Powerful Negotiation Tactics That Everyone of Us Needs to Master Feat. Chris Voss

We will just kind of rock and roll into this, and I'll give you some background. We'll get to Q and A, and then I'll throw something at you at the end. So asking asked for the top 10 greatest negotiation responses. Number one is now bad time to talk. Now I'm going to dig somewhat into why you want to get people to say no versus saying yes. And there's a million reasons for that also. But I will tell you an initial indicator, in my view, because Dan talked before about if somebody says, hey, I want to talk to you about something that's mutually beneficial, you know, that's an indicator. A behavior of a half. Hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Dan's come to recognize that, and it immediately turns them off. We're actually developing, within my company, we've developed this. We get specific profiles of what do halfs say, what's an indicator of a half, and why you should want to walk away as soon as possible nicely. The last impression is lasting impression. But if you got a few minutes to talk is one of those things. So, I mean, how long is a few minutes? When somebody said to you, have you got a few minutes to talk? When was it ever actually less than 5, which is a definition of a few. Right. So it's now bad time to talk. In place of that, why is that one of our top 10 lines? There's only. There's only one of two answers. And this is. This is why Howard asked me to do a fill in a blank, so you could take notes if you wanted to, to write it down. Because clearly, if you write something down, you're more focused and you're more likely to retain it. It's an accelerator of learning. So there's only two answers you ever get. If it's now a bad time to talk. One of them is hesitation. And they say, why? No, no, it's never a bad time to talk. Go ahead. What do you got when someone responds like that? You've got 1,000% of their focus, which is what you called for in the first place. Their focus, their attention. As Dan said, you got their attention. Now, keeping their attention is a secondary issue, but you've got their attention. Now. What happens when you say, have you got a few minutes to talk? Well, they think, how long is a few minutes? What do you want to talk about? When's my next appointment? That's what goes through people's minds. When you say, have you got a few minutes to talk? What does that mean? You do not have their attention. You just blew the first seven seconds by clouding their brain with those thoughts. So it's now a bad time to talk. They stop, they clear their head and they go, no, what do you got? Or they say, yeah, it is a bad time to talk, but I can Talk Tuesday at 1. Now you just got an appointment for their focus and their attention, which is what you were after in the first place. That's what we say. Oh, that's what we get over and over again. I remember seeing this come up in a thread on LinkedIn once. And somebody on LinkedIn, you know the level of discussion in there of people clinging to their own beliefs. Someone wrote, well, I don't want to say, is now a bad time to talk? Because what do you do if they say yes? And my thought is, do you really want to talk to somebody who says yes to that? If they're willing to say yes, now is a bad time to talk. You want to keep talking, think about how stupid that is. So it's now bad time to talk. Any of you, that from this point forward, don't at least experiment with this. That loss is on you. I'm sorry, I'm blunt. All right, so extending. I never ask anybody if it's a good idea. We consistently ask over and over, is this a ridiculous idea? And this also will begin to get us some underpinnings of why no works. One of the reasons why no as an answer works is what we found from our own experiences. No matter how fatigued somebody is, somebody can say no and clear their mind. Every one of you listening to me right now, we all have the same problem. We suffer from decision fatigue. No matter who you are, you have capacity for X number of decisions in a given day. You start running out of gas at some point in time. It's between the decisions that you've made. The number of clicks, every click is a decision. Your circadian rhythm, what you've had to eat, what a good night's sleep you had the night before. Doesn't matter. You've all got so much gas in a tank. We see over and over and over again. And people on my staff are, especially my assistants are told, never ask Chris a how or what question after 1 o' clock in the afternoon. Because if you say, what do you want to do? What do you want me to do? How do you want me to handle this? After one, my reaction because I'm fatigued is going to be, I don't know, stop bothering me, go away, don't bother me again. Which there's a Couple of you don't want, do not want to trigger that sort of response from somebody because then my last interaction with you was you annoyed me. And the last impression is a lasting impression. So it also begins to put you on a slippery slope, if you're working for me, of a downward spiral where I don't think you're that smart because all you did was annoy me. Now, all they, they've all been taught, and I explicitly say this, never ask me a question ever after one o' clock in the afternoon where I can't say no. Because if you say, do you want me to do this? I'll say, no, do this, this, this and this. And I will in fact ask, answer. The question that they want to ask was how do you want me to do it? But something about saying no triggers my ability to think through steps. First time I ran across this Jack WELCH Book signing LA, I'm standing in line of 200 people. They're doing everything they can to minimize the amount of time that you spend with a book signer for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which, I'm at a book signing a couple years ago, there are 300 people in line. The people orchestrating the book signing walk up to me and they go like, from the moment somebody walks up to you to the moment they move on, you've got 30 seconds. Otherwise we're going to be here for six hours. We don't have that much time. We got to get everybody through this line. 30 seconds per person. We're going to ask them their name before they walk up to you. We'll write it on a piece of paper. They will hand you a book with their name. It's going to take you 30 seconds for you to look them in the eye. Sign to Bob. Nice seeing you. Good luck, Chris. And they're going to move on. 30 seconds. They're doing the same thing with Jack Welch because they got to move everybody to the line. Plus they don't want me pitching Jack Welch. They don't want me asking him over to the house, they don't want me asking him over to dinner because my wife makes a great meatloaf. All that's going to happen, they're going to want pitchers. So I know I get seven seconds when I walk up to Jack Welch, I want to pitch him on. Coming to speak at the negotiation course I'm teaching at usc. I ain't got time to lay this out. And he doesn't have time to listen. And it's late in the day I walk up to him and I say, is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course I teach at usc? And he looked at me in the eye and he started to squint. And then he looked up into the universe and he got this hideous scowl on his face and he just. He just froze. And my first thought was, has killed Jack Welch. He got so mad because he looks furious that he had a stroke and he died and he's getting ready to fall over. So when he initially doesn't die, I'm relieved. But now he looks furious. I mean, furious. I think he's going to start screaming, scaredy, Scott, get this guy out of here. I don't know what he's going to do. He finally unfreezes. He looks at me and he says, this is 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. 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. Reach out to my assistant. I'll let her know what's going on. Decision fatigue. He said no. And he thought through all the next steps and he laid them out for me. Now, is it a ridiculous idea and are you against the next two going back and forth with Robert Herjavec over him sending some people to one of our courses? I had lunch with Herjavec. Generous dude, sweetheart of a guy, completely generous. He paid for lunch. It's my favorite kind of lunch. On top of that, I was at a steak restaurant, so it was even better. He paid 90 minutes and he paid. Great guy. I look at him and I say, we got one of our in person sessions coming up in New York. Can I give you a ticket? He looks back at me and says, how many can we buy? One more indicator of a generous, decent human being. We're going back and forth on the tickets. My son, who runs my company, he doesn't care that it's Robert Herjavec. He's mad because we're going to sell out and he wants to sell the ticket and he's hoping Herjavec doesn't take it so he can sell it. He's on the east coast, we're on the west coast in la. Herjavec's offices in la. I was living just up the street at the time. My son calls me at 4:30 in the afternoon, 7:30 in New York. He says, you Get Herzvic on the phone and get a commitment for the tickets before the business day starts tomorrow or I'm selling his ticket and we're going to sell out because we're on the verge of selling out now and you're holding up the whole circus. And I can't wait to start of the business day tomorrow because the business day starts three hours later in L A and by the time we get up in la, New York's going to lunch, we're going to be out of luck. So I get need a decision from herjavec now at 5:03 in the afternoon I sent him a two line email. Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to three tickets for our course now? Second line. Are you against paying for them before the business day starts tomorrow? That's a 503 email. Again, decision fatigue. Five o' clock in the afternoon. When was the last time you tried to close somebody with a hard decision after 3 o' clock in the afternoon? The loan after 5? The email response from herjavec comes back at 5:04. No, we're willing to commit to three tickets right now. No, it's not a problem. My assistant will be within in touch with you within the hour and will pay for the tickets. Tickets are paid for at 5:23. I've got all the emails, timestamped, our favorite negotiation one liners and why. All right, number four, have you given up on what's the context? This is context driven. I see a lot of people trying to manipulate me who've learned this and they'll send me in an opening email. Have you given up on doing business with us? Well now I have because you just tried to manipulate me with one of my tools. Now I don't mind if you use my tools with me, but if you want to use them against me, I smell it really quickly. So any of you that want to try have you given up on as an opening line? It's going to sound harsh. It's out of context. You deserve to have that door slammed in your face. On the other hand, it is the most effective restarter for people who are ghosting you.

