Transcription
How can we use “why” in a way that works for us? We literally will say to people, “There are a lot of competitors out here that could teach you—you know, Harvard could teach negotiation; you can learn negotiation from Wharton; Charis is out there. There are no shortage of credible competitors for negotiation knowledge. Why would you ever come to the Black Swan group?”
We asked that question all the time before the book came out. We’d be standing up in front of a group, and I’d say, “Guys, why listen to a hostage negotiator?” And what happens? What do you think happens? Why would you listen to a hostage negotiator? Why would you? “Your skills have to work,” your skills have to work, is what he said.
Here’s what happens: On the people that haven’t made up their mind yet, they tell you which part of your value proposition appeals to them. I could say, “You should listen to a hostage negotiator because my skills have to work,” or I can look at you and say, “Why would you do this?” And you say the same thing. Now, when does it matter more to you—when you say it? And I begin to understand what aspect. Now, if—if he’s a potential client, I say, “Why would you ever listen to a hostage negotiator?” And he says to me, “Because your skills have to work.” Now I use that to continually frame my value proposition because I know that’s an element of my value proposition, and those are the words that speak to him.
And if their mind is 80% made up ahead of time, you have to diagnose what aspects of what you bring to the table matter to them. Because more than likely, every single one of you have anywhere from 10 to 20 reasons why people should do business with you. And if you start out on stuff that doesn’t matter to me, how long before I tune you out? Five seconds is a pretty accurate guess. It’s roughly three to ten seconds; some data says seven seconds, but you’re gonna blow five, seven, ten seconds on a wrong issue, and I’m going to tune you out. I mean, and there’s no shortage—and I don’t know how many of you have been in pitch presentations and have pitched presentations, or have—have product presentations. People hate having a CEO in a room because they’re like, “Damn, the CEO is going to interrupt, start asking questions before I get all the way through my presentation.” Well, actually, what does that tell you? It tells you number one that he didn’t care about everything you set up to that point in time, and what he interrupted John was what he really cared about, right? But—and we see this in industry after industry after industry. I worked hard on that presentation; I want them to sit there for two hours. Why give the whole thing? That’s when people are really happy—when they get a chance to get through their whole proposal, and then—and ideally they don’t get any hard questions, and they roll out of there happy as hell, right? And then what happens? No sale, right?
“Here” in “yes” is a bad thing to hear, so don’t say “yes.” Yeah, yes, and themselves. I—I would much rather say, “You know, okay, I’ll do it.” I’d love to say, “You win,” because when you win, you’re going to perform. Hmm. Yes, there’s nothing without how I need you to perform at a top level. You perform at a higher level when you feel like you win. If I—if I hear—if you look at me and we make a deal, say, “Okay, well, that’s a resigned okay,” and we’re going to run into trouble when we go to implement, because the minute anything bad could happen by you—by you’re inaction, you know, there’s a phrase, “Never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing,” which nearly everybody can hurt you by doing nothing, right? Um, so saying, “Okay, I’ll do it,” right, or, “Yes, you won,” or “You win,” right, right. I—I want you to feel like you won. You win, so you got the better end of the deal. Yeah, because are—are you—are you going to hold to the deal if you got the best end of the deal? Of course. Awesome. Yeah, I got the better end, huh? Right. So you win. Okay, I’ll do it. You win. You can do both of them together. Um, if I say it, that’s good because you won. If you say it, it’s bad to me because you feel beat. I don’t want you to—I don’t want you to feel beaten, right? Right, which is one of the real big problems with negotiation, because since I’ve been getting—helping people get better at it, like I get more stories, the guy says, “Let me tell you about this deal. I had them over a barrel; there was nowhere for them to go,” you know, for all types of persons. “I took them hostage.” Well, I guarantee you that the person they beat um was as passive-aggressive as possible on the implementation of that deal, but it felt good about it. Money on the table; they didn’t feel good about it, right? Huh? Right. So always make the other person feel like they got the better end of the deal. Right? Right. They won, and yeah, they won, and it was their idea. It was their idea. “I like your idea; I’ll do it,” something like that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that—that—that’s really good.
And so that’s why the one—usually the one-word answers of “yes” and “no,” those are also frequently misunderstood. You know, the street kinds of yeses: there’s commitment, confirmation, counterfeit, and most people are used to getting lured into a trap with “yes.” You know, “Would you like to make more money?” Is it a true—this is the off-season, you know, whatever setup. “Yes, there is.” “Would you like—okay, yeah.” Um, you know, what’s leading someplace. “Yes.” One of my—one of my students is on a honeymoon, and he’s want to get um—uh an upgrade on his bungalow, and it’s the off-season in this—in this resort. Now, what they typically do is they cut prices on—on their basic rooms, but not the honeymoon suites, and he—but he knows they’re all vacant. That what he—he doesn’t want to cut price on a regular room; he wants a honeymoon suite, and he starts out the conversation with like, you know, “Is it a true—this is the off-season?” That general manager knows there’s a trap there; that’s what you say. So the guy starts going sideways on him immediately. All right, he didn’t say “yes,” right? He didn’t want to say “yes” because he knows that “yes” is commitment, and “yes” is probably a trap, and he knows, “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but you’re going someplace,” that’s what he said. Yeah. And then what happened? Well, and so then uh my student realized that, you know, he fell into this—this “yes” trap thing, so he had kind of—he had to kind of get back out of it, and they started talking, and instead of trying to get yeses and no’s on him, he started describing the situation; it started showing up a little bit. Yeah. Well, I’m sure you know a lot of guys don’t like me come in; we want a room; we don’t want to pay anything for it. You get so many tourists that are in here in the off-season, and they’re cheap; that’s why they’re here in the off-season anyway because they’re cheap to start with, and they won’t pay anything for—for anything anyway. And now the managers