Episode 55: The 3 Negotiation Skills Every Sales Leader Needs to Know with Nicole Davidson

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management. And to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales Teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered B2B sales teams. Today we have Nicole Davidson joining us. Very different to the type of guests that we normally have on here, but one of the most highly regarded skills when it comes to sales that any team can think about and that is negotiation. Nicole is an expert at that topic. She's a commercial mediator, negotiation trainer and an advisor as well who is accredited. Hard to find people who are actually accredited in this type of field and actually also good at it. And Nicole is exactly that person because she's been doing it since 2016 and has a huge amount of experience in the legal, insolvency, banking sectors and all of those around her mediation practice, which means a negotiation skills. I also know Nicole and she is one super polished professional, which is someone who I generally regard as having the type of negotiation skills that you want to learn from. Nicole's also consulted around Australia, of course, the Europe, Middle east, so brings a macro worldly perspective to help us think micro in terms of how we negotiate. So Nicole also has some nice awards behind her. In 2021, I think, Nicole, you received the Resolution Institute's award for achievement as an emerging practitioner. And then 2022, he followed up two years in a row with some awards at the Australian Law Awards as Mediator of the Year. And also she's actually been listed inside Small business magazine's top 50 small business leaders. So a whole lot of accolades. I think I could probably keep going, but I won't. We'll stick to that. But today, Nicole, welcome to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast. Terrific to have you on board.

It's really lovely to be here. Ben, thanks for inviting me along.

My pleasure. Tell us a little bit about yourself and Nicole Davidson. Mediation and Negotiation and what you do.

Yeah. So myself, I am a mum of three. I live in Melbourne. I did a law commerce degree many, many years ago and had a very brief stint being a lawyer and decided that it really wasn't the role that I wanted to be in for reasons which now mean what I do is exactly what I want to be doing. So I had some fundamental problems with the fact that we have an adversarial legal system and I'm not sure it's the most efficient thing that we can use outside of the criminal justice system. But I had approximately 10 years working across a variety sectors, all in business insolvency, front end deals in the investment banking, and never really sort of felt satisfied with any of them. I really wanted to be making a difference to people's lives, which is what I felt I wasn't doing in those roles. So I then moved into training and development. I did a post grad course in adult learning. I worked in house doing learning strategy and eventually I fell into a role where I was front of house doing the training rather than planning the training, doing general communication skills. And from there I landed in a consultancy that specialized in negotiation training. And it was when I got to deep dive into the negotiation theory and see how this applied and when I thought about how it would have been if I'd had those skills and that knowledge, when I was doing all of my first part of my career, I fell in love with it. And so I've been teaching that now for over 10 years. I decided I needed to be putting it into practice. I didn't want to be a trainer who just taught me, rolled out the same course day after day. So I was accredited as a mediator and I've been mediating and training in my own business for the last eight years.

Great. It's a nice story and probably sums up the reason why I wanted to have you on the podcast today is because you have the legal background and I think the legal background provides a really nice baseline to understand what negotiation is because you have a firm grasp of the law, which I think helps in a lot of negotiations, be it mediation, be it sales negotiations, be it negotiating with your kids at home. I think it all has a baseline that helps. But you come from a learning perspective that was developed in business and we see a lot of lawyers that are teaching negotiation practices and they come from a legal point of view. I like that your negotiation comes from a practical business point of view. So I think that's really relevant to those that are listening. So I have a request for everyone listening today is to try and think about as you're going through this podcast, what Nicole is saying can be applied to your industry or your business or even any specific deals that you have in play at the moment. Negotiation is a really hard topic to master. In fact, it can take a lifetime and you never get there. But if you can take some practical tips from Nicole today and apply it to something right now, I think you'll find that it will help you roll out multiple times into other deals you're doing or people that you're working with. So let's get into it. Nicole, first question, in your eyes, what makes a good negotiator?

