Master Negotiator: Proven Strategies for Winning Any Negotiation

[Music] In any legitimate negotiation, the more you assert your position, no matter how true and genuine it is, the more the other person locks up.

The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is what do we need to know about reading people, whether they're lying to us or not? Well, there's different kinds of lies. There's a predatory lie where they're trying to take advantage of you, and there's a defensive lie where they're just trying to protect themselves. Pick out the difference.

And then he's negotiated with terrorists, diffused kidnappings, and now former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss is sharing how the same tactics that helped him save lives can help you win deals, build trust, and master high-stakes moments.

"I'm a bank robber and you're a negotiator, and you got to talk me out." Want to play? "Yeah, I would actually love this." We'll simulate a phone conversation. Okay.

Ring. Ring. "I need a car in 60 seconds or she dies." Oh boy. Okay. "You got 50 seconds to get me a car and I kill the hostage if you don't."

So Chris, I would love to know if there was a signature moment in your life, or a series of events, or maybe the way you're wired, as you look back, what maybe led you or drove you to become one of the best negotiators out there?

Well, and I I think it would be fair. I I consider myself maybe the best negotiation coach out there. Okay. Um, and doing it and coaching it are two different skills, which is why most professional athletes that were great players are poor coaches. That's right. That's right. And the analogy I like all the time, Phil Jackson, probably one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NBA, didn't even start on the team he played for. Now, he was the six-man and they were a championship team, but he didn't start. U so I think I'm as good a negotiator as the top in the top tier, but I think much more think about how to teach it, how to coach it. So, I think I'm a better negotiation coach.

I get that, but I still would love to know, back to that question, do you think that there was something you can look back on that drew you to negotiation?

The universe uh hit me with a 2x4 and sent me that direction. So, I was uh I wanted to be in law enforcement. Uh decided that in my mid-teens, all I really wanted to do was be a cop. And I saw a movie, a couple of cops in New York City called The Super Cops. And they struck me as being they were very creative. I didn't realize at the time they were also Mavericks. They didn't, you know, they ignored what the commanders told them to do. Uh, which I did also. That was probably one of the appeals. But so I wanted to be in law enforcement and I consider myself kind of a medium-sized guy and there are a lot a lot of bigger, better people than me on the street. So I wanted to figure how do I even the odds a little bit. I was more attracted to martial arts and then I tore my knee up in college pursuing martial arts. So then lingering knee problems, my father uh convinced me to look at federal law enforcement, joined the FBI, was on a SWAT team in the FBI, reinjured my knee. Want to like crisis response, decision-making required. You can't delay. And we had negotiators. I figured that was how hard could it be? I mean, I literally remember literally saying to myself, "I talk to people every day. I could talk to terrorists." And anything that looks easy. Communication is a refined skill. And so then before I knew what I was getting into, I went to the head of the negotiation team in the FBI in New York and said, "Here I am." She's like, she was duly unimpressed and rejected me. But then I said, "What should I do?" And she said, "Volunteer on a suicide hotline."

So the turning moment really was when I volunteered on a suicide hotline and then I found out how powerful empathy was and that you could change somebody's behavior 180 degrees in 20 minutes. Cuz I figured that you had to, if they were suicidal, you'd be on the phone with them for hours. You know, Richard Branson in his book Losing My Virginity is talking about his early days. Very good-hearted guy. He's volunteered on a suicide hotline maybe as a 20-something, also dyslexic, by the way. Uh, and he's he talks about being on the phone overnight with people. And I show up at the hotline. They go like, "Yeah, 20 minutes or less. We got a time limit. No more than 20 minutes." I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. It's ridiculous. It's not the way it is in the movies." Like, "No." They said, "No." And as a matter of fact, if you do it right, it won't take that long. So then I was like, "Wow, this is what if this works someplace besides suicide hotlines?" And I started using it in my personal life. And then just the I think the other turning point moment that was really fortunate was I I got involved in a bank robbery with hostages, which is an extremely rare event. I mean, it's literally a unicorn event where you actually negotiate because the bad guys are trapped in a bank. Like, it won't happen once in the whole all of the United States this year. Not one time. There'll be bank robberies and there'll be hostages, but the bad guys will be gone before the cops show up because they know they're coming. And it happened to me in New York City and the last New York City, largest city in the US, the last time they had a bank robbery with hostages was 20 years earlier. That's how rare it is. And I talked one of the bad guys out using the skills and then like had proof of concept. You make the magic work in real life. You're like, "Wow, this is powerful stuff." And just kind of kept going from there.

Yeah. I I want to follow up on that because for our audience, you know, going after something, trying anything new, the fear of the unknown, I believe, is got to be one of the biggest fears we face, whether it's personal or professional life. The fear of the unknown is terrifying. So, you've got a little bit of training, you do well, you taste it, some success, but I do want you to speak to the early days. Take us back uh whether it's a story or a memory of feeling that fear because the stakes are really high. What you just described first time around. I mean, you're a human. Yes, you're trained, but you're new at it. How do you recall facing that fear and pressing through it?