appreciate what the guy’s coming from; he’s leading with the negative, right? He ends up getting the upgrade, really? Yeah, free, because he built a relationship, and yeah, the guy—the guy—the guy’s got an empty room. Yeah. Never been meeting somebody could hurt you by doing nothing; not giving you the—the empty room is doing nothing. You know, you want this guy to give you a favor, and he doesn’t own the hotel, and those rooms are normally vacant anyway, so his owner—whoever owns a hotel—they’re not mad at him because those rooms are empty; they expected them to be empty. Yeah. So he’s got options. You know, ultimately you want to make the pitch like, you know, “You give me that upgrade; I’m going to be a fan for life; I’m going to tell everyone, come back, and tell all my friends about this.” Something I’ve done for like the last 10 years. A friend of mine told me this line that he’s like, you know, “If you ever want an upgrade, if you ever want like something better in the deal, use this line,” and I swear I’ve been using it—maybe it’s been wrong—but I love your opinion. Right? I say, “What’s the chance you can help me with this?” All right, so that’s a—that’s a “what” question to start. “What’s the chance?” Two things about that that I like: um, first of all, it’s a “what” question, yeah, and secondly, um, “What’s the chance you can upgrade me?” You’re—you’re elevating the person when you’re asking for help, so you’re giving them power, right? Right, the opportunity to have power. Right. Yeah. So there’s—and I don’t know that I changed that sense at all. I might say in advance like, “Look, this is really going to seem greedy to me,” um, you know, because you can’t—you can’t leave me with the negative—leading with a negative. If you—if you try to call out a negative that’s not there, you won’t plant it. If you try to deny a negative that’s not there, you plant that baby. That’s why you have to know the difference between a denial and a straight observation, and those—that’s a subtle difference. Because you’re good—you’re probably going to want to say before you ask a guy for a discount, you’re probably going to say, “This guy’s gonna think I’m cheap and I’m greedy; I don’t want them to think that.” So if you mention it—all you got instinct to say, “Look, like I don’t want to—I don’t—I want you—I don’t want you to think I’m cheap and greedy here.” That’s a denial that plants it. So I bet you might think that I’m being a little greedy. Sure, I’m sure it’s just coming across—I’m coming—I’m not being greedy, but what’s the chance you can help—you can upgrade me? Yeah. Yeah. You can support me in getting up. And so if you—asking for an upgrade as a human being, the guy is good. No, that’s not gritty. You want—you want them thinking—no, you want them saying, “Now, hmm, that was a great answer,” because when somebody says “no,” they have just protected and defended themselves. Like it’s ridiculous—the most ridiculous question that they would never say “yes” to. Like if—if at the end of the negotiation, uh, if I can’t—if my one of my last things I’m always going to say is like, “If you can’t budge at all,” I’ll say, “All right, well, look, it seems like you’re powerless here.” Oh, nobody wants to say “yes.” Oh, wow. “Seems like there’s nothing you could do. It seems like you’re completely powerless here,” and they’ll put you on hold; they’ll find a way to help. So it seems like you’re powerless; you can’t help me. It sounds like you’re powerless here. Right? Nobody ever would say “yes” to that. Wow, that is powerful. Yeah. Do you use that a lot when you’re at the end of video or anything or something at the end of any deal? If we haven’t come to an agreement that—that I’m happy with, that’ll be the last thing I’ll say. “It seems like there’s nothing I could say, and it seems like you’re powerless. Seems like nothing that you could say to them to get what you need, right? Or for them to move,” right, deal points. “And it seems like you’re powerless.” Right? They’re powerless. Right? Holy cow, that’s—that’s powerful. So yeah, we—a lot of people have cut deals by—they thought it was completely in the tank, and they’re actually just trying to end positively. It’s really—it’s critical to end positively. Remember, you don’t get in life what’s fair; you get what you negotiate. If you want to become a better negotiator, click the link in the description below.
If someone is looking to buy—wanting to buy something—acquire something, whether they’re buying a business, a car, a house—some potential expensive item, a jewelry—something of—of more value than a thousand dollars, and they—they might be able to negotiate a lower price. You mentioned the extreme price anchoring—how that is a mistake, right? There’s a house for a million dollars; I’ll give you 200 grand for it, right? Right. But you want to get a better deal, right? Maybe it’s a Rolex, maybe it’s a car, maybe it’s a house, maybe you want to acquire a business, whatever it is—something of higher value—a ring, an engagement ring—you’re going to marry someone, right? Right. Let them make their profit off somebody else. Yeah. What should be the lower percentage on a higher item of value? How—what should the initial offer be? You want to get a better deal, so you don’t want to pay a million dollars for a home, but you really want the home. You don’t want to pay 3,000 for the diamond ring—the engagement ring—but you really want that ring, right? How low of a percentage should you go to anchor in order for you to feel like, “Oh, I got a great deal, and I got the thing I wanted, and they didn’t get screwed over,” you know what I mean? Well, depend upon the context. I mean, like 30—30 is a good rule of thumb to start at. Well, for—for a target like—if you—if you—and again, very—very context-driven. Sure. Like, for example, I’m in Macy’s one time and um—picking up this jacket—girl—em—really likes it. She searches this thing extensively; she finds like a threat out of place, and she goes like, “Watch me get 10% off on this jacket.” And I’m like, “A threat of a place? I can get 30% by being nice.” No way. Tell me more. Well, like in every transaction, you know, I look at it as an act—there’s an aggravation tax. Now, the person that you’re dealing with has already built in the aggravation tax because of all the aggravating people that have come through the door ahead of them. So there’s an aggravation penalty; there’s an annoyance tax; there’s an aggravation tax that’s already there on a price. Now, if you’re not aggravating, you don’t need to pay the aggravation tax. Interesting. Let somebody else pay that aggravation tax, and you benefit from them actually paying that—that tax. Yeah, let somebody else pay it. Um, if I’m not aggravating, why should I pay the aggravating tax? So you know, this young lady, she’d gotten 10% off on a regular basis. I will be demanding 10—10% of the annoyance tax when there’s another 20% to begin. Interesting. Like you—so many people don’t realize how much money they’re leaving on the table. Really, like