Yeah, I think that's a great question, because I vividly remember being asked one time if I would give a keynote presentation on why Donald Trump is such a good negotiator. And I have to say I refused. And I refused on the following basis. I think Donald Trump has some excellent negotiation skills. He has, over the course of his career, negotiated some great deals. There's a book about all of his deals, analyzing the way he negotiates. But the challenge that I find with his style of negotiation is that we think of him as being somebody who will negotiate a great deal for himself. And, you know, given that he's in the property development space. If I had a property development deal and I was looking for someone to partner with, I think because of his style of negotiation, I'd be very wary about putting that offer to him. So I think there's probably been a number of deals that he's missed out on because of that. So to me, what makes a good negotiator is three things. They have a mindset of curiosity. They always want to learn more and understand what's going on. They are very skilled at asking the right questions so that once again, they can dig in and ask. And they are excellent listeners. And once again, I think so many of us listen, and at the same time that we're listening, we're already formulating our response, or we're thinking about why what somebody said is wrong. So. So to have really, really well developed listening skills is critical. So for me, they're the skills. But I think then there's also what goes alongside that is, and this is something that I use as a framework when I teach is that you need to have a systematic understanding of what a negotiation is, which most of us don't have because we're never taught how to negotiate. We just learn by trial and error as we go along so digging down and having a framework of what is in a negotiation and how can I use those components? Components being really structured in the way you plan for your negotiation. And then there's the people element of it. Negotiation would be easy if it was all AI, but people are unpredictable. So understanding how people work, particularly where there's, you know, every negotiation has an element of conflict. So understanding those dynamics is really critical.

Interesting. You touch around the skills being curiosity, asking good questions, and listening. And for me, all three are really, really related. Right. To be curious, you often need to be able to ask good questions and listen to the responses. Right. But to be able to listen to a response, you need to, you know, how to ask the question and be curious in what's coming out the other end. Right. And then to ask good questions, you've got to be ready to listen. Right. And a good question is often a curious question, so very much interrelated, but also one in particular is quite hard to master. For me, curiosity is a mindset, so that's all about being ready to listen and learn. And often the best learners are often the most curious. Listening takes practice, but it's that adage of two ears, one mouth, and you just need to get good at active listening. But to ask good questions, there is an art to it. And for me, I have a format that I follow. But I'd love to hear how you teach how to ask good questions.

Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, I think for me it's the listening is even harder than the asking the questions. But coming back to the questions, I think the key is always coming back to what is the purpose of the question that I'm asking. And one of the things that I find where people make mistakes around the questions is that they ask those very closed questions where they're really actually not asking a question at all. It would be great if we were to actually agree that you're going to get this done by Thursday, wouldn't it? It sounds like a question, but it's not a question. And so a lot of the time I find people are actually asking questions, but they've already made up their mind and they've come for something. So for me, it's about knowing when do I need to use a nice, broad, open question? How do I get someone to talk? And when is the appropriate time? So at the beginning of a negotiation, when I'm trying to find out what's important to this person, how am I going to understand what they care about so that we can put a Deal together, that's going to work for them. I need to be asking really great questions, open questions, and I talk about, actually often it's not a question at all. I talk about my best friend, Ted, tell me more about. Explain how this impacts you. Describe what it means if this happens. So tell, explain, describe. Great ways of prompting somebody to give you more information. But then at other times, I absolutely want to use a closed question. So if I want to confirm I've got something right, I'm not just going to confirm it. I'm going to say something like. So it sounds like what you've said is the timing of when we get this deal closed is essential to you because of year end. Have I got that right? And just that coming in and asking that question where they have to confirm it or deny it is really important. Where so often people will ask that question and they'll assume that they're correct without actually getting the other person to say. And that can be really easy for someone, particularly if the answer is not what I think it is. But. But it's actually helpful for them that I'm wrong. They'll just sit there and say nothing.

Yes, Assumption is definitely the parent of many mistakes. So not confirming is something that I have seen plenty of sales leaders in particular make a mistake around. So, Ted, explain that again.

Tell, tell, explain, describe.

I like that. Tell, explain, describe. A nice format for questions. I've worked a lot around a very practical framework, which is to ask a question and then ask a second question that dives a little bit deeper into whatever the response is, not only to help you process but to stop you worrying about what you're going to say next. Because, you know, it has to be a second question that's related and gives you time to process and then think of that next question.