Um, first of all, I'm going to I'm going to uh derail the question for a moment, then I'll come back to it. Go for it. Cuz we have an exercise. Like, if I'm a bank robber and you're a negotiator. Oh, I see. Okay. And you got to talk me out. Okay. You want to play? "Yeah. I would actually love this. This is actually great derailment. Everybody take notes." Let me let me let me lay out the the game plan. Um, bad guy in a bank. Mhm. You're the good guy. Okay. Got me surrounded. Okay. You don't know how many bad guys. You don't know how many hostages. You got to talk me out. You're going to call in. We'll simulate a phone conversation. Okay. There are four rules, four restrictions, and these are the real-life restrictions and actual bank robberies. All right? Uh, you cannot give me transportation. Okay? You can't give me weapons. Okay? You can't give me drugs or alcohol. Okay? And there's no exchange of hostages allowed or no one comes in. People only come out. You can't say if I come in, we let somebody go. You can't say your mom's here. If we send your mom in, we let somebody go. Nobody comes in. People only come out. Okay. So, no no transportation, no weapons, no drugs or alcohol. Got it. No hostage exchange. Okay. That's it. Those are the restrictions. All right. Yeah. Call in. Okay. And talk me out. Okay.

Ring ring. "I need a car in 60 seconds or she dies." Okay. What are you ultimately needing? "You got 50 seconds to get me a car and I kill the hostage if you don't." Okay. Well, I think you realize that you're in control here and I cannot possibly get you a car at least 35 seconds. Oh, okay. So, you can get me a car. How much time do you need? Well, let me How much time? I probably need at least an hour. Call me back in an hour. Click. Okay. All right.

Ring. Ring. "It's less than an hour. That must mean you have the car. I knew I could deal with you. I knew you were a good guy cuz there's no reason at all for you to call me back unless you have that car." The car is being worked on right now. But wait, wait a minute. Worked on. What's worked on? We're in the process of getting you a car. Oh, you're working on. Okay. Call me back when it's here. Click. No. No. Oh. Oh boy. Okay. Uh, ring ring. "If you don't have the car, I kill her in 15 seconds." 14. 13. 12. 11. 10. Nine. Do you really want to kill her? Seven. Is this going to end up like that? Six. Five. It's not going to work out for you. I can help you. How can I help you? Get a car. Okay.

So, we'll stop. So, what you did was the the biggest dilemma that people have. You don't consider yourself a liar. Correct. And you lied to me. Were you ever working on the car? Not that quickly. No, at all. You can't give me a car. That's number one rule. Oh, no. Four rules. Yeah. Well, that's fair. So, I flunked it. But I also want to point out something, too, while you're doing this. I felt the fear rise in me to the point of my first question that you derailed just in that role play. I felt some fear there.

Well, there's a lot of great neuroscience reasons there, which number one is in any legitimate negotiation, the more you assert your position, no matter how true and genuine it is, the more the other person locks up. Because you said you you felt you feel when somebody's coming at you when they're when they're direct, you don't mean for them to feel attacked, but the caveman wiring causes you to feel attacked. Yeah. So the the more I assert assertively, which people tend to do when they're in the right, the dumber I make my counterpoint, the less less ability they have to actually work with me and respond. And you know, we've run that exercise and I I promise you your heart rate went up. Oh, I felt it. We did uh we did the exercise one time in one of our in in business negotiation training because if if your employee walks in and says, "Boss, if I don't get the raise, I quit." "You pass me over for a promotion. I quit." Now, they they may be somebody that you're developing and you're grooming. And you want to give him a raise. You want to give them a promotion, but there are a variety of reasons why you can't do it. now they're not ready. It's going to it's going to the ripple effect across the organization. It's going to hurt everything. You can't do it and you don't want to lose them. Like I I got personal issues in my life. I know I'm a valued employee. I know I'm one of your best employees. Raise a promotion now or I'm out at 60 seconds or she dies. Customer says to you, "Discount will walk." 60 seconds or she dies. Like it's it's everywhere and a lot of people don't really know how to say gently that won't work. How do you say no gently? And then not what most people do is um out of sheer defensiveness, you want to say something that's going to buy your time. That's what I immediately went to. I went to a stall to see if I could distract. Yeah. You're trying like, "Let me think. Let me think. I don't know what I'm going to do." Yeah. Yeah. But in point of fact to even entertain the notion of a car, which you can't do. Yeah. But that's common. Everybody does that. Nobody really cuz there's not there's not a lot of evidence out there is how do I tell the truth in an emotionally intelligent way? How do I say no without them feeling slammed? How do I make them feel heard, valued, without giving them what they want? And you came really close. You had you asked me a great what question, which is "What do you really need?" That was a great what question. The problem is if I'm really dialed in, what questions are difficult enough to answer because they require in-depth thinking? If I don't feel like going into in-depth thinking, I'm just going to dismiss it and push it to the side. But the the your gut instinct is there's a fundamental deeper need here. So the deeper need is if I want to escape, that means I want to live. And so the answer is "Sounds like you want to live." That's a label. It's not a question. And most people are taught to gather information. Ask good questions. Everybody says you want to get information, got to be taught to ask good questions. Well u first of all, that makes people feel interrogated. Secondly, do they have the mental capacity to answer at the time? That I cannot explain a brain science behind it. Um, but I know it works. If I say to you, "What do you really need?" You'd be like, "Give me the car." If I say, "Seems like there's something you need." Then you go to it. There's something about a label and unscientific. It approaches the brain from the side door and it doesn't exhaust you to answer and I'll get unvarnished truth out of you.