massive amounts of money on—on any given—the difference between 10% off and 30% off, right? Like they got away to give you a better deal if they feel like it. So how do you get them to feel like it? Well, so yeah, great. There you go. Exactly. Again, the approach—very similar to the hotel thing, you know, there’s—there’s a—there’s a strategy where we sort of bundle the skills in the Blackstone method; we call it the accusations—on it—the accusations—audits—accusations—audit. Then we do an audit of all the names you would call me [Laughter] if I’m gonna do this. Uh-huh. You say this—you say it to yourself. Okay, not today, because I need to come up with a list. Oh, so again it’s like, “Look, you get annoying people come through here all day long, every day, and want something for nothing. I’m going to look like just like another one of these annoying jerks,” it’s really demanding and rugby the wrong way and don’t appreciate how hard it is for you to work in this jewelry store, this car dealership, this wherever you are. You are knocking yourself out—a tough sales job; you’re trying to feed your family; people are coming here trying to take food out of your mouth, because how do they see it? You know, it’s not about you, and it’s not about—it’s really not sympathy. You know the difference between sympathy and empathy. You know, “I feel your pain,” right? Like, “I’ve been there too,” you know, like, “I’m a regular guy.” Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, “Don’t give me that regular guy stuff.” So but you—you look at people like me—you want something for nothing to come walking in all the time, you know, you look at us as—as wanting discounts, and you know—and you’re trying to feed your family. Now suddenly this person is like, “Oh, wow, forget it; this is not the other annoying jerk that came in here.” Now—now they’re starting to open up, and then you know you talked before about being playful—being playful about this can be a really big deal. I—I’ve gotten so many things for free for being playful, or upgrades or discounts, just by—let me just say a friendly joke or just something funny, right? You know, let me just be goofy and dance in front of them and be like, “What is this guy doing?” You know, yeah. You’ve just got—you don’t got to pay the aggravation tax. Yeah, and then plus, see Sean says you’re 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. Not only have you put the person in a better mood, you know, I got them thinking about options. What can they do? What, you know, how can they help you? What can they get away with? How can they shortcut the TSA line? How can they—what’s the code for the employee discount? Like, I—you know, in this—in the same place where I’m trying to get this 30% or so off, and I’m joking around with this guy, sure, you know, and—and one of the things again—see—is a human being—I’m like, “Well, I’m Chris; is there a Chris discount?” “What kind of Chris discount?” And then laugh at that, and so—and I’m still not getting enough of a discount, and finally I go like, “Look, give me the employee discount.” Um, “I’ve been joking around; I smile when I say this.” The guy goes like, “If I give you the employee discount, I got to pay for this thing myself.” And I go, “I’ll pay you back,” and I’m laughing, and he laughs, and so he looks at the machine, and I says, “Wait right here,” and he walks around, and I see him, and I walked up to a person, and I proceed to be the manager, and he’s whispering to the manager’s ear, and I see this manager standing going like, “No, really,” and he comes walking back, and another employee intercepts him, whispers in his ear, and I see his eyes light up, and he walks over, and he plugs in a discount for me, and we get to 30% off. Wow. But I was joking with him; I was shown—I knew what it looked like from his perspective. I’m getting myself out of this aggravation tax thing, you know? Let somebody else pay the demanding, aggressive, annoying tax. You go in there, and you brighten somebody else’s day up; you leave the world a better place; you get some practice in because you want that confidence for the big negotiation, right? And all these things work for you, and you are—you end up feeling better about the day yourself. Yes, you had a fun interaction. Yeah, you got a discount. Exactly.
How we can negotiate during these uncertain times so that we can survive in order to pick up the pieces economically when this is all over. You’re faced with colleagues, clients, vendors, customers trying to completely pull out of deals because they’re scared about what’s going on, and consequently you’re trying to hang in there, and you’re scared about what’s going on also. I’m going to give you a three-step process in order to maximize your chances for success. The Black Swan group is always here to give you the best chance of success, and here’s the steps to the process that’ll put you in a best position to not just survive, but to thrive through these times. So we’re going to start with what we refer to as tactical empathy, and then we’re going to move from that point into an effective pause to let our tactical empathy sink in, and then we’re going to be using something that a Black Swan group calls a thought-shaping question. So we’ll start off with the—what the facts are and how we see it. I’m going to tell you right now, there’s going to be language in this video for mature audiences only because we’re going to use the language that we’re using with each other. I had a client call me up on the phone the other day after they’d sent me a text message and said, “This is a total show.” So that’s the way we’re going to start this out because this is way everybody is viewing this situation: a total show. Start out by saying, “This is a total show. I know you are scared here to death. You guys are desperate; you’re scared this whole thing is going to get out of control, and it’s going to destroy you and your company.” Ladies and gentlemen, that is what people are feeling on the other side. The best way to drive a stake through the heart of any fear is to just simply call it out—even call it out, overdo it. If you’re not laying it on thick, you’re not laying it on thick enough. You’ve got to drive a stake through the heart of these fears, and you do it in a fearless manner. Again, this is how this goes: “This is a total show. You guys are desperate; you’re scared this whole thing is going to get out of control, and it’s going to destroy you and your company.” Now notice when I said this, I didn’t put in, “We’re scared too.” When the other side is scared, they’re not worried about whether or not you’re scared; they’re caught up in their own fears, and we’re not going to use “we” as a disguise when we need to be using the word “you.” Tactical empathy is a recognition of how the other side is actually feeling and the articulation of it. It’s about them, and it ain’t about you. And this is not the time to be dropping “we’s” in the middle of it when you need to be connecting with them by saying “you.”