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It's almost a 1000% guarantee of a response. In many cases from three to five minutes. The person receiving it, seeing it, I'm not kidding you, when you send that one line text or one line email, sit there and wait because the response may come screaming back at you. It will restart the conversation literally. I know of two or three instances and probably 10,000 when it didn't. One instance when the answer was yes. Now, context. Your system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you have achieved. If they're ghosting you, they're not responding, you're part of the problem, which means they've gone dark on you for one of two reasons. Number one, you're not listening to them. It's a larger subset of communication with them with you is doing them no good. The first problem is probably that you're not listening, you're pitching and they get tired of giving you the counterfeit yes or the maybes and they just can't take it from you anymore and they just stop responding because you're not listening to them. Number two, they've lost all influence on your side. Again, communication with you is doing them no good. If communication with you was doing them any good, they would still be communicating. What does that mean? Is your takeaway when you send have you given up on. And they respond five minutes later. If you go back to the same type of communication that you were using that led up to that point, you've just blown your one shot reset. I was coaching an ex girlfriend probably about five or six years ago. She says, hey, this guy, you know, we're pitching him on this investment. He's not returning our text anymore. And I said, perfect. Shoot him a text saying, have you given up on making this investment? He's going to get back to you right away. She did. He got back to her right away. She went back into the same pitch that drove him away in the first place and she never heard from him again. If you send this, you have to rethink how you got into this in the first place because your communication system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you achieved. You cannot go back to communicating with them the way you were communicating before. Chances are you were pitching and you weren't listening. You've got to go into listening and using one of our skills, principally summary, to try to get back on track. There was another point I was going to make on that, but it'll come back to me. All right, we're going into 5 and 6. Actually, Howard has a question. Go Ahead. No, no, you gave me an alternative to that, which is, you must have a legitimate reason for. He's saying, I don't know. Can. Can. Can anybody. Howard says, you must have a legitimate reason for. We'll get it. We'll get into that in a minute. But here's the one that I wanted to get into. We're coaching. We're coaching a guy in a negotiation with Coca Cola, selling them a healthcare program. He says, they got to get. We gotta. We have an agreement, but they haven't signed a contract. Got to get the contract signed by the end of the calendar year, or this is all going to go down the tubes. And the guy I'm working with has heard this. So we say, perfect. You send it. You send. Send the email. Send a text. Have you given up on getting the contract signed by the end of the calendar year? So we get a response every time. Silence. This guy got back to us and he said, you said, this worked. We don't know what's going on. I said, no, we do know what's going on. The answer is yes. And it's really hard for people to say yes, especially this one. That's why you get silence. So he. Here's, you know, going from certainty uncertainty to certainty going with Dan Sullivan. Before, you didn't know if they've given up. Now you know, whether you like it or not, you have a solid answer. They have given up. You have to recalibrate all of your communication now to try to salvage this. And here's what's going on. I guarantee you that your counterpart has lost all influence on his side of the table. Coca Cola. And the guy will coach and says, yeah, but if he doesn't sign this, it's going to hurt him. And I say, you know what? That's not good enough. Here's what this guy's looking at. He's trying to make a decision whether to get his hand cut off, which is losing your deal, or getting shot in the head, which is what he's faced with. I promise you, this guy's fighting for his life. Here's how you get him out of it. You send him another email saying, like, look, all this business nonsense, I can't take it anymore. Let's go out, let's get a steak and a scotch. You know, we'll have a couple of drinks, we'll have a few laughs. I promise you, we won't talk business. He said, if you can get him out of the office into a social environment, and you don't ask Him a single business question. If you get him out of there and get him laughing, he'll tell you what's going on. You won't have to ask. Sends an email, they make an appointment to have dinner together. They have dinner. My buddy is not pressing business at all. A few drinks in, this guy begins to explain to him how he's fighting for his life in Coca Cola. He's worried about losing his job. They moved him. Somebody else has got the contract now. And he offers to tell him who it is and connect. So if you ask that no oriented question and you get a yes, you have to read what you're learning. You might not like the answer, but you're actually smarter, having gone from uncertainty to certainty. All right? Moving down the line, letting out know a little at a time to encourage collaboration. Read the book. You know that how am I Supposed to do that? Is a story of how the book opens. And a lot of people have picked that up as a way to bargain. Like somebody says, one guy got back to me at lawn service. Guy said he wanted X number of dollars to do all the landscaping in his house. And he just looked at him, said, how am I supposed to do that? And a landscaper immediately cut the price significantly. A lot of people learn, how am I supposed to do that? Is a great way to get people to bargain against themselves. What it really is is a polite way to start indicating to people that the answer is no. Friend of mine, Ned Coletti, was a GM of the Dodgers. Those of you that are baseball fans probably know who Ned is. Great guy. And Ned and I were talking about this one time a few years ago, and Ned said he liked to let out no a little at a time. What does that mean? Nobody should get blindsided with no, people should be given gently indicators that there are problems. If you got problems with what they're proposing, if you can't do it or you won't do it, or it's a bad idea to do it, no is an answer, but it's really about your fourth response and letting out no a little at a time. Now, how am I supposed to do that? A how? Question is principally designed to create implementation. If you don't want to do something because it's unimplementable, you say to somebody, how am I supposed to do that? Like, all right, I'll do it. Give me some implementation based on my constraints. Every now and then somebody says, well, what if they tell me how to do it? Well, you just push them to their limit without making them