Couple of years ago I'm flying back from uh the Middle East jet-lagged badly in uh Seattle. Text the guy on my team. Normally we used to say to people say before you answer a question, find out why they're asking, say "What makes you ask?" But it's a what question. I got to have enough mental gas in the tank to answer it. I'm exhausted. I'm jet-lagged. Sent sent him the thing. And instead of saying, "What makes you ask?" he texted me back, "Seems like you have a reason for asking." And it went bang bang bang bang bang. Hit the five reasons right off that. Shot it right back. And then I thought, "Wow, if he'd said, 'What makes you ask?' I my text would have been just effing do it right. But since he labeled me, there's something different. There's some magic alchemy about a label that opens people up without making them feel interrogated."

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All right. So, I do want to come back to this fear thing because I I know the younger generation I'm raising them. I mean, fear is is super heightened and anxious world and I I want to see if we can learn something from you. Is it the is it the training and the process is so well done that you don't have to think. You're just instinctive. You know what to do. So, when that fear of the stakes the way I asked the question, is that what keeps the fear at bay?

Yeah. It's a faith in a process. Okay. And training and practice. Great. Um, the big advantage I had when I went to the suicide hotline was I went there as a mercenary. I didn't go to LA to help. Ah, now helping was a great fringe benefit. The fact that it benefited people made it that much more satisfying to be there. But I was told, look, you want to be a hostage negotiator, go volunteer on a suicide hotline. So, I'm there as a complete mercenary, which then made me fascinated by the process. If you go to a suicide hotline and you want help, then every time you don't help, it eats at you. It deteriorates you and you become afraid that you're going to fail people. I'm there to learn. If it didn't work out, it was learning. I they I got I got I'm I'm coachable. I went through the training. I knew that I I listened to the people that knew what they were talking about. I do what they told me to do. Some people won't do what you tell them to do. They don't care if you know they want to I don't care you know what you're talking about. I got my own thoughts but I'm coachable. So I knew I was doing a process and then I leaned in. I just leaned into the process. And then when I got to the bank, I just leaned into the process and I'm coachable. When I was at the bank, the commander, NYPD commander, Hugh McGawan, brilliant guy, since deceased, um, coached me to start out with an approach that was different from normal. I was the second negotiator. They handed the negotiation off to me next. And he said, "I want you to do this, this, and this." And they were all different than normal. And I'm like, "Okay." Cuz I'm coachable. And it made all the difference in the world.

Yeah. Curious, was there a moment in your career, whether it was you on the front line or somebody that you had coached where the process didn't work? Something that sticks out to you and and what do you learn from it?

Well, um, best chance of success. My former boss Gary Nestner used to say this is best chance of success, which means by definition sometimes a process doesn't work. And and and then learning from that um we found by studying it, hostage negotiators are successful about 93% of the time. Wow. Which means 7% of the time it's not going to work. And once you get 10 or more situations under your belt, odds are starting to work against you. And then what Gary said was, hm, there's got to be indicators of the 7%. What do they do early on? What will we what behaviors and actions will they manifest in the first five minutes that correlate very strongly with them being 7%ers? And we outlined them. And then we take that idea to our business negotiations. So a lot of people come to work for me. They think I expect them to make every deal. No, that is not the case because not every deal is profitable. Identify the 7%ers and walk away. We're not going to shoot them. We're just going to stop talking to them. And so we've taken that. Yeah. It's it's nothing works all the time. Nothing. Anybody tells you they got something works all the time, they're lying to you. It's all percentages. And so what's the highest percent? What's your best chance of success? And then knowing that, can you predict the bad outcomes? Yes, you can. And knowing that, then you can withdraw. You know, in a hostage negotiation world, we're going to the boss, we're saying, "Hey, we got to line this guy up for a shot." In the business world, we got to say, "These people are going to are going to waste our time." Very politely, we say goodbye. We leave always leave the door open. you when we say goodbye to you, you're going to feel respected. You're not going to feel insulted. You're going to feel like the door is open when you come back under the following conditions that you're going to be collaborative.

What do we need to know, Chris, about reading people to where we have a very high percentage chance of identifying whether they're lying to us or not?