Now the next thing you’re going to do after this is you’re going to go silent. Good use of tactical empathy has got to sink in, and you can’t be stepping on it with, “But this is how we’re gonna deal with it,” or “But”—any of this “but” nonsense. Believe me, it’s—Brandon Boston, president of the Black Swan group, likes to say, “Nobody wants you to put your butt in their face,” so anytime you’re about to use the word “but” is the perfect time to go dead silent. You need to let your tactical empathy sink in, so go dead silent, and if you have to start counting 1,000 to yourself silently—one one thousand, two one thousand—whatever it takes, you have to stay silent and let them make the next move. Now they’re either going to give you an indicator that they want to hear what you have to say, or they’re going to express some more of their own fears, which means you haven’t expressed it enough for them, and it’s a time to paraphrase what they say or even expand on how they feel about it. Or if they’ve gone completely silent on you, that means you’re on the right track; you just haven’t gone far enough. And if you’re on the right track and you haven’t gone far enough when they’re silent, the next thing you got to do is say, “And I haven’t even expressed how bad it is; it probably feels much worse to you than what I’ve said.” This is a recognition of the dynamic that’s taking place in a moment. You’ve got to clear somebody’s fears out before you move on, otherwise they’re going to continue to have all the judgment and everything that they say clouded with fear. You’re also not explaining the situation to them. Ronald Reagan said a long time ago, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and believe me, if you’re trying to explain something to someone, you are losing. Now deference, of course, is the key to all this—in the late-night FM DJ voice. We’re not using an urging voice; we’re not using an exciting voice; it’s a late-night FM DJ voice of understanding and confidence.
Now we move into the third and final phase; we’re going to shape their thinking with a great high question. As you know, our high questions are what we refer to as calibrated questions, and we ask questions not to get answers, but to shape thoughts. So this is a high question designed to be a thought-shaping question: “How do we work our way through this so that we don’t destroy each other and we put ourselves in a position to pick up the pieces and work together when this is over?” Now what we’ve done here is we’ve opened up with a high question in a deferential way to trigger what Daniel Kahneman would call slow thinking. This is slow, in-depth thinking—stop you in your tracks thinking—and it also makes the other side feel safe and secure; it’s deferential. People love to be asked how. They don’t realize that you’ve helped to make a complete mental shift here because it feels safe and in controlled by the higher question. And then we’ve added in divisions of the inevitable future. The inevitable future is we’re going to have to pick up the pieces after this is over. This is part of the Black Swan method, and this is from a great article by Brandon Voss: “The three negotiation mistakes that are hurting your deals are: number one, listening to respond versus listening to understand; number two, using ‘I understand’; and number three, asking yes-oriented questions.” Now let’s dive in. Number one: listening to respond versus listening to understand. This is the big problem, and where really all of your problems stem from. Most people don’t listen at all, and if they do listen, they listen to just go, “Aha, what a contradict,” or to jump back in or to tell somebody why they’re wrong. I’m sorry, this is self-centered stuff. To quote Gerard Nierenberg, a negotiation guy that I studied way back when when I first started this journey, he said, “Listening is as much about sensing emotions as it is about hearing words.” If you’re listening to understand, you’re sensing emotions; you’re trying to figure out where they’re coming from; you’re taking a focus off you, and you’re really putting your focus on them and their perspective and their facts and how they feel about their facts—what has affected them, and what kind of reactions has that perception of those effects had on them. That’s listening to understand.
Now number two: using “I understand.” Now you might say this being very well-intentioned; you might say this because you’re trying to express to the other person that you do understand, and this is a misinterpretation of the Covey advice from way back when: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” And a lot of people in a very well-intentioned way will say, “I understand,” as if it’s going to make the other side feel better. Now your intention is good, but your application is going to fall short. Never in the history of mankind has somebody said to another person, “I understand,” and stop there and had the other person say, “Oh, thank God,” and instantly feel better. Your goal of trying to make him feel understood is the goal—not that you understand, but that you make them feel understood. And unfortunately, saying “I understand” doesn’t make anybody feel understood. As Brandon Voss has always said, “If we could reach in your brain and take out the phrase ‘I understand’ entirely, you’d probably be better off.” The other problem with the application of this is the most of the time that people have heard this, somebody said, “I understand,” but—and then told them why they were wrong. Well, this doesn’t make anybody feel good. “But” is a racing word; “but” races the intention of the words of everything that came before it. So even if you meant to make him feel good, as soon as you said “but,” you wiped it out. A second problem with “I understand” is a lot of people think, “Okay, so if I do understand, that means that I can tailor my message, and it’ll really hit home.” So in a very well-intentioned fashion, you take as much time as you can beforehand to try to understand; you research them; you reach their situ—research their situation; you research everything you can about them, and then you think you do understand, and therefore you can talk, and they can listen, and your talk is going to be that much more effective because you understood. Now the goal is to make them feel understood, and the only way you can make them feel understood is to articulate—to express their perspective back to…
Them and look for the words "that's right." "That's right" is what people say when they feel understood, and that's what you're going for. You're not going for "your right," which is when you're pitching and then just asking you to stop talking. You're going for "that's right."
Finally, number three: asking yes-oriented questions. No, no. Now, now, I know you're probably doing this, and I know you're achieving some success with it. That's the problem. People achieve some success with this. We live in a Las Vegas world. The Black Swan group and a Black Swan method is to get you off of the gambling table where you win 10% of the time—which is probably what you do with yes-oriented questions—and move you on to the gambling table where you win 80% of the time. It's about increasing your percentages. There are those of you out there that say, "I make deals or I come to agreement with yes-oriented questions. That's my data." Yes, you do, and you are not making as many deals as you could make. You could be asking yes-oriented questions with a very respectful intention; you're just trying to respectfully confirm that something is true.
And from a very early age, you were taught that when you heard the word "no," there were problems, because it's usually the first word that every kid learns: "no." Why? Because every adult is pointing at them when they do something that they didn't mean to do but was wrong, and they point at him and says, "no." I mean, everybody's got stories about that was the first word their child heard. "I don't understand why my kid says 'no' all the time." Well, because you were pointing at him and saying "no." So the experience of hearing "no" has been drilled into our head since we were toddlers; that "no" meant bad. Well, if "no" is bad, "yes" must be good. Actually, that's the problem, because empathy is about the other side, how the other side feels. So while we were horrified when that adult pointed at us and said "no," actually the adult felt good; the adult felt like they were giving direction and it made him feel safe and protected. And this is one of the critical issues of why "no" was a great response.