Yeah, interesting. I use that concept as well when I'm teaching people to listen because it is, it's that thing where it forces you to listen. So I talk about, you know, I do an exercise with people we call question from an answer and they have to go through five questions in a row. Each question has to be based around what the other person talks about. And once again, that's a technique that I will use very specifically in some cases because that technique can be very much about relationship building. Because when I'm using that technique and every question I ask is based around what you've just said, there is no way that that person can mistake the fact that I'm really, really listening to them. And so it's A great way. We know that when somebody listens, when we're being listened to, it actually releases oxytocin in the body. We are primed as social beings to want people to hear us. You know, a lot of us pay a lot of money to psychologists just so that somebody's listening to us. So if I can genuinely listen to somebody and they feel it, then they're actually having oxytocin released in the bloodstream and they're feeling good. It's going to help us build a really productive business relationship.

And for me, getting to a point where we've created value for the other party or value for both parties is important. But when we're creating value at the other side, we tend to move towards a result. And I think asking good Questions, whether it's 1, 2, or using the TED format, actually helps you understand where you need to create that bag. So I like it. The other thing that you mentioned, which I think is really important is preparation. I personally work off the seven Ps prior. Proper preparation prevents pretty poor performance. Right. Sometimes you substitute a word in there that's not quite as G rated, but we're running a G rated podcast here at Nicole. So preparation. How do you go about getting your preparation right and not wasting time on preparation? That's not relevant.

Well, and I think one of the problems is that there will be times where because you have fully prepared, it is going to be wasted. Because sometimes, and I remember having a situation like this myself, I spent all this time stressing about preparing for this negotiation. And it was a very small thing. At one point in my life, I was a Thermomix consultant, so I was selling Thermomixes. The whole issue with this was somebody had picked up a box that had some cookbooks in it and they hadn't paid for them. And I had to call this person. I knew she was a particularly hostile person and I had to ring her and say, you know, you've got my cookbooks, I need the books back or you need to pay me. And I was so worried about her response. So I took all this time thinking about, you know, what she might say, how would I respond all the rest of it. I eventually rang her and I said, oh, those books that are in the box, they weren't actually meant for you, and did you want to buy them or shall I pick them up? And she went, oh, no, I'll pay. How much is it? And I'm like, oh my God. I spent hours stressing about this. But even though it is you know, wasted time. In one way, it's the times that you don't do that preparation, and it goes the other way that mean that that's never wasted time. The problem for most people is that when they're preparing for a negotiation, they are purely focusing on the facts. When I talk about negotiation, I say there's two aspects to it. There's the content of the negotiation, which is, what is it that we're actually negotiating? So in a sales context, it's, you know, what are the products, what are the prices, what are the time frames, you know, how's the contract going to be drafted? What are the warranties, all of that detail stuff, and you absolutely need to be across all of that content. But the other aspect that people often don't prepare for is the process of the negotiation. How are we going to actually run this negotiation? Now, that might be from, have we got the right people in the room, both on my side and on theirs? Are we having this negotiation at the right time? Now, that could be a time in the economic cycle. It could be a time in the financial year. It could be, should we be doing it on a Monday morning or Friday after lunch? So these are all choices that we need to make. Are we thinking about strategically, where is it best to have this meeting? Does it make sense to have it at their office, our office, in a neutral place, Online, by telephone? Are we doing things strategically or are we just somebody made a suggestion and we were, yeah, okay, fine. Without considering if it's the right thing to do. So the preparation absolutely needs to cover both the content and the process.

Interesting talk about that. I do a lot of strategic planning. It is the biggest part of my business because I think it's the most important for any sales team. And with every single sales leader. When I'm preparing for strategic planning, one of the most important questions I ask them is, where are you going to put the coffee? They look at me and they go, what? Come on, man, you need to run a strategic planning. And I go, yeah, that's cool. But if there's no coffee for people when they come in in the day, we may as well not even start. Because myself, I don't drink coffee. It means nothing to me. But I know that people, when they don't have coffee available to make sure they can switch on, there's no point even starting. So spending time on not just the facts, but the process that you mentioned wholeheartedly agree with you. You've alluded to a little bit as we're talking around about knowing people. So we're talking about the skills, which is being curious, asking questions, listening well spoken about, the preparation. So it's getting the facts right, but also getting the process right. Who, what, when, how type of approach. But you've also spoken about knowing the other side. And I guess we could call that without scaring people, the psychology of a negotiation. How could we talk about that? Perhaps in a very practical term, where people listening might be able to say, aha, here's some things I can do to take to my next negotiation that make sure I know the other side.