Well, there's different kinds of lies. Um, there's a predatory lie where they're trying to take advantage of you, and there's a defensive lie where they're just trying to protect themselves. And so starting to um pick out the difference. Now, the three conflict types: assertive, analyst, and accommodator. Fight, flight, make friends. Caveman responses. The assertive. If they're lying to you in a predatory way, that's what everybody calls gaslighting. Feels attacking. They're trying to destabilize you. They're telling you that what your view of reality is is incorrect. You know, they're telling you, "No, it's not a horse, it's a zebra," or "It's not a horse, it's a giraffe when it's a horse. Look at this thing right here." So, that's the assertive. They're they're going to go on offense. The analytical type, they love deception by omission or deception by the literal truth. One company's holding an auction. They're auctioning a product. Typical corporate auction. They invited a lot of people to come in and bid. They only got one bidder. Standard format on on an auction is every bidding company is kept in a separate room. You don't get to see the other people. No contact with the other people that are bidding. They got one bidder. Personal relationship between an executive on a selling company and and on the the bidding company. Guy with the bidding company gets his buddy on the selling company off to the side says, "Look, man, we know each other. We know each other a long time. You got to be honest with me. You got to tell me the truth. Where are we?" And the guy from the selling company says, "Well, I can't tell you everything, but you are the low bidder." Literally true. Massively deceptive. Deception by omission. That stuff happens all the time. Analysts love that. Deception by literal truth or omission. Kind of the same thing. They believe in always tell the truth or at least don't lie. What? How are those two different dynamics? Now, the accommodator, make friends. You ask them a question and you are baffled by the answer. You don't feel attacked. They said a lot a lot a lot of stuff and you have no idea what they just said. That's both offensive and defensive deception. You get somebody on your team, you're trying to figure out what the hell's going on. You ask them, they're really nice about it, really super pleasant. They're smiling, you're feeling all this warmth for them, and they walk out of the office and you go, "I have no idea what they just said." That's right. That's the other kind of sounds like a politician on a Sunday morning show. There you go. Right. So, those are basically the types of deception. And your question is, is it offensive or defensive? And if it's defensive, then they feel threatened. It's not a predatory act. So, then you say yourself, okay, all right. So, they feel feel defensive. I'm not getting the truth out of them. Let me let me be less threatening so that I can I can dig down to the truth. And if somebody's all over the place, the label would probably be "Seems like this is confusing" cuz they may be confused by it very much. Yeah. So, and they are confused and they're scared to death to tell you. Yeah. So, you know, that's empathy. "Seems like this is confusing." Something like that. Yeah. That's good. U I I love this this direction. I I I can't wait to hear what you're going to say because you're now leading a company and you've you've led FBI negotiators in that coach's role. I in in my unique role here at Ramsey Solutions and counseling all these unhappy professionals over the years, one of the biggest complaints and things I dealt with were "I don't feel like um my boss is giving me the real real." And one of the big issues is is leaders are afraid of the confrontation part of sharing bad news. And I see you shaking your head. What's the application if you could teach leaders how to share uncomfortable or bad news to their employees to where they didn't avoid it and thus create this limbo that I can tell you humans hate.

Empathy should precede assertion. Empathy should precede sharing bad news because sharing bad news is assertion. So, somebody comes in, they want to know um what what can you predict? How do they feel if somebody comes in? They feel undervalued. Um, they feel like they're knocking themselves out. They feel like they've doing everything asked of them. Now, they may be lousy employees, but that's still how they see things. It it could be, you know, they could be it could be a C player and you can't tolerate anything less than a B player and you're trying to have all A players. But unfortunately, the world they probably came from two or three other jobs where being a C player was fine. Everybody in their family is a C player. They're all holding down jobs. They're all happy. Everybody in their family, everybody around them, all their friends are all C players. I don't know why I'm not getting more money. Well, empathy is not about accuracy. Somebody feels like they're doing a great job and they're undervalued and a boss thinks they are not doing a great job and they're overpaid. First, you start with how they feel and then their reaction to that is going to give you a diagnostic. Are they delusional? Are they kidding themselves? You know, where are we? How do they see this? And then there's a discussion of how we got here. Always understanding, right? So, you you feel like you feel like you've done enough to deserve a raise. You feel like you've done everything that's been asked of you and more. You feel like you're always there. You know, start these labels make people feel heard and understood and then their reaction to it, they'll be like, "Well, you know, I'm usually there." I realize I'm not always on time. That stops you from saying like, "Look, you're you're late two days a week. I can guarantee you you're going to be late by 10 minutes every Monday morning." Not only that, we never know when you're going to show up. We got to we got a list of core principles here. Number one is be on time. And our A players, we tell them in advance. A players, we want you 10 minutes early. Not only you never on time, but we ne you never tell us when you're going to be late. How are we supposed to know when you show up the door? So all the truth you want to share with them, say things back to them from their perspective because their reaction to that is going to be a diagnostic is in their head space. It's somebody at home going like, "You knock yourselves out for that guy. You work harder than anybody in our family. They don't care about you. They undervalue you. They call you on weekends. Who how do you know who's whispering in their ear if they got C players in their family? C players are whispering in their ear and you kind of want to understand are they being driven by their feelings? Are they being driven by the the people that are whispering in their ear? But it all starts with every bit of empathy is actually a diagnostic because you're looking at how they react to what you say.