So, um, ghosting is a problem, but I think one of the worst problems, especially whether it's sales or deal-making—which is what I'm in—is "stay in touch." Right? The prospect, the other party, they want you to stay in touch. You don't stay in touch enough; you become forgotten. If you stay in touch too closely, you are annoying. Any suggestions on tactfully or tactically staying in touch and making sure you're moving the needle with them?
Yeah, so, um, their their last words to you is "stay in touch." What's the prompt here? Yeah, usually it's this question I get asked a lot, so it's usually we're in long sales cycles, pretty complex deals. Um, they they tend to like you, whatever, but they're they're not ready to move forward with the negotiation, the deal, the contract, or whatever. "Stay in touch." They're not saying "no," which I'd rather they ghost or say "no," because then we can move on. But "stay in touch." So what would be, you know, a couple of ideas you might think of of how to stay in touch?
You know, let's rethink this. First of all, that's that's the same as a "maybe," and you got to treat maybes as if they're nos. So that's that's what you got to proceed after saying "stay in touch." It's either a flat "no," they're not going to do it, or they haven't they have misgivings that you're not revealing. So you and you know that to be true. Like, are you keeping your are you keeping your percentages, your win rate percentage, your length of time to an outcome, and your percentage of successes on your stay in touches? A percentage of staying touches to success?
Yes, we do. We call it more of a pull-through yield, meaning leads we put in the pipeline to success ratio. It's really high; it's about 85 percent. But this is my question, hold on. Yeah, "stay in touch" as a category only—you can tell me what percentage of the "stay in touch" people—let's go, let's call them a zebra or a giraffe or a thoroughbred, I don't care, the one they're one profile—"stay in touch"—can you tell me what percentage of those close and how long it takes to close? Yes or no?
Yes. I could. I could. Yes. I could. Yes. Okay. So can you uh so first of all, it's not a sin to not get the deal; it's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal, correct? So if they're saying "stay in touch," what do you know to be true? That they're not saying "no," they're somewhat amenable to terms, but whether it's timing or pressure or something on their side that's not motivating them to be enough to turn the dial to "let's sign the retainer." All right, so they have misgivings, or they lack pressure, or they don't see the immediate value. Nobody says "stay in touch" on something that they see immediate value to, right? Otherwise, they'd execute. Either if they see immediate value to it, or if they have it um pressured execute, they'd execute.
So one spot is going to be a label: "stay in touch" sounds like you have misgivings. It's a good point. "Stay in touch" sounds like there are other things that are pressuring you now. They're going to be much more likely to talk with you about the barriers than they ought to talk about what's going to hook them, because people are comfortable talking about what's getting in the way, because they don't feel there's a commitment involved. So they're free. I'm free to tell you what the barriers are; it's up to you to solve them if you want to. Say, "Well, what would it take to make this deal?" I don't want to say that, because it's going to back me into a corner. Um, so you want to focus on the barriers instead, and you probably want to go after that with labels. So I I would I would never, you know, and I could tell you something: nobody in my business development team goes in to "stay in touch" mode, uh, and and a lot of what we've learned will be inspired by similar to um Jim Camp's 2002 book. I work with Jim; we collaborated over a lot of stuff, me and his sons, Jimmy since deceased. Their whole approach was to get somebody to make a decision, yes or no. But every conversation was designed to make a decision, and "stay in touch" is to avoid decisions, and maybe, and it's Never Never Land, and you cannot monetize "maybe." To some degree you can monetize "we're not making this deal," because then you can move on. So I would I would never go in to "stay in touch" mode. I could "stay in touch." What do you know to be true? You know they don't see the value right now. You know they're being pressured in other areas. You know they have misgivings. You know those things to be true. Throw it out with a label; focus in on that. They're going to be much more likely to talk with you.
I like the take on that. Very good. I love it. Thank you. You're a rock star, man. But you know that was a great question. Thank you very much for uh for the question.
Thank you. Pleasure.
Jack Welch, author of *Jack: Straight from the Gut* and *Winning*, alongside his with his wife Susie, they're coming through Los Angeles a couple of years ago. They're they're hustling their book, *The Real-Life MBA*. I go to the book signing: Jack Welch is at… I want to come speak the negotiation course I'm teaching at the time at USC. How many people try to get Jack Welch to say yes to something at that book signing? Pretty much every one of them, right? They're going to come up there: "Jack, how are you? Yeah, my kid makes my wife makes a great meal if you want to come to the house tonight." God knows what they're going to ask you, Jack. "I got this invention; would you pose with it?" How many people are going to ask him to try to say yes that day? That week? How many people try to get Jack Welch to say yes to something? You're me. You come up to Jack Welch. What do you say? And how much time do you have? You maybe got seven seconds, and even if you get to the second response after him, there's 300 people standing behind you in line. They walk you up there before you get to them; they say, "What's your name? Chris," right on a piece of paper, so Jack doesn't get it wrong. Really, that's so you don't so you don't talk to him, and then you keep moving on. Top of that, have they patted me down? Do they know whether or not I've got a gun? If I've been through a metal detector? As a matter of fact, I do have a gun, but he's not in trouble for me. They don't have my identification; they don't know I'm not going to hurt them. I'm going to get within arm's length of Jack Welch. Action is quicker than reaction; they can't stop me from doing anything I want to do. This is this is the dilemma of bodyguards. You get within arm's length of the target; you can only stop them after they've done… you can grab them after they've killed your target, but you can't stop them. I'm going to give within arm's length of Jack Welch; I could do whatever I want. I could walk up to him; I kiss him right on the lips if I want to, right? He was falling asleep; I want to make sure you wake up. He's gonna wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Time I woke up to Jack Welch, and this is what I say to him: "Is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course that I teach at USC?" He looks up and to the left; he gives his really intense scholars, and he just freezes. And I think to myself, "I just killed Jack Welch." [Applause] He had a stroke; he's so furious and he's gonna die, and the security is going to tackle me; I'm gonna drag me on Cops; I'm gonna say, "But I'm an FBI agent." We don't care; he killed Jack Welch. So initially when he doesn't die, I'm relieved, but he still doesn't move. Finally unfreezes; he looks at me and he says, "It's my personal assistant's name; this is special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her. I will call her and tell her who you are and what you want. I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in the fall; if we are, we'll come in and speak at your class."
