By Jeff Sanford
Toronto, Ontario — July 18, 2016 — Everyone has to negotiate in life. Whether it’s the client who wants to renegotiate a price after the job is done, or a supplier delivering product negotiation, it’s a part of everyday life. Getting it right is a vital skill for any business person, according to Black Swan Group CEO Chris Voss. Voss spoke extensively about the art of negotiating during the latest Guild 21 conference call.
During the call, Voss shared real, solid and actionable tips that anyone can use. Before we get into that, you may be wondering what exactly makes Voss an expert negotiator. On top of running Black Swan Group and authoring his own book “Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It,” he spent 24 years in the FBI as the organization’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. The FBI is considered a “thought leader” in the negotiation space. Voss learned all the tricks the FBI (and Scotland Yard) use to handle high-stake negotiations. Voss has also attended Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and the Kellogg School of Business. Now that he has retired from the FBI, he solves business communication problems using the tools developed by hostage negotiators. His approach is a bit outside of the box when it comes to mainstream thinking on negotiating.
Voss starts his presentation by pointing out that most professionals have learned a negotiation technique known as ‘Getting to Yes.’ The phrase comes from a now-famous business book, “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In,” which was a bestseller starting in 1981. The book sold millions of copies and was translated into 36 languages. It became the accepted way to negotiate, according to Voss.
“The thinking has always been, ‘The more you get people to say yes in a conversation, the more likely you are to get the big yes.’ That’s why every sales pitch starts with a question like, ‘Would you like to have more free time?,’ or, ‘Would you like to make more money?’ We don’t go a day now without someone getting us to say yes. It’s what most people have been taught. We love yes, it’s what we live for. But ‘Yes’ is the last thing you want to hear.”
What? How can this be? Turning this accepted wisdom around Voss points out that, “When someone calls you on the phone … As soon as someone tries to get us to say ‘yes,’ we get defensive. When someone calls and asks, ‘Do you have a few minutes to talk?’ You immediately get concerned. People immediately ask themselves four questions: ‘If I have a few minutes, do I want to talk to you? If have a few minutes, do I want to talk to you abound what you want to talk about? How long is a few minutes?’ And the last question, ‘How do I get off the phone?’ It takes a while to work through those answers. When you ask, ‘Do you have a few minutes to talk?’ everyone in the room will want to say, ‘no.’ And so trying to get someone to ‘yes,’ triggers defensiveness because they don’t know what they’re getting into. People get defensive at that.”
“Hostage negotiators never do this. It never occurred to me to try to get people to get to yes,” says Voss.
How then did he get people to say yes without asking? “At the FBI we didn’t get someone to say ‘yes.’ We never did that. Because it feels like a trick or a trap. If you trap someone they don’t keep their word. They lie. They don’t follow through,” says Voss. “The real thing hostage negotiators try to get people to say is, ‘That’s right.’” The trick is to get people to agree with you. Allow them to make their own decision, rather than forcing them to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
Voss expands on this idea. He points out that saying ‘That’s right,’ is different from saying, ‘You’re right.’ There is a key distinction between these two phrases. “When people say ‘You’re right,’ that’s what someone says when they want someone to get off their back. It’s what we say to someone we care about and want to maintain a relationship with but we want that person to shut up and leave us alone. We say this to get someone to stop talking. It’s what a husband says to his wife so she doesn’t get mad. He says, ‘You’re right.’ This is different from getting someone to say, ‘That’s right,’ which is what you want to hear from the other person in a negotiation,” says Voss. “You’re being suckered if someone is saying to you, ‘You’re right’. You want them to say, ‘That’s right’. When people say ‘That’s right,’ they tend to be okay with what’s being said. They’re coming on board. The other side is coming across to you. ‘That’s right,’ is what people say when they hear something that is completely the truth. If they’re saying that you’re getting them on your side,” says Voss.
He tells a story about a ransom case in the Philippines. “We took this terrorist down from asking for $10 million to zero because we got the terrorist to say, ‘That’s right’,” says Voss. He follows up with another story of a client who was a sales rep for a drug company. The salesperson was trying to get a doctor to buy a new drug. But the doctor wouldn’t give her the time of day. The sales rep made an appointment with the doctor again after the coaching. “She went in and said, ‘Your patients are more than just patients to you. You feel for them. You’re not going to give them just any drug. You’re not going to buy drugs because the company tells you.’ She was talking to him from his perspective. He turned and looked at her as if he’d never seen he before. He turned and said, ‘That’s right,’” says Voss. “It’s a subtle but important way to handle a negotiation.”
Another phrase that creates problems says Voss is ‘I’ll try.’ “Everyone has a bad instinct about, ‘I’ll try.’ That’s a bad response. People will throw that out when they’re trying to maintain relations and don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but don’t want to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” says Voss. “In the FBI we learned the hard way that whenever someone says, ‘I’ll try,’ it never happens.”