Angry, because when somebody turns around and gives you implementation as a negotiator, in many cases your job is to find out where the boundaries are. And maybe one time in 10, somebody will turn around and say, this is how you do it. Well, perfect. You've just learned a lot. You've been given implementation that they think is reasonable, plus you push them as far as you can on that issue, which in many cases is your job as a negotiator. The other thing it is again, my son Brandon, he said, how am I supposed to do that? Is forced empathy. You don't ask a how question so much as to get an answer. As you get, you ask a question in order to make them think what Danny Kahneman would call triggering slow thinking. If you look at somebody and say, how am I supposed to do that? And you say it deferentially. You don't say like, how am I supposed to do that? Where your tone of voice says, I think you're stupid. You say it deferentially. You make them stop and look at you and see you as a human being, at least potentially as a collaboration partner who's looking to collaborate but just needs some help. So it's forcing them to empathize with you, which is one of the things that's a good thing to do in your negotiations. So it's forced empathy. Number six, your offer is very generous. I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me. That hits a number of awesome psychological buttons. Positive attributes are reinforced by the recognition of them. If someone's being stingy with you to their. In their brain, they're being generous. That's what empathy is about. What is it to them, not to you? You need more generosity at somebody. When they've given you a stingy offer, you start off by saying you've been very generous. It makes them want to be even more generous. And the story they're telling themselves in their head is that they're being generous anyway. You want to encourage more of it. It has a tendency to turn that dial up by saying, you're being very generous. And to say, I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me, I'm afraid is important part of that statement. It just doesn't work for me. The beauty of that is that it takes away external criteria. One of the things that I think Bob Cialdini talks about a lot, or he may even speak of, because I think we're going to see him tomorrow. Some people say, well, in negotiations, go to external criteria, go to an External set of criteria that you can both agree on. Well, look, what if the market price is X and you don't have the money, the external criteria is a market price. Does that mean you got to pay the market price if you don't have the budget or the funds, it's a stupid idea. So saying it just doesn't work for me. Takes away external criteria as a way to take you hostage. We have never had anybody say, I reported back in any response when someone said, that just doesn't work for me. Somebody fired back, say, yes, it does. You made a lot of money last year. No, it doesn't work for me. I've never had that fired back at anybody. What typically happens, one of the students in Georgetown was doing this in a negotiation in his day job in a business. And his partner sat down, some people across the table, they came in with a low ball offer. And he looked him in the eye and said, you know, you guys, offer is very generous. It just doesn't work for us. He said the people on the other side of the table looked at each other and looked back at him and said, you're right, it is low, and gave him a higher offer. How often does that happen? How often does it have to happen? All right, number seven, you call a black swan group on the phone and you get my son on the phone and you say to him, how are you today? And he's going to say back to you, it sounds like it got a place you want to start. And you are immediately going to get into the conversation. Now, of the number of people that ask you, how are you? How many of them actually wanted to know what is how are you really? How are you? Is a temperature check where someone's trying to get a bead on what mood you're in to find out whether or not they can lay out what they called to talk to you about in the first place. You've just gotten around all of that, dancing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and gotten right to the heart of what they had on their mind anyway, which is what they went through in their head before they dialed the phone and called you. And you just put time back in your day and in their day now, the only time Brandon's ever gotten any pushback on this, he said one time, one guy did say, okay, I'd love to get into that, but really, how are you? The guy wanted to know he wasn't mad that he tried to get right into it right away. And my son was like, fine, you know, and then they had the social conversation this guy wanted to have, because then it was about serving the person on the other side of the phone. And that guy, who was a minority, wanted to have that how are you? Conversation, which, if it enhances the moments in the interaction, is cool. But at least two out of three times, they really don't care how you are. My back hurts, my legs hurt, I get varicose veins. They don't want to hear that. What they really want to know is, are you in a mindset where they can talk to you? So how are you? Is really a probe on the other side's part to find out if they can talk to you about what's on their agenda. And when you say, sounds like you've got a place you want to start, bang, you just hack that and you move forward. All right. Responses to questions number eight and nine. You answer a question at your peril. Everybody knows the question behind a question is much more important. So why is answering a question at your peril? Well, number one, most people usually don't. Don't have the ability to ask a good question. Like, when I ask a question, I'm pretty good at it because I listen and I actually want an answer. But most people, they ask you a question, and you answer the question, they start talking about something like, good God, I had no idea that's what you were talking about. If I'd have known that before I answered, I'd have given you a completely different answer. What makes you ask again? What makes you ask? What makes you ask? Upward inflection, genuine curiosity, inquisitive. You got to find out what's driving them. I'm in a presentation a couple years ago, while I'm still doing security stuff. Insurance company thinking about getting into K and R. Insurance. Kidnapping, ransom. There's insurance for it. There's insurance for everything. They say, have you kept your government security clearance? And I have intentionally not. And what I think, for brilliant reasons, and I think the answer to that of no is so startling that people are going to ask me, follow, why not? What's going on? And have you kept your government security clearance? No. Conversation then goes in another direction. We don't get back to this topic in the entire presentation. I never get the opportunity to come up with my brilliant explanation why I don't have the government security clearance. It never comes up, and we don't get the contract. To this day, I don't know why they asked. What makes you ask might have changed.