Calibrated no is worth at least five yeses. The mythology in sales is "get to the decision-maker." Why is that mythology the real problem? Is a deal-killer. We were in um competition uh via as as uh through somebody else two or three years ago to to get the contract with Verizon for for their for their negotiation training, and um uh the pitch was being made by the company we were working with. We didn't make the pitch. That sounds very self-serving to explain why we didn't get the pitch, but through the uh through the process, the information we got back that was at fully 50% of the deals at Verizon signs are never implemented. Now, I'm at the tip of the iceberg guy, so I'm saying, all right, if this is happening to Verizon—they're extremely capable company—that's probably a good rule of thumb for all companies, and 50% of the signed deals—that's crazy—are not implemented. So what's the problem? The problem is deal-killers on the other side. The sales rep is getting a deal signed, but there are uh weasel clauses in it that the other side wanted to have put in so that their deal-killers can now kill the deal. You know, the terms and conditions phase that everybody goes through, or the weasel clause, it's a satisfactory clause. You know, they've gotten you to swallow [Music] turn around and kill the deal on you. It's not a sin to take a long time to get the deal; it's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal. And this is a massive amount of time invested in not getting the deal, because the deal-killers on the other side of the table tanked it after everybody thought they had a deal.
I want to repeat back what you said. Are you cut out there just real briefly, and I want to make sure that I'm understanding or that the audience can understand what you're saying when it comes to deal-killers versus decision-makers. What you're saying is—and I know you talked about this in the book—is that most people in sales, they're like, "Hey, let's get to the decision-maker so that we can get a deal done, right?" Whereas you're saying that's not actually the issue; that's not what you're looking for. What you're looking for is the deal-killer. So, for example, the decision-maker—I'm going to use a much more simplify than maybe a Verizon example, but tell me if I'm on the right track here—the decision-maker may be the the owner of the company, right? However, the deal-killer may be the wife, or you know, vice versa, right? And so what you're saying is you've got to get the deal-killer, the wife, on board, and if you can get her on board, then you're good to go.
Yeah, just get the deal-killer at least in the loop. A lot a lot of the issues are the deal-killers are mad that they were never consulted; they were never in a loop, so they sit back and they're like, all right, you know, you didn't pull me into the process, just try and do this without… I'll give you another example. We got uh we're talking about a training contract with a company, and we're talking to the CEO and the head of HR. Now, one would think that the CEO was a decision-maker, and if it wasn't, then at least the head of HR was going to be part of it, and they said, "Yeah, you know, I got to tell you what, um, you know, the the guy that's ahead of sales, they are giving away the store. Oh my God, they're their sales people are just they're getting killed, and you know, we got to get this training for that guy." And we had a whole training schedule that we worked out, and we were talking about scheduling dates, and then lo and behold, they stopped talking to us. Well, who killed the deal? The guy they wanted the training for most of all. Us bringing in a training process that he was not involved in bringing in sent the message to him that he was a screw-up, and he wasn't, and that also it was his fault that his people were given a company giving a store away. Now he can't admit that, you know, that's an embarrassment. It's not my fault, and I'm sure as heck not going to allow you guys to bring in training that I haven't approved, right? Right. And he killed the deal on us, and and we never got the deal, and that was a that was the last time we got sucked into that.
Foreign with sales, especially with things like this, how much of this is logical versus emotional? Uh, I gotta tell you something: everything is emotional. Yeah, I can I can I can lay out the I could lay out the brain science right now and explain explain that length whether neuroscience supports the fact that we do not have a logical thought in our head, because we tell ourselves that, but the neuroscience tells us uh unequivocally or unequivocally—I always have trouble with that word, but I love it—you know, I can't pronounce the words I want to use, but you know what they mean; that's what's important. I I know what I know when I see it. Um, every thought that we have in our head, the neuroscientists are not certain whether thoughts start in the emotional side of our brain, which is known as the limbic system, or simply go through the limbic system, but we do not possess a thought that our emotional apparatus, our limbic system, is not intertwined in neuroscience, which means we don't have a thought that lacks emotion. We don't make a decision without emotion, and actually interestingly enough, further on they've shown that if you pull emotions out of our decision-making process, we actually can't make a decision. We can follow directions: "If this happens, do that," but we can't make decisions, because we can't weigh things out, because we weigh things out based on what we care about. So every decision every salesperson is trying to get somebody to make is in fact a decision that has emotion interwoven with it.
Interesting. So when it comes to things like uh objective thinking per se, when you're trying to take a third party or a third yeah third-person view or removing as much emotion as possible from it to simply look at facts rather than letting emotion getting involved in things, and I like to think of that as objective or logical thinking, right? How much does logic—I mean, I understand what you just said with the emotion being part of everything—but how much does logic play into a a sale or a decision-making process with someone? I mean, there's people that are buy off of emotion just like right like that, and then there's a lot a lot more like the accounting type people I like to call them that are very logical, very numbers-oriented. How much does that play into actually getting someone to commit to and follow through on a deal, or is it really emotional?
Well, what is their logic to start with? So yeah, everybody thinks they have a logical process, but at some point in time you have to uh uh evaluate, you know, give a value to the facts. You know what matters here; what's important. Start putting valuations on things. Value is based on what we care about. So you know there's there's our value issues are going to start with how we weigh things out emotionally, and then then the Mind Bender, then then—and this is what we refer to in the book—is bending reality loss. Every if you're a human being—and so this only applies to human beings—lost things hurt lost things twice as much as an equivalent gain. That's from prospect theory. Danny Kahneman wrote *Thinking, Fast and Slow*, won the Nobel Prize in behavioral economics in 2002, because this is a fact of human life. What does that mean? Five dollars: when I pay for it, I gotta get ten dollars in return in value at least, or I'm not gonna make the deal. If you're offering me something that gives me a 20% rate of return on my investment, that's inadequate. I need a 100% rate of return on my investment. So you're pitching gain to me based on neutral third-party valuations of what a dollar is worth and what the return on investment is. No matter how much you lay that out, I'm not going to weigh it that way, because I'm always going to overestimate the value of the dollars that I've spent, and I'm always going to underestimate the value that I've received. And the value we received at a dollar—I mean, in terms of like value doesn't necessarily have to be just dollars back, right? I mean, it's whatever we perceive as value back, correct?