All right, let's go to a question right here in front. Uh Courtney Twist from Maraposa, California and I'm in real estate. So my question to you is that our clients, sellers, um often have unrealistic expectations on the value of their home. So I'm wondering what your best advice is for shifting their mindset without u messing up the rapport and creating resistance.

Well, when yeah, when they when they lay the value on you, what whatever it is, first thing is "Seems like you have a reason for saying that." You want you want to dig into what's causing them to say that so that they feel heard because you're not going to you're not going to get them to change their mind till they feel heard. You also want to know you want them to say out loud what where they're getting the data like is it their brother-in-law? Is it they're selling a three-bedroom house and a five-bedroomedroom house down the street sold for a quarter of a million dollars more and it had a pool. You need you need the data behind what their reasoning is and they're going to feel heard and people are much more immuneable to being guided having felt heard and then it if they're if they're undervalued depend upon how long it's gone then all right so you got data you want to share with them comparative data you know never tell anybody they're wrong tell them you got different data because then it's not a personal attack and then you probably say "Is it a ridiculous idea if I share with you how I came to my valuation?" No oriented question makes them feel safe and secure so then you lay it out a little at a time you got to watch them gather data with your eyes see how it's impacting them are they listening at some point in time do they have they had enough you don't know what's going through their mind, but you're going to be able to see that something's going through their mind. The minute you get any body language shift at all, "Seems like something just crossed your mind." Any body language shift, any body language shift is an indicator of something that crossed her mind. Now, reading body language is highly inaccurate. So, they could be angry. They could have gas. Those are 180 degrees apart. You got to know which one it is. Or they could have just agreed with what you said. "Seemed like something just crossed your mind." You got to find out what just happened. All you know is you got a body language shift. You got to find out what it is. And ultimately the question is going to be especially in real estate, you lay your data out, you lay their data out, and then the question is, "How long do you want the house to not sell?" Because that's makes them feel in control. I mean, it confrontation care's what the data that we have says here's the price you want. How long do you want it to be on the market and have not sell? "I'll do whatever you say. You're in charge." Secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control. Make them feel safe and secure. How questions are great questions at the end. If they still if they still haven't seen the light, then "How long do you want it to not sell?" Then that that gives you a preview of the future, too. Because in real estate, your big problem is if it's not priced properly, the real issue is, are you fired at the end of the listing for being honest? Well, if they feel safe and in control the whole time, then chances of them shifting out of being unable to their ego won't let them admit that you were right all along. And so the conversation you're setting yourself up for is, "When are we going to change it?" He's gonna he or she's going to change the price on a house. It's either going to be with you or it's going to be with the next realtor or the realtor after that. But eventually they're going to change that price. Well, they're just going to give up and not take it off the market. You you want to accelerate that moment. Yeah, that's brilliant. I love that.

All right, back row right here. All right, Mike Black. I run a small company, marketing company here in Denver, and I do a lot of negotiating. And my question for you earlier you talked about how you diagnose the other person and kind of their response. So fight or flight or accommodate right we each have those responses when we're going into negotiation. What advice would you have for us and how we manage ourselves?

You know, there's a fascinating book that I came across recently called Chatter. And uh the author whose name escapes me was being interviewed of course on my favorite podcast, Human Labs. And all right, so you already know you need to keep yourself in a positive frame of mind. And if you're aware of that, you probably um maybe you do a gratitude exercise in the morning or maybe you do meditation or maybe stretch, which is a great practice and you should do that. It's mental hygiene. You brushed your teeth yesterday morning. You need to brush them again this morning. Right? But the chatter thing really got me thinking because everybody knows I don't know what the number is, 10,000, 50,000 conversations go through your mind every day, thoughts, and they keep telling us those thoughts are repetitive and it's kind of like breathing or but you can get behind those thoughts. So if you're in a bad mood, the chatter in your head is like, "Ah, this is not a thing. You know, I got I got to, you know, this is bothering me." Like, "I'm worried about how this is." Your chatter is working against you. This is something I just been thinking about a lot lately cuz I get in a bad mood. And by definition, if you're in a bad mood, your chatter is working against you. And so then I'm looking for examples like, "How do I get in there and how do I change my chatter?" Jaco Willink. All the guys who work for him uh inspired by him are like, "Whatever happens to us, Jaco, all you ever say is good. We lost all our funding for our weapons. Jaco, what do we do?" Good. Gives us an opportunity to do something else. Jaco's got an automatic good going in his chatter. So somewhere along the line, he got into his chatter and taught himself that reaction to each and everything that happens is good. And no matter like if something goes bad like I I got stranded in LA. Good. You'll find that it impacts there's a physiological impact on your brain and in your neurochemistry at the point of time. So the real challenge you're talking about if you're going into a negotiation and you're saying like a gez another one I'm worried this. That's your chatter. The the simple but extremely difficult thing to do is to become aware of your chatter and then pick out a phrase to try to replace it with. "I'm lucky. It's a bountiful world. Things work out for me. It's the universe is on my side. I wouldn't be here if the universe wasn't on my side." So, and I'm still working on wrapping my mind around that. But the negotiation is with yourself and with your mindset. And you got a steady stream of 50,000 thoughts going through your brain at a high rate of speed. Can you get in there and little by little, you can't do it all at once, but little by little, can you start shifting some of them? And that that's what you do.

