A short instructional talk by Brian Tracy on negotiation tactics emphasizing the law of reciprocity and persuasion techniques. He explains emotional and material reciprocation, the Socratic method (ask questions and listen), negotiation tactics (agree slowly, defer contentious items, always ask for reciprocation), and distinguishing price from terms with an illustrative anecdote.
Let's talk today about negotiation tactics. One of the most powerful of all is called persuasion by reciprocation. Now, this is based on what is called the law of reciprocity. It's considered by many to be the most powerful law of human nature. And what it says is, if you do something nice for me, I'll do something nice for you. I feel obligated to reciprocate. For example, if we go out to lunch together and I say, I'll pick up the lunch, you almost always say that, I will pay for it next time. And next time you insist on paying for the lunch. Now, there's several different types of reciprocation. There's, of course, emotional reciprocation where you make people feel good. You say, thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you. I know how busy you are. Thank you very much for your time. When or, this is a beautiful company, or it's a great opportunity for me to speak to you. Whenever you say anything that causes people to feel better about themselves, they have a deep unconscious need to reciprocate. There's another type of reciprocation which is called material or financial reciprocation. When you do something physical for someone, for example, you help someone load their car, they want to help you load their car. You lend people money or your lawnmower, they want to pay you back by reciprocating in some way. We always like to do things for others because we have, according to psychologists, this deep need to be even. So, if you do something for me, the only way that I can get even is by doing something for you. By the way, the reverse is also true. If you do something that hurts me, then I feel a deep need to get even as well. So be careful. So the starting point of reciprocation is look for opportunities to do things for others. Something as simple as bringing a cutout from a newspaper that may be of interest to a prospect. Something as simple as giving a person a book or something like that. Something as simple as opening the door or getting a cup of coffee is a very powerful technique to cause people to like you and to feel obligated to you. Use the Socratic method. Now, the Socratic method is simply by asking a lot of questions. The more questions you ask of another person and listen closely to the answers, the more they like you and the more they open to being influenced by you. You'll find, by the way, that in negotiating is that the more questions you ask and the more open you seem to appear to being reasonable and to see things from the other person's point of view, the more reasonable they will be as well, they will reciprocate. Now, whenever there's a disagreement in a negotiation, and I've negotiated 50 and 60 page agreements that were worth many millions of dollars and covered multi year time spans, you'd always say this, well, let's come back to this. So you put off any clause or any part of a negotiation where there is some difficulty or resistance or push back. You say, let's put that aside for now. Let's go through the rest of the material and then let's come back to that later. Now, in negotiating, one of the rules is to agree slowly. It's very easy to agree quickly. But even if you have no problems with a particular issue, always go slowly with the issue. The slower you go, the more strength you have later on when you come to issues that are of greater importance to you. You can also push the fairness button and use the word fair over and over again. They have found in television debates, especially in politics, that the politician who uses the word fair when they say, you know, that's not a fair interpretation, that's not a fair way to describe this situation, or that wouldn't be fair to me or someone else, you'll find that in current politics they always use the word, well, people aren't paying their fair share. And no matter what the truth of the matter is, the word fair triggers an emotional feeling to be even, that you should back off. Rather than being unfair. Remember, children are always saying, that's not fair, that's not fair, because they know how strong the word is. Ask the other party to reciprocate. Now here's a rule in negotiating is never give something without getting something in return. Even if what you give is of no real concern or value to you. Always ask for something in return. If you don't ask for something in return, then soon that they will ask. They will ask things from you and not reciprocate at all. And remember, the final point is that price and terms are different. You can pay almost any price if you can name the terms. I remember one of the best negotiators said, I will pay you $1,000 for that gold cross pen in your pocket, even though it only cost 150. I'll pay you $1,000 for it if I can name the terms. And the terms are, is every time I pass you on the street in New York on a Wednesday, I will give you $1 until the thousand dollars is covered. And no interest. So therefore, you can agree to a higher price as long as you can agree to terms that are much more favorable to you. Thanks for watching. So what is the one thing that you're going to do in your next negotiation based on what you have learned in this video? Whatever it is, leave a comment below. And until next time, remember that only you are responsible for your. Sam.