Right. And then we gotta we gotta start I gotta start getting into your head to find out who you perceive as value. Yeah, so it's not always with the dollars and cents. What? So for someone that has lost maybe control, or not not control, they've had a bad conversation; they got on the phone with someone; they are negotiating I don't know a deal where they're doing, let's say it's 3000 a month or 5000 dollars a month, right? It's a deal for a year; it's worth 60 grand in all, um, and they've had a they've had a bad conversation, and they can't get the person to call them back, or they haven't been able to… what's the next steps? Are you following up? Following up? Follow up, follow up, like you know Grant Cardone style, or are you letting it go and moving on to the next one? Like, what's what's your technique for, all right, that conversation didn't go well, and what's next?
All right, so I value my time, you know, um, if if you're too hard for me to get to, I'm probably not going to continue the follow-up. However, my next follow-up is going to be a two-pronged approach. I'm going to send you a one-line message; it's going to go in an email or it's going to go in a text, and it's going to be one line, and one line on, and I'm going to say, "Have you given up on doing business with me?" Or "Have you given up on this the sale or whatever it is," and I have sent that message out: "Have you given up on x?" Now, 999 times out of a thousand—which is pretty good batting average—I'm going to get a response back somewhere between 3 and 30 minutes from sending that out, and it has to go out like that, word for word. I had a woman once said to me, "I sent that text out; it didn't work." I'm like, "All right, cool, interesting, possible. Tell me word for word what you sent," and she said, "Yeah, well, I thought that sounded a little harsh, you know," and so instead of saying, "Have you given up on doing business with me?" I sent out a lot a message that said, "Should we give up on having lunch together so we can discuss the process?" I'm like, "I wouldn't answer that either." And you and you gotta understand where they're it's uh you got to be careful with of the wheat crap. Your boss comes to you and said, "Hey, look, we got a problem." Is that what the boss means? Yeah, no, he's like, "You got a problem," you have a problem, and so we disguise you know we use "we" as the disguiser for "you" all the time. It's just it's so bad. So the the one line is "Have you given up on doing business with me," word for word. Now you're going to get a response anymore from three to thirty minutes. I'm not kidding. But now what do you do to follow up? They haven't been listened to; they're not talking to you because you've shown them that you don't listen to them. So when you get them back on the phone, what you have to do is summarize the perspective from their situation. Do not repeat your pitch; do not repeat what caused them to go dark in the first place. It sounds so logical, but man, so many people do that. Everybody does it, you know. Summarize it from their perspective and throw in, you know, "You're probably having a hard time with this; you probably think I'm not paying attention to you." You gotta especially summarize the stuff that you don't like. I mean, I would ask anybody listening to this also take a look at my TED Talk, because that's when I say, "I must say it eight times." Summarize the stuff you don't like; summarize the stuff from their perspective, meaning what what does that look like? All right, what that looks like is they're not getting back to you because they don't feel listened to. Be so you say, "You're probably not getting back to me because you don't feel listened to. You probably…" They're not getting back to you because the process is not moving them forward. You say, "You know what, this process probably hasn't moved you forward at all. You're probably asking yourself why you're talking to me at all," because that is in fact what's going on. You got to get the voice in her head to shut up. You don't get the voice in her head to shut up by contradicting it; you get the voice in her head to shut up by articulating what it's saying. Now, suddenly you resonate with the voice in their head, and you keep at this until they say to you, "That's right." Ah, so if you get it wrong, it's not over; you just keep saying, "Okay, well, then maybe this…" Well, the great thing is if you're actually trying to solve it or articulate it from their perspective, if you get it wrong, they're gonna go, "No, no, that's not it; this is what it is." Now, that being corrected is one of the ideal places on a planet to be, because people love to correct, and when they correct, they tell you the truth.
I I want you to repeat that one more time for the audience to hear, because I don't think very many people understand that. So one more time for the audience in the back: "Being corrected is one of the ideal places on the planet to be. The other side loves it, which means now they're in an interaction with you that they love, which bodes well for future interactions, and when they correct, they tell you the truth." So to the people out there that are like, "Ah, man, if I feel corrected, I feel like they think that I'm not credible or that that I don't know what I'm talking about, and therefore they're going to see me as less and not want to do business with me," what would you say to that? You're leaving money on the table; you are killing yourself; you are… you know, it's an emotional intelligence move, one of the smartest moves on a planet, and be your fear is getting in your way, and your fear is stopping you from living in a bigger house. I love that; I love that.
So you said it was a two-pronged approach, and maybe we covered the second one already, but the first one was that text or that email, one line. What was part two of that? Yeah, get it "that's right." Um, part one: if you get a "no" out of them. Part two is to get a "that's right" out of them. You get her "that's right" out of them. Now your next move is is exactly this: I'm going to do it perfectly dead freaking silence. Shut the front door; shut up; let him kill the boy. So if they reply back, you just don't reply. When when you get it "that's right" out, they will never be more inclined towards you than they are in that moment. Um, the secret of negotiation is letting the other side have your way at that point in time. Let them give you the deal; let them outline it for you. Now, in the extremely unlikely event that they don't, but you have to give them a chance to do so, count one thousands in yourself. So you know one one thousand, two one thousand… if you get to ten, and only if you get to ten, then you say, "How would you like to proceed?" And that's if you're on like on the phone, then not via email. Exactly. I mean, um, it's hard to get a "that's right" out of somebody via emails. Emails are bad moves; emails are playing chess, and you don't want to make seven chess moves in one email. So this is on the phone, in person. So you get out, okay, "that's right" out of them verbally. Shut the front door. If you count to ten, and you will not you'll you will get to three and they'll start talking again, but in the event you got to wait to ten, very deferentially you hit him with the magic H question: "How would you like to proceed?" "How would you like to proceed?" Now you know the road map, and you know the best possible road map. If it doesn't work for you, you just made yourself smarter, and you move on, and you move on. That's awesome. That's how so good. Many of us as communicators uh need to know how to negotiate. So with that, I'd like to ask my first question of Chris: How do you get the courage to negotiate, Chris?