All right, let's go to another question behind me. So, as Art Sarah with Pack and Tape and 38 years ago, packing tape. Pack and Tape. That's a great name. 38 years ago, I would drive two hours to get in front of a client face to face and then I started this company founder CEO and it's based on an e-commerce platform. So for the last 18 years, we do a lot of things by email, by phone, and um sometimes by text. And my question to you is, how has negotiations changed since the start of the smartphone in around 2008? And with all the social media and all the texting going on because now we're recently starting to get on airplanes and going to visit these clients that we used to deal with by email. Um, if you look at them all as complimentary modes, you want to live and die by one, you're screwed. But if you look at them as complimentary to start with and then um emails, any email longer than five lines is probably too long. First problem. Second problem with an email, would you play chess by email? Would you reveal your next seven moves in a chess game on one email? That's the way people email. And then they're mad because they expect the person to read it the way they wrote it and I'm gonna I'm gonna write this and then they're going to sit there and think about how brilliant it is and they're going to agree I'm right. Then we're going to go to the next point. Nobody reads it like that. If they read it at all, which means everybody gets long emails, you they decide whether or not to read your email based on what's in the subject line. You wrote a brilliant email. They deleted it based on a subject line. Somebody relying on um email alone. Next problem, tone. Nobody knows what your tone is and more than likely it's going to be read in a vastly more negative tone than you wrote it. As an assertive, I tend to want to write very concise emails. And it was a guy I was doing business with an assertive like me and he'd send me concise emails and they were just so cold. I didn't mean for it to be cold when I wrote it. I had this great warm mentoring tone of voice when I wrote it. That's not the way anybody reads it. So if you start to look at these things as complimentary and you want to break things up into small doses and know you got to do something to make the tone nicer cuz it's most likely going to be read negatively and then it all becomes complimentary and you know there's there's no substitute for the magic of being in person and you can't do it with everybody. So, how how do you how do you now blend the uh blend the approach and the um have you given up on text to resuscitate ghosting people who are ghosting you?

Um, law firm that I did a keynote for four months ago. I spent so much time on getting no for an answer and "Have you given up on?" And the month after I was at the law firm, they resurrected a million and a half dollars from clients that were ghosting them on that text alone. A million and a half dollars. I wish I would have charged him a million dollars for the keynote.

Is there a limit, by the way, on how many times you can go back to that phrase, "Have you given up?"

The only limit is um the system you're employing is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you've obtained. What does that mean? Your communication prior to them ghosting you is perfectly designed to get them to ghost you. What a lot of people want to do was they'll restart the conversation and then go back to the system that caused them to ghost him in the first place. So, what was wrong? Why does somebody stop ghosting you? Talking to you is doing them no good. That's going to be a combination of you not listening, you just pitching, and the possibility they've lost influence on their side and they're embarrassed to tell you. And so your communication end starts if they reconnect with you, probably feel like I haven't been listening to you instead of going back to telling them what to do.

Is it possible for you to role play that out with me where you're where I've ghosted you on something?

I'd say, "Have you given up on having me on your podcast?" "No, I uh Sorry, I've just been crazy schedule and honestly I forgot. I need to get my team to follow up with you." "Well, it sounds like maybe I failed you in some way." "No, not at all. It's all on me. I'm a disaster administratively. Million ideas running like a squirrel on cocaine." "Well, you know, I can see that uh you're really busy. You're overwhelmed. You're probably very well intentionally overcommitting." "Yeah." "Oh, man. You're reading my mail." "So, when it works for you, let me know if there's anything I could do to help clear your schedule. You know, uh schedule six months in advance, but I can see you're really busy." "Yeah." "Well, I appreciate your grace and kindness. I'm going to get on this. Your team's going to hear from me very quickly." "What should I tell them?" "Is it a ridiculous idea to tell them how quickly?" "No, we'll get it before end of business today. The contact will be made so we can get the schedules matched up." "Okay."

So, the normal questions got him thinking through um implementation, which is where you want to get people that are struggling. I want you to tell the Jack Welch story real quick to our to our audience. It's it was a powerful example of how you just made a guy who so effortlessly says no.