It.

Seems like you have a good reason for asking that same thing. You're not being disrespectful by digging into the motivation behind somebody's questions. Finally, number 10. Seems like you have a good reason for not doing that. When people are failing to perform and you want them to open up, this is what you've got to say. Seems like you have a good reason for not performing. Seems like you have a good reason for not meeting the deadline. They are never going to tell you what the real reason is or what's going on behind their side of the table. If you say, why didn't you do that? Do you know you failed in an agreement? All the accusatory stuff, they're not coming out of their shell to let you know what's going on. Contractor, subcontractor, negotiation, Washington, D.C. subcontractor, completely failing to perform. Contractor sits down with the subcontractor who's been making excuses, blaming it on other people for lack of performance, Sits down with him and says, seems like you got a good reason for not performing as per the contract. Guy on the other side of the table kind of shrugged his shoulders, said, no, I don't. And they worked it out and they fixed everything. You don't sit down to find out what's stopping them because you want to hang them. Maybe you do, but you really sit down because you want to get people back on track.

So you talk about three voice tones negotiators can use. What are they? And on a related topic, what is an example of mirroring and how is that important?

All right, the three voices are the three default types. You know, in our way of thinking, everybody in the entire planet, regardless of gender, regardless of ethnicity, either falls into fight flight. Make friends. Some people would call that fight flight mate. But it's the caveman that survived from the caveman days. We saw a threat on a jungle path, we ran from it, we fought it, we made friends with it. And my Harvard brothers and sisters subscribe to the same philosophy. We've tested somewhere north of 2,000 people in all countries, and we believe that to be true. So the three voices are what your natural voices are. And I'm not going to make any political statements in any way, shape or form, but the assertive, the fight type, direct and honest. That's my natural born type, Donald Trump. And if I were to talk to you, we do an exercise called 60 seconds or she dies. And I do all three voices in the exercise. And if you were volunteering, I look at you and I started with the assertive voice, and I Just go, I need a car in 60 seconds or she dies. If you think of yourself as direct and honest, you're an assertive. You got a tone of voice that's combative. It causes problems. There's no way around it. It's not a good voice. My natural born type, I once had a hostage negotiator say to me, dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick. And I didn't take that as a compliment, but that's my natural voice. So that's voice one. Voice two is the accommodator's voice. About a third of us are just relationship oriented. We naturally smile. We're naturally very happy. It's actually ridiculously strategically smart. You're 31% smarter. In a positive frame of mind. If you're smiling, you're hardwiring your mood, you're making yourself smarter. Everybody has something called mirror neurons. If I smile at you, your mirror neurons trigger. Even if you fire it, you started to smile back. It's an involuntary response or chemical changes in your brain. You're smarter too. That's a smart move. It's one of the reasons why naturally gregarious people make lots of deals, because people. And they're not always the best deal, but they're probably pretty good.

