,983 instead of $38,000. It gives the number credibility and weight.
On the final number, throw in a non-monetary item (that they probably don’t care about) to show you’re at your limit.
Another thing Voss notes is that if your counterpart doesn’t immediately reject your first offer, you have the upper hand.
TL;DR
Everything in life is a negotiation. Build these habits into your everyday conversations and interactions.
Negotiations are about uncovering information and influencing behavior.
To increase the amount of information you have, use active listening, mirroring, and emotion labeling.
To influence behaviors, use accusation audits and anchoring, ask NO questions and calibrated questions, avoid “fair” and compromises, and get to a “That’s right!”
Beware of the different types of YES and NO.
Use the Ackerman model if you are in a hardball negotiation.