So, book signing, several hundred people there. Jack's got no idea who I am. Um, I'm just another person at the book signing. And book signings, they're hustling you through 30 seconds at a time. Boom. Boom. Boom. They run an assembly line. They're going as fast as they possibly can. They don't want anybody to feel slighted. So, they do everything they could do to make you feel like you had a moment and get you out of the way. And so, they get your name before you walk up and they put it on a piece of paper and they say, "Hey, we don't want Jack to misspell your name." You feel, "Oh, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want him to spell Chris with a K. I want to get it right. Jack's going to get it right. I'm going to walk up there. Jack's going to say, 'Hi, Chris.'" Ch out. But I'm going to feel like he greeted me. That's right. So, but that's to keep you hustling. And they don't want you talking to the the person at all. And they also don't know that you're not a threat. Jane Fonda was at a book signing. A lot of people don't even know who Jane Fonda is. But um Vietnam vets have not forgiven her for what she did during Vietnam. And so there was a Vietnam vet that came to the book signing just specifically to get close to her so he could spit in her face. Somebody gets close to you, action is quick, quicker than reaction. That person's in danger. Security grabbed him after he did it. But he got close enough to her to do her harm. So Jack's and everybody's jumpy. They don't There's other reasons they don't want you to talk it though. They don't want me kissing Jack Welch on the lips, obviously. Right. Right. I'm close enough. I can't. Would have been a great Instagram reel, though. That you know, and it would have been a moment I never would have forgotten. That's right. So I walk up and I say, "Is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course I teach at USC?" And he just scowled at me and then he kind of looked up into the heavens up and to the left and he got this furious scowl on his face like I he looked furious like stroke-inducing furious. And I thought he had a stroke. I mean, he didn't move. Not a young guy, you know, deceased, now deceased, wasn't young at the time. And I thought sure that he had a stroke and died and he was going to fall over dead in front of me. And that's I'm like horrified. I'm like, "I just killed Jack Welch," right? So when he doesn't die, I'm relieved, but he still looks furious. And now I think he's going to start yelling for security. Somehow he's been deeply offended by this question. And but finally then he he doesn't call security. He looks at me, he says, "This is my personal assistant. This is her name. This is a Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her. I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in the fall. If we are, we'll come to speak at your class." Just that quick off of the no because people feel safe and secure when when you ask them no. And then if they need to think things through since they feel safe and secure, they can do it with an unclouded mind. And what he did was laid out the conditions for implementation. And when you talk about asking for a no, I want to make sure everybody grasps what you're teaching here. You're asking a question.

That his initial instinct is no, but it immediately allows him to process whether or not he actually wants to say no. Is that what I'm hearing from you?

So some people when they're thinking really hard, they get that intense look and they're just thinking. And that happen to be Jack Welch's look on his face when he's thinking something through. He looks furious, which is again why you got to be careful how you read body language. It could be 180 degrees off the read. That's his thinking face. And thank God I was scared. So I didn't say anything because if I have said a word, it would interrupt his thought process. A lot of times if you're in a one-on-one conversation and you say something that's got somebody really thinking, but you think they're angry, you speak up, you're going to ruin everything. You've just destroyed their thinking, right?

So, you know, you got to you got to kind of find out. And if they go silent for a really long period of time, my son, who has been my business partner, he goes dead silent when he's thinking or when he's angry. And I can, if I'm in person, I can see it. But we'll be on a phone. He'll be dead silent on a phone. And so I'll just as he's quiet long enough, I'll go, "I can't tell if you're thinking or if you're mad." And he'll tell me.

All right. So, back to that scenario. Obviously, Jack Welch doesn't know you. You're a fan. He's in sign. You and I have both done those lines. You're just in go zone. You're signing books. You're trying to behave and do what your handlers are telling you to do. So, you're really not super conscious when you asked him that question, which is, you know, you set it up. The, is it ridiculous? Is that the word you use? Yeah. So, and he's immediately going, "Well, of course it's ridiculous. I don't know you." But in asking him a question that's an obvious no, you said it it just kind of relaxes the mind. They feel safe.

Does it allow him then to actually go, "Well, he didn't ask me to show up at a YMCA for 11 year olds." Exactly. This is an actual professor at a very, you know, prolific university." Does that, what is that what's going on when he can actually consider it? Consider the rest of what I said, right? Yes. Um, and he decides on his own whether or not there's any value. Now, a lot of people would say, "Hey, you know, there's value in coming to speaking at the NBA program, USC, one of the top 14 business schools in the United States, revered. Everybody knows USC is visibility." Like, I'm going to pitch visibility to the former CEO of a multi, one of the most successful multinational corporations ever. No, I'm not going to pitch that. But I want it to occur to him. And it also gives him the opportunity. They're on a book tour. He's thinking about how successful the book tour is. There's not a, there's not a prestige issue here. And there's the value issue here is potentially it boosts book sales. I want him to consider the possibilities without me presenting them.

And so if I get him to say no, there's a Pavlovian response to saying no. People feel safe and secure when they say no. A lieutenant on the NYPD a long time ago once said to me, "Chris, a lieutenant's job is to say no." And I thought, "That's really narrow-minded." However, saying no makes you feel powerful. It settles you down. So, why don't I just use that to my advantage? And what'll happen is if they can think clearly then he can think through the implementation and he decides the next 10 times Chris that I check into a hotel I am going to try this. I'm going to ask if it's a ridiculous idea for you to consider upgrading me to a presidential suite. Out of those 10 times what do you think my chances are? Well, they were, they're going to be higher than they were before you walked in and tried to pitch.