Another phrase that incites a universal reaction is the question, ‘Why?’ “Everybody is made defensive by the question, ‘Why?’ Never say to anyone in a negotiation, ‘Why?’ This will always make the other person defensive and less likely to give you what you want,” says Voss. To make an inquiry during a negotiation, “Change your ‘why?’ to ‘what?’,” says Voss. “Instead of saying, ‘Why is this price justified?’ say, ‘What makes this price justified?’ People will become much less defensive. Change your, ‘why?’ to ‘what?’”
Another thing Voss learned in the hostage negotiation business is the proper way to say no. “Hostage negotiatiors have to say ‘no’ all the time, but they don’t want to say it abruptly,” says Voss. He tells another story from his FBI days. Someone had robbed a bank and wanted a helicopter and a million bucks. This wasn’t going to happen, so Voss had to tell the bank robber no in a strategic manner. “Tone is huge. But you want to put ‘no’ as a question. So you say, ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ That’s the first way to say no,” according to Voss. He provides an example. “I had one client in this business tell me he knocked down the price of a fender by saying it in that late-night DJ kind of voice, ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ It works,” says Voss. He explains how the trick works. “By asking ‘How can I do that?’ people don’t feel conned. People like to be asked, ‘how?’ The other thing that’s interesting about asking, ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ is that it makes the other person take a hard look at you. They have to think about your situation. They have to turn the situation around and consider your perspective,” says Voss.
He provides another example, going on to tell a story about a negotiation between a woman and thirteen-year-old over a $60 game console. The mother asked, “How am I supposed to do that?” The kid came back with, “Well, I’ll pay half.” Handling a ‘no’ with a question defuses a situation. “The other person won’t get so upset. They don’t want to get up and storm away. You see it consistently in life,” says Voss.
Of course this strategy only goes so far in a hostage situation. Asking, ‘How can I do that?’ can gain some time,” says Voss. “But the other person is going to run out of patience until the third time. Hopefully by that time they’ve changed their terms or come down on price.”
He goes on to say these reactions are universal among humans. “I get a kick out of human nature,” he says. “Hostage negotiators all over the world use the same skills. In Bogota, Colombia, in Cape Town, South Africa or in Japan. It’s all the same. People ask me about cultural differences, but there are no differences between humans at this level. The culture is the one of human beings. No matter where you are, these tips will work. It’s based on how we’re built. It’s sub-cultural,” says Voss.
One of the most important words a negotiator can use is what is known in the negotiating industry as the F-word: fair.
“Why is fair a trigger? It’s a subtle jab. If I’m in a negotiation and say, ‘I just want what’s fair,’ I’ve accused you of being unfair. That makes you uncomfortable’,” says Voss. He tells a story about a client in Boston trying to sell a home just as house prices had gone down. “Their response to the buyer was, ‘We just want what’s fair.’ The buyer raised their offer. How is this fair to to the buyer if market prices were lower? It’s not. If the price went down, the price went down. But by bringing in ‘fairness’ the sellers were able to get more than market price,” says Voss. “There is something about that word that makes people want to do something for the other person. That’s why we call it the F-word of negotiating.”
When it comes to actual negotiations, Voss will be sure to tell someone in advance that he “Wants to treat them fairly and that they should tell me If I’m not doing that.’ This is an important set up at the beginning of the negotiation. “When it finally comes out of the other person’s mouth that they’re feeling upset … and that will happen … If I have said early on, ‘Tell me when I’m not being fair,’ I can then say to them, ‘Well you should have told me when I wasn’t treating your fairly,’” says Voss. “’Fair’ is an interesting word.”
When the call was opened up to questions someone wanted to know when it was possible to tell if someone should walk away from a negotiation. According to Voss, “There are a couple of things I’ll look for. I’ll look for clues as to whether or not they’re playing games with me. If they’re going to be difficult, I wouldn’t bother. As negotiators like to say, ‘No deal is better than a bad deal.’ By the time we’ve gone back or forth a couple times I’ve got a good idea what this person is about. I have a tendency to walk away from high maintenance, low revenue people. Time is the only commodity I have. If people are wasting time, if they’re doing all the talking and only stopping to ask me to say, ‘yes,’ well then you’re wasting my time. And I’ll walk away. Time is in every negotiation. And that’s my most valuable commodity. It’s odd. A lot of people are willing to have time wasted.”
Another tip for negotiating: “’Splitting the difference’ is a compromise. It’s usually never a good idea. It seems fair, and almost everyone thinks it is just split the difference between the high and low offer and get where you want to go right away. But be very wary of splitting the difference. You want to make a high value trade,” says Voss. Think of it this way: If you can come off your original price and move quite a distance to get to the middle, rapidly, your original offer will be seen to be a lie.”
The biggest mistake people make when negotiating? “Making your case first. Try to talk them into something over time. But let them talk as well, and let them put out their case first,” says Voss.
Every negotiation is an, “exchange of information,” says Voss. A negotiation will play out naturally. But there are some tricks based on human nature that can help. Knowing and using these tips can push the outcome of a negotiation in your favour.