But okay, so you just said you're 31% smarter when you're in a positive state of mind. So if you can flip yourself into that and become 31% more effective and smarter, that seems to be a pretty good advantage.

Huge. Yeah. So. And there's actually a hardwired connection. If you force a smile on your face when you feel lousy, the chemical changes still take place. You can override it. And then the third type is what we call the Late night FM dj. That's a hostage negotiator's natural tone of voice. I mean, we. We learn that we drill it over and over and over and over again because it hits the mirror neurons, it triggers a chemical change, and it slows the other side's brain down. Now, while we use that about 10% of the time, if we have a term in a contract that's completely unacceptable, that term would often be work for hire. I will not sign a contract that has a work for hire clause. Well, I would, but it has to be for $5 billion. Not kidding around, because work for hire takes our intellectual property. I just don't say take it away. I'll sit down at the table and I'll look you in the eye and I'll say we don't do work for hire. Late Night fm DJ voice. You will feel that that's an immovable term. What I say, what you hear. If I say that's an immovable term, you're going to get mad and want to fight me on it. I don't need that. So I will just take the term and I will lay it out like that. Your brain will slow down, it'll stop when you recover, you'll come up with the answer for me. I also won't say I need you to take that clause out. I need you to volunteer that idea.

That's great. So I heard you say before that when someone says let's make a win win situation, they're usually going to try to. That's an indicator that they're going to probably either try to take advantage of you or whatever. And I found it very interesting because I have used that term. I have. I'm willing to be seen that I'm delusional here. I have said it in ways where I really do look out for other I want it to be a win win situation, not use it as terminology to hide dishonesty or hide attempting to be. And I know the whole thing of like a lot of people that brag about how their integrity is and how great they are and how they want you to win, a lot of times they're the most full of shit. I also know that some people that are the most smooth talking are sometimes wolves in sheep's clothing sort of thing. And when I heard that though, it really struck me as like going, huh. So you know, what do you do when you're really genuinely wanting to create a value for value deal? You're not trying to overly negotiate, if that's the right way to call it, or you're not trying to scam somebody, but you're giving too much of it away, or you're letting people steamroll over you. I guess. What are some without making this a confusing question, what are some indicators that should be red flags or warning signs that if someone says this, be careful. And what's the caveat to that? How could I better describe things? Because I do want things to be a win win situation for someone. I mean, like everyone here, they invest a lot of money to be in this group. I want them to get a hell of a lot out of it. I genuinely care about my clients and at the same time, I have some people that will try to take advantage of me and they ask for too much or they're just very Demanding. So what are words that are indicators? And so I'm asking you two things. What are warning signs that when you hear them antennas go up, this is something. And then on the other side, how do you protect yourself from getting taken advantage of?

Right, right. All right, so context. Let's throw context on this. And contextual intelligence is a part of emotional intelligence. And that's really what we're talking about here. We're talking about military grade emotional intelligence, weapons grade empathy. How do you like that, huh?

That's actually good.

All right, so context. You should have a win win mindset. If you're in a win lose mindset, that's actually stupid because if the other side loses, why are they ever going to want to make a deal with you again? That's kind of dumb. But a lot of people don't realize that in business negotiation, most people, business stories, like, I had them over barrel and they knew I beat them. Every time I hear somebody talk like that, I just shake my head and I think like, you know, you were losing so many deals.

No, absolutely. There's people that are in the transaction, business versus the relationship business.

Right, right. So now more context on win win. If somebody articulates it right up front, that's the tell. They're trying to cut your throat. And we talked about this a little bit also, you know, Joe doesn't show up and go like, hey, happy to see you. Let's do a win win deal. You know, you start talking about it further down into the conversation or you feel it or you try to live it. That's completely different than what we've seen over and over and over again. Nearly every single person that right off the bat, we've been in a negotiation with them. And if they articulated let's do a win win deal in the first three minutes, I know they want to get our stuff for nothing. And now I'm already headed for the door. So, you know, what are the tells? Actually, there's two tells. You got to watch out for people that are trying to cut your throat. What's worse is the people that are trying to pump you for information and never do the deal with you at all. One of the things that is not in the book, which is actually probably going to be much more the focus of the book that we're talking about now we call Proof of life of the Deal. And salespeople have a saying, it's not wrong to not get the agreement. It's wrong to take a long time to not get the agreement. That's what's killing you. That's what kills more people and more business. And we shift what we refer to as proof of life, like right up front and then we walk away, which is. It's also, you know, it's been expressed a couple times here. Play the long game. Play the long game. That's when you start being willing to walk away from stuff or also play the percentages, game or half. I'm in a conversation with a potentially extremely lucrative client two days ago. I get coached because I was on the phone by myself and normally we like to negotiate in teams. But I got off the phone and I called one of our coaches and I said, this is my read. They failed the proof of life test. They did some other stuff. I think I need to email this guy back and tell him we're not interested. He's waving a billion. A company that's going to grow to a billion dollars. They want to change their culture. They got all these problems. He outlined all these problems. I know we have answers. I know they can benefit from us. But I strongly feel like they want us to create a program for us and then they're either going to implement it without us or they're going to go to who they want to go with in the first place and they're going to tell them to do our stuff. And I know there's a lot of people out there that are telling their favorite vendors to do what we do. It's been directly reported back to me. So we get out of those really early on, you know, who are going to be the time wasters. Long way around, though, on, you know, what you get taken advantage of occasionally and look at how well you do. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, be willing to be taken advantage of occasionally.