Well, a lot of it really has to do with understanding how to prepare, and with a minimal level of preparation, because each of us, we run through negotiations in our mind in advance, and we have a tendency to often to defeat ourselves, and we'll defeat ourselves usually in one of two ways. Um, we'll think about the worst-case scenario and how if they said this, it would be nothing I could ever say, and then so we've and there's no point in negotiating because I already know what they're going to say, and we've defeated ourselves in that fashion. And another way that people do is they think of so many possibilities that they think that they can never be prepared for them all, and then they've ended up defeating themselves again. So actually what I say is think of think of the worst-case scenario, think of the best-case scenario, think of one great open-ended question to ask the other person in regards to either one. The reality is the situation is going to fall somewhere between the two extremes if you've done a small amount of…
Preparation for each one of the extremes; you'll feel prepared. You'll feel you have you'll have more courage because you'll feel prepared, and in fact, you will be prepared because it's going to rain somewhere in between those two outcomes, and you'll be able to deal with the infinite possibilities in between because you've prepared for both extremes.
Here at the bank, we've got 187 countries, and I think we have about 150 nationalities working here at the bank. So, a question for you is: is culture a big deal in negotiation? Um, it can be the starting point of a negotiation, and we look at culture instead of based on where you were born or your ethnicity or even the shade of your skin; we look at it more on a human level. We negotiate in ways that appeal to human beings, and then we sort of break the human culture up into three different approaches to conflict. And they are: there's two that seem to make a lot of sense, and there's one that is just—we think—is crazy.
Back in the caveman days, we had the fight-or-flight response to threat or conflict. Caveman sees a saber-toothed tiger; he either wants to kill it and eat it, or he wants to run from it. And then there's a very interesting third type that wants to make it a pet. And these tend to be the types of people that we will run into around the world, and occasionally there's enough of them in a given place that they almost become what you expect from the population, and it can be the starting point of a conversation. And many people look at culture as wanting the beginning and end point, like: this is what you say to an American to get a deal; this is what you say to an Arab or Muslim or someone, a Japanese person. And people want that to be the beginning and the end in terms of cross-culture. So if you can—if you look at them in human terms and accept that there are these three basic types—the kind of person, the type that wanted to kill the saber-toothed tigers are very assertive, aggressive people; tends to be what we think of Americans as: very direct, very loud, very assertive, very aggressive. The type that wanted to avoid the saber-toothed tiger tends to be more analytical, quieter, much more thoughtful, occasionally dispassionate. There are types of societies and cultures that that are very quiet, sometimes referred to as high context; things have to be taken with a great deal of context to understand where they're coming from. And there are types of cultures that are very gregarious.
If these three cultures are the starting point for a conversation, and then from that point forward we really focus on the other person, regardless of what culture you're from. If I start to take my cues from you, if I treat you with respect, then you'll let me make mistakes. If you know that I'm treating you respectfully, and somehow I use the wrong hand to shake hands with, or I don't bow with the proper time, or I don't pick up the right utensil—if I've been respectful all along and listening to you very carefully to try to understand what you're saying, then you'll give me the space to make errors, and we'll be able to work together.
Implementation in any business deal—yes—is nothing without—how an agreement is nothing without implementation. And if your implementation isn't discussed to some degree in advance, then it's a guarantee of a tremendous amount of time lost going back and fixing the mistakes that you should have seen coming in the first place. Or if you haven't talked about implementation in advance, decision starts to break down; both sides go like, well, I'll wait for the other side to start fixing this. So anger and frustration is building, and then when somebody finally does say something, they're screaming at each other. Like I was in a—I did a negotiation for windows in my son's house a few years ago. Contractors are probably pretty much the same worldwide; you know, they take a deposit, and they take your deposit to go finish the job that they started six months before, and they're not going to do your job until they got a deposit from somebody else. So I—I know this is it—what they do. So I negotiated to try to save this guy from himself. If I know that's probably how he's doing business, we're not gonna do it like that. So he says, yeah, you know, how do we do this? Yeah, you can be deposit, you know, your windows are in six to three to six weeks; uh, I'll call you in and we'll rent—you'll put them in. I said, well, how do I know they're going to be in three to six weeks? You know, then again, the issue isn't whether or not he answers; it's the process I'm putting it through. So finally I said, okay, dress in implementation. So you keep saying the windows are going to be in by three weeks; if you don't call us three weeks from now to tell me the windows are in, then you give me permission right now to call you on the phone and call you names. Now what do you say? Was just don't worry. So in two weeks and five days—well, he saved off time—he calls my son; it says, just want you to know the windows are right here; the windows are right here, and we're getting—you know—because I just addressed the implementation in a way that he didn't want to have happen. So he dropped all his other nonsense that he was doing with everybody else because I addressed implementation up front. We got the windows in, and because I did it nicely, you know, I made him think it was his idea by asking how and what questions. Then when we had problems on down the line also, you know, he—she handled everything really easily. Well, you know, we had an issue with the door; we had some other stuff, and but I—I didn't want any anxiety to build up on the unforeseen problems which always drop in.
That's amazing, and how did you know what it was that he didn't want? Because he didn't want to be called names, right? Well, I did it kind of playfully, and you know, we went back and forth with him a little bit playful, and you know, a hostage negotiation, late-night FM DJ voice, business negotiations, playing for boys. Would you do naturally? Right, right. You know, and I don't know, I think you probably—your emotional intelligence—you probably just discovered that people wanted to deal with you the more that you smiled, the more that you're playful and pleasant. And a point of fact that correlates really strongly with how many deals people make and how their long-term relationships play out. That's really interesting; I hadn't ever particularly thought about that before. So I would take that, so thank you; I appreciate it.