So, um, there's some other elements there. Like, if you're asking for an upgrade to a presidential suite, how is the person behind a counter going to see you? Oh, is a complete, u u just a buffoon. You're not realistic. Are you? So, that's what you say. Yeah. Empathy is how do they see you? Oh, so you say, "Would you think I'm a buffoon?" No, you say, "I'm going to seem like a buffoon." Ah, I'm going to seem like a buffoon. but still employ the, "Is it ridiculous?" but with the setup, you're, you're, that's not a, that's not a bad trigger question. You got three things to think about. How do they see you? What's the last thing they got to worry about? Well, they got to worry about are they going to get in trouble? Exactly. So, how do you encounter that? How much trouble are you going to get in? M because when you want people to think about the difficulties and the problems before the commitments because then when they make the commitment they've already thought about the difficulties and the problems.

Friend of mine gets a ticket to uh the Trump inauguration talks to a company in a position to get it for him. He says, "Not, would you get it for me?" He said, "How hard would it be?" And the response is, "No, we could do that. It's not hard at all." When they got him the tickets, they said, "You know what? It really was hard." Now, had he not said, "How hard is it going to be?" He got him to think about the difficulties in advance, and they said, "You know what? We can overcome it." If they hadn't thought about it in advance, when they ran into those difficulties, they' have got back to him and said, "We tried." That's right. So, you want to prepare people for implementation and think about what are the obstacles and get them to think about them before the commitment. That increases your chances that it'll be there. And if you do it right, hotel, um, the upgrade is there if they have the inventory, right? And how they feel about you. Yes. And then how they feel about what's going to happen to them. And so one at one time when I was asking, "How hard is it going to be? How much trouble am I gonna get you in for an upgrade?" He said, "You know what? I'm gonna blame it on him." That's glorious. I love that.

The phrase trusting your gut. Trust your gut. I think most people who've heard that, I think they get the concept. I think they could believe it. I know you and I both believe it. U but as a master coach, coach our audience right now on getting to a place where you can feel the body telling you that this is the right decision. And that's where we get this idea of trusting the gut. By the way, I've read the research on it. You probably have as well. They've proven this that it's the, the brain sending the signal to the body. So, it's not your gut versus your logic. It's one and the same. But, I'm curious, how can we get to a point where we go, "Oh, I can now begin to practice and feel my body, my gut telling me so that I can verify." I'm curious to know how you would teach us to do that.

Run your own data. First of all, say to yourself, "What is my gut telling me?" and keep track of what your gut is telling you. Then make your decision. Um, your gut might tell you to do it, you choose not to do it, but keep your data. Start, start keeping a track record on your gut. Now, you'll find that really four or five times in a row, you're like, "Wow, my gut's good." What people do is they lose track of the time number of times their gut was wrong was right or they only remember one or two times when their gut told them something different and they didn't do it but as soon as you start tracking, you know anything that gets measured improves. Yeah, but is there a way to feel it, Chris? Have you learned? I ask myself, what, like, what's my gut say? I just ask myself that. Ah, because that reorients you. You know, I get into my amygdala a. And so I asked myself, "What does my gut say?" Now I know that if I can listen into the gut, gut's probably right, but how did I get there? I started paying attention to the results.

Real estate, we got a lot of people that are, we got a protocol of to um not bother doing a presentation with a client. So we tell people what the protocol is and we had one guy that just said, "All right, so my gut's telling me not to do this or my gut's telling me I got this before they'd go." See, if you got, if if you got saying this is a waste of my time, he tracked his dad on over a year. His gut telling him it was a waste of time was accurate almost every time. So after the year was up, when his gut told him he was the fool in the game, he just didn't go and he made the same amount of money in 80% less time. So he, he just, he just tracked his gut and then he proceeded with his normal protocol. And I got data and this isn't somebody telling me this. This is my life, my experience, my circumstances. And once you start getting, start taking a look at the hard data, if you kept it, then somebody didn't come in and write that down on your piece of paper. You wrote it down. And so it's track, track your gut.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And you know, the challenge that I give you every show is to take at least one thing away and apply it to your life. And I'm going to lead the way as an overthinker, a people pleaser. Boy, I was really hitting the chest with Chris's thoughts on taming the chatter, rewiring the brain with all the thoughts we have to make sure that we have more positive thoughts than negative thoughts. And that's going to absolutely help me in every area of my life. I challenge you to work on that in the week ahead.

Hey, I also want to thank the Gaylord Rockies, this beautiful hotel where we're having Entree Leadership Summit, and the staff here at the Old Hickory Restaurant. I highly recommend it. I had a steak that knocked my socks off last night and they kindly opened up their restaurant to us to shoot this conversation. Also, if you're enjoying the program, we're seeing tremendous growth and I'm so grateful for that because that means that people are coming back and enjoying the conversation and learning and growing and we can't do it without you. So, if you're enjoying the program, I'm going to ask you to like, to follow, to share, and subscribe because that helps us get this great content out to professionals who want to keep growing.

Well, hey, to our awesome group of folks that decided to come out here and heck, all you hecklers, you guys asked great questions. You were a great studio audience. Thank you for being here. And join me in thanking Chris for his valuable time and how he helped us. Thank you. Appreciate you, brother.