Yeah. That's one thing that I, you know, I say to people all the time, you know, like, well, you know, I try to help someone. Yeah, it's like it's par for the course. I mean, what I try to do is align myself with people that are aligned with me. And when I start seeing disalignment, even though I extend myself, even though I try and they just keep at it, they keep complaining and that sort of stuff. It's like after a point, you just, like, we're just not aligned. I mean, you just see the world different than I do. But yeah, it's really good to have indicators early up front and be able to bail on it because there's always signs, you know, what are you looking for? If you're able to sniff it out and smoke it out early enough in advance. So let me ask you this, Chris. So what's the most valuable negotiation technique or strategy that you've ever learned and why is it so valuable? Because you know a lot of them.

You know one of the simplest ones. All right, let's go with simplest. Mirroring. Repeating the last three words of what someone just said. The last three words? Yeah, you know the last three words. Just repeat the. Nice job, Dean. I know what you're doing to me. I know what you're doing.

For it.

Right away without even. How dare you put me on me. Nice. No, if you can master that skill. Because a lot of times you just need some time to think. You know, everybody says, boy, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I know what I wish I would have said. And now that I'm thinking about it, now I see what I missed. That mirror technique, the last three words buys you that time in the moment without the other side realizing that's what you're doing. Because they're going to go on, they're going to talk some more, they're going to add a lot in. One of the crazy things about the mirror technique is it's a preferred move of the people that possess both a high IQ and a high eq. Now, I cannot explain why that is the case. I can speculate on it. I think if they are high in both areas, they love the simplicity of it and the lack of effort and the data loving people. So they love how little they have to do to get a bunch of information out of the other side. But that's probably the single most valuable thing that you could learn.

Simply very good. Very good. Well, so we've talked about this one before, but it's always so important because you've shifted. You've helped so many people just with this one. So why is the word no more important than yes? And if you could give an example.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so the key to negotiation, it's not about you. We hear this all the time. But here's you hear no and you go like, oh my God. Oh my God. I hate no, I hate. I hate being told no. I think we get that conditioned every child on earth, regardless of the language. What's the first word they learn? No, because they get told no and they get pointed at them and no, don't do that. No, no, no. So we get a beat into a hardwired into it. So when we hear it, something horrible is just happening. But the flip side, the person who's saying it feels protected and safe and they calm down and they relax. They feel like they just protected themselves. The other thing too is you can say no when you're tired and then immediately contribute to the conversation and think things through really quickly. So it's completely different if it's about them. People love to say no. They feel. And they're gonna, they're gonna say a bunch more afterwards. You know, I got, I got a couple no stories that I love, but I'll tell, tell one of my favorites. Robert Herjovic. We negotiate with Robert Herjavec's crew over how many tickets are gonna buy for one of our training events. I've already offered him one. His response for free. His response to the one for free was how many can we buy? Not how many more free ones can we get? I'm a huge Robert Herjavec fan. Based on my interaction with him, I find him to be a generous, decent human being. So we're going back and forth and the event is getting ready to sell out. And my son Brandon, who runs my company, he calls me on the phone late in the day. I'm in la. He says, you get Herjavec to commit how many tickets are gonna buy now or they're gonna be sold out by the time the sun rises in New York tomorrow. Because my son's on east coast time. We're getting ready to sell the event out. And Brandon says, and if he doesn't buy any, I'm giving away, I'm selling a ticket that we're supposed to be giving him for free. So I'm like, all right, I got to cut this deal now. That's five o' clock in la. When's the last time you tried to get a hard decision out of somebody? At 5 o'. Clock. At 5:03 and also an email. At 503, I sent a two line email to Robert Herjavec. Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to buying three tickets now? Second line. Are you against paying for them before the business day starts in New York tomorrow? Again, we're three hours behind New York. The time stamp on his email response is 504. One minute later. No, we'll commit to the three tickets right now. No, it's not a problem. We'll pay from right away. Send me a link. We'll pay for them right now. Within the hour I send them the link. We get the money at 523. Get people to say no. You'd be shocked at the responses you get fantastic.

So there's some questions that people have, but what I'm going to ask everyone. Save your questions. When we open it up for Q and A, I might ask you to repost them because it's sometimes hard for me to track everything and be present here, too. So, Chris, how might an entrepreneur use these strategies and techniques that you teach to better understand and serve their clients?

Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, simply understanding them better will help you serve them, you know? All right, so let's say you're the favorite, and let's say that they're elf. They're not half. They want you to dial into them. You know, you want to be open to a better deal, which is you tailoring your services to them so that it better serves them and it's more lucrative for you. Because first of all, I'm going to presume that everybody on this call believes the same thing that I do, that you over deliver. So first of all, if you're over delivering, you were bargaining whatever you were charging anyway, which means if you tailor your service, your good or service so that it's a better delivery for them, you're worth even more. Yes. You want to get what you do. No, don't. Don't be greedy. Don't grab with both hands. But when you provide a service that's worth it, you are entitled to be paid. So the more that you listen to them and understand them, and I'm here to tell you there are ways that you can tailor whatever you're providing that would be easier for you to provide it, which means it would be more profitable for you and it would be better for them. So be willing to engage in conversations and be open to that. And then the other crazy thing is there might be something really counterintuitive that'll make it profitable for you in unexpected ways. And one of my favorites is you know our mutual friend Dan Sullivan. He's talking about his book deal. He's talking about listening to me. Never split the difference. And we pay.

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button.

We pay people what they ask. No, I don't pound people on price. So Dan turns around and gives every dime of the book proceeds to Dan and Tucker.

Ben.