Yeah, look, I mean, and it's a really, really complex area. So I think the thing that fundamentally underpins all of this is that if you look at how the human brain works, it has a whole bunch of inbuilt shortcuts. So as a really simple example, if I was going to pick up my pen, I wouldn't stop and go, am I going to pick it up in my left hand or my right hand? I just automatically would go to my dominant hand because that's a shortcut that the brain has built into it. And we have lots of these shortcuts because humans have to make so many choices every day that if we had to think about each of them, we'd never get anything done. Now, there's a few of these shortcuts that really get in the way when we are in a negotiation. So, for example, there is a cognitive bias that means every time, particularly if we're in conflict with somebody. And bear in mind that even in a solid business relationship, there is an element of conflict wanting different outcomes. When we're in conflict with somebody, any suggestion that comes from them, as opposed to a suggestion of ourselves, is likely to be discounted, automatically discounted by our brain, so it doesn't get given as much credence. The research that was done around this, they gave two groups of identical people. So demographically, the same groups were given a copy of an arms reduction proposal. So back in the days of Gorbachev and Reagan, and they were asked, does this arms reduction proposal favour the USSR or America, or is it even now? The groups were exactly the same in terms of their composition, but one of the groups came back and 57% of them said, oh, this is much more favourable to the Russians. And on the other group, the majority of people said, no, this is pretty fair to both parties. Now, the only difference between those two groups, they had exactly the same proposal that they read. The only difference was that the first group that said it favoured the Russians were told that the proposal had been put forward by Gorbachev, and the group that said it was equal and fair had been told it was put forward by the Americans. So we get this situation where in negotiations, when the other party puts something on the table, we might discount it without giving it the full degree of analysis that it deserves, just because our brain goes say no, because it's not ours. So that's an example of one of the cognitive biases that really gets in our way.

And is there a process? Well, I know there's a process. What's your process around in that type of instance where a proposal is put up by another party to help the other party recognise it as either their idea or an idea that potentially is valuable to both sides?

Yeah. So there's a couple of things, I guess, you know, because this is the thing. It's. If we're getting a proposal from the other side, we might be discounting it. So we need to be aware that this is going on so that we can actually go. Hang on, before I assess this, maybe I need a second opinion or maybe I need to stop and reflect. But when we're putting proposals to the other side where they might discount them, sometimes what we want to do is actually not put the proposal there. We actually want to use a lot of questioning and break things down until they come up with a proposal for themselves, because we know that they might disagree with our proposal, but they're not going to disagree with their own. And, you know, certainly when I mediate as well, I'm often in the position where I'm actually leading people gently to a place where they find that solution for themselves so that they can own it.

Yeah, it's that whole dropping breadcrumbs type of approach. Excellent. Okay, well, we've covered a few things today. We have covered some of the important skills to be a good negotiator, curiosity, asking your questions and listening. We have covered all about preparation. So it's not just around the facts, but also around the process that you need to follow. And we've also spoken about probably the hardest topic, I think, to master, which is understanding the other side of the negotiation, or more specifically, the psychology of negotiations. And perhaps a couple of areas there around how we might be able to help work through the it's not my idea issue when you're going through a negotiation to one that becomes a little bit more equitable. Hopefully not at the level of arms deals between the Americans and the Russians, but certainly whatever is relevant for our business. So, Nicole, thank you very much for your time today, Nicole Davidson. Negotiation is the name of Nicole's business. What is the best place for people to find you, Nicole?

Yeah, look, the best place is probably to head straight for the website, which is nicoledavidsonnegotiation.com Alternatively you can find me on LinkedIn.

Excellent. Perfect. Well, for everyone out there, I would recommend you look up Nicole. You never know when you need some help with negotiations, but when you do, you normally need it really quickly. So Nicole's a great person to go to, but until next time, keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're ongersales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales team.