Ben and Tucker. Sorry. And then Ben and Tucker. Tucker says, dan got the last drop of my blood. When you're not greedy on the price term, what the other side gives you back might be worth 10 times what the dollars were worth. And those guys, I think those guys, I think Ben and Tucker die for Dan. Yeah, yeah.

And That's. See, the beauty of Dan, too, is. And I think it's one of the reasons, I mean, heck, me and Dan have done podcasts on this is we like reciprocal people. You know, we like people that are generous. We like people that are useful. And it's just so much easier to. That's what an ELF person is. People keep asking, what does ELF mean? Elf is easy, lucrative, and fun, and half is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. It's actually a term I got over 20 years ago from my friend Mark Schneider, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year. But I heard him say elf years ago. And I said, I'm going to develop that into something because I started thinking of all the different business methodologies you can use in terms of marketing and the stuff that me and Dean Jackson teach on. I love marketing. It's ELF marketing. It's automated, it's robotic. But then I started thinking, how do you. You can filter everything through an ELF filter. What are people? What are projects? What are things that you're doing? Are they easy, lucrative, and fun? Or are they hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating? Sometimes people can be hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating. Not all money is created equal. So ELF is a really great filter. And I'm super happy, Chris, that you're referring to that, because I think it just offers some framing. So, yeah, I mean, this is. Once you. Once you become skilled at utilizing what Kris is teaching and what he's talking about here, you will find a lot of things in your life that were difficult become more elf. And that's the whole goal, is to bring ELF to people in all areas of their entrepreneurial endeavors.

I'm going to jump in real quick because there's one more tangent I want to go on to on half. And now before you fire your half clients. And we just shifted into this recently, we got a couple of deals that were proposed to us, and they were half deals before we walked away. And I had this conversation with my son Brandon and everybody else in our company. When it came up, I said, what's the counteroffer that would make this an ELF deal before we walk? Maybe they don't know that this is half. Maybe they don't understand it. And there's a pretty good chance of what, you know, the chances are that they're going to offer you a half deal because they don't know any better. They can't help themselves. There's a whole bunch of reasons. I said, let's counter with what would make this an ELF relationship. At that point, there's no doubt in anybody's mind what we're looking for. And they had the option to take it or leave it. And we have the option to take it or leave it. And we turned a couple of deals around with that by simply countering. Instead of saying goodbye so long, we said, all right, here's what would work for us. Here's what would make us want to do business with you forever and make us want, 10 years from now, look back on the last 10 years and say that was cool and we threw it out there. And the batting average is actually pretty high on that. You know, we don't counter offer their offer term by term. We construct what would be great for us and how we would love to do business with them before we walk. And you'd be surprised at how many people will embrace that because they just didn't know any better.

Do you ever have situations, Chris, where.

You look outside of the. The scope of what will be the.

Immediate terms that are on the negotiation.

To see, to draw in other things.

That might tip things some way or be an influence?

I was just thinking about how, you know, that's a great question. I'm glad you brought that up. We're trying for that all the time. And, you know, how do you know what you don't know? What we'll do is we'll start to see. Say, let's brainstorm this a little bit. Like, here's some ideas that people have gotten in the past. Start throwing out wacky stuff that people brought up, and that will kick their brain into gear. So, yeah, try to kick them into a collaborative brainstorming process to look for how to get outside the scope. But I mean, I love that question because that's absolutely what everybody should be doing.

Well, there we go.

That's the trauma. If you want to talk about trauma.

Yeah.

People talk about poverty. They haven't seen poverty.

So when you're in those states, and I mean, when's the last time you've been in what you would consider when it's happening? This is a f ed up situation. I don't know how to get out of. I don't know how to deal with it. How do you move past it? How do you. I mean, because you've been in, you know, you've been massively criticized. I mean, there's been all kinds of things you've dealt with, but how do you deal with really difficult decisions?

So there are a couple of ways. One thing is you can never let someone else define who you are. You can never Let someone tell you what makes you who you are. So you can't really please everyone. And when people criticize you, the best you can do is hold your head high knowing that you have done nothing wrong. But you can't let them control who you are. You can't control the world, but you can certainly control how you react to it. Other thing that I learned as an entrepreneur is that your life as an entrepreneur is like your heartbeat. You know, ups and downs of the life is what tells you that you're still alive. When you are smooth, that means you're dead. And you never to want, want of a life, of an entrepreneur to be smooth. When you are absolutely at the bottom, you know, all you have to do is thrive. Just enough. As Tony said, get set for the winter, know the summer is coming, the next beat is going to be up, right? And when you are on the top of the world, don't get too cocky. Don't get too arrogant because you know the winter is coming, the next heartbeat is going to be right down. So never get too depressed when things are bad and never get too cocky when things are, you are at the top because either way, you know that seasons change.

Yeah, yeah, awesome. So.

You take control of situations. I mean, I've seen you do that. Now, for instance, we get up here, you take my questions, put them away. Now that's a funny thing. And it doesn't matter because I've interviewed some, so many damn people. I don't. I just like thinking things through. But the fact is that's an example of how you actually go about doing your life. You, you pretty much do what you want to do within reason, I think. I mean, I'd love to talk with you about, like as we're discussing moonshots. A lot of this is, oh, it's one thing to have an idea. It's another to behave in a way that gets people to do what you want them to do. And you're really good at enrolling people, people into your visions, into your missions. I mean, you started some, you know, insanely successful companies. So let's talk about persuasion. How do you do it? How did you learn how to do this?

So it's very interesting. It's a whole lot easier to build something that is audacious, that is actually going to change the trajectory of how humanity is going to live. It's so much easier to build a billion dollar business than to build a million dollar business, right? So you tell someone, hey, I'm going to go start a company that's going to help you find a roommate iPhone app. People say, great idea, good luck, have fun with it. You tell someone, I'm going to start a company that's going to make illness a matter of choice. We going to eliminate all chronic illness from the face of this earth by understanding, empowering each individual to to become the CEO of their own health. Because when you are sick and you don't know what is going on, you are helpless. And when you are helpless, amazing things happen. You're going to be victimized. You're going to be victimized by someone. And today we call those healthcare system. Our pharmaceutical companies have become a parasite on humanity. They are the parasite that must die, right? These are the pharmaceutical companies that are taking advantage of people who are sick. When a CEO of a pharmaceutical company tells you the best drug that they develop are the drug that you have to take for rest of their lives, best drugs are the one that people have to take for rest of their life. They should be ashamed of saying that not the best drugs that cure anything. They want people to be sick. And that's exactly what we don't want. So amazing thing is I have never started. I've started seven companies and not one of them have ever been in the same industry. And God, you know, knock on this leather. Every one of their company has been wildly successful. There has not been one company that has been less than $100 million. So when I started, you know, everything from space, I'm not the rocket science. I started the health company. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist. Interesting things happen. When I set out the moonshot, we are going to make illness optional. The first call I got was the head of the IBM Watson research working on AI. He said, For 20 years I've been developing artificial intelligence. This is the problem I would love to solve. Because if we can solve that, that will be my legacy. I got a call from Dr. Massier. She is a Ph.D. in microbiology, Maryland. And she was working for Human Longevity Inc. For Craig Venter. As you know, Craig is one of the most genius person cover of Time magazine who invented life, man who played God. And he's working on human longevity. And she calls me and says I want to work with you to solve this problem. What's the point living longer if people are going to be anyway? So let me help you solve this problem. It turns out at Los Alamos National Lab they have been working for 10 years for biodefense work at National Security trying to figure out if a bad actor were to get hold of something biological, how would they know what's making people sick? So I got a call from Dr. Youssevich and says, you know, we have been working on a technology for 10 years. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars developing it. And I want to come and help you solve this problem. Now I have this amazing team and a technology that government has spent billions of dollars developing that can look inside your body and tells you what's going on and make specifically what you can do about it. Not here's what's happening, here's the food you need. Don't eat spinach, don't eat kale, don't eat avocado and eat more carbs, right? Amazing life. Now I put together an amazing team and great things happen. Every venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley says, what are you doing? Why are all these people quitting and joining you? I'm going to make illness optional. We want to invest in your company. And you say, I don't need the money. And that's like raising a red flag in front of a bull. You never want to tell VC you don't want the money because now they think you must have something so good that you refuse to take their money. Now they are desperate to give you money at any cost, right? And that's an amazing thing. When you don't want something, everybody wants to give it to you. When you ask them to go to the bank and say, I need a loan. No, you're not qualified, sir, I don't need the loan. How can I give you the cheap loan?

So I think that's describing how you do sales, right?

So sales. Actually, I tell you what, one of the things I notice when I come here is most people who are exporting, who are expert in sales, don't know a bit about sales. And I tell you why. You don't ever have to sell a thing. You want to inspire people to buy. So if you have to sell something, you're doing something wrong. What if you can inspire people to be part of what you're doing and they buy, you don't sell, right? So the difference is, is you want to be as informative, as educational and really make it bigger than themselves. So when I tell people that I want you to sign up for Wyoming, I don't say, please go buy because it's going to help me make money. What I say is, please sign up. Not only you are going to feel better, but you're going to help the humanity get better. All we need is couple of million people. Once the artists artificial intelligence has enough diversity of data for millions of people, we will be able to solve every chronic disease. So please help me achieve my dream. Please help us achieve our moonshot. Please help us come together as humanity and get rid of these parasites and implode the healthcare system. And that's how you sell.

What I'd love to have you do is talk about the scientific research around pre suasion so that people realize this is not just a really bright professor's opinion about how to set up the sale, setting up the request. This is like you have done some serious research on it. So I think people would really appreciate this at a much deeper level if they knew how hard you have worked on this. So if you could talk about that.

Well, there are some literatures in academic behavioral science about priming, about framing, about positioning, about anchoring. That all came together for me in terms of what they were implying about how you amplify the effect of your message. It's by what you do before you send that message. And it involves creating engagement, creating a focus in your audience on some aspect that they're yet to experience. They haven't encountered it yet. You just make them open and receptive to to it before they ever encounter it. That's the idea. Let me give you an example. Suppose you want to sell somebody something that's new or you want to bring them in and you know that people hang back when they've got something that's new, they haven't yet tried it, they're unfamiliar, they don't like getting out of their comfort zone. But you've got this thing and it's really great. How do you. Here's a study. Researchers went up to people on the street, said we have a new soft drink, it's untried, nobody's ever encountered it before. Would you be willing to give us your email address right now and we'll send you the information that will allow you to get this product? Now that's a risky thing to do. Somebody comes up to you unbidden, unsolicited, unknown, ask for your email address. That's a risky thing. Only 30% of the people were willing to do that under those circumstances even that sounds to me like a lot, right? But there are risk takers among us. For another sample of people, the researcher walked up and said, excuse me, do you consider yourself an adventurous person? People thought for a minute and they went on a particular memory track for times that they were adventurous because adventure was the Question that they were now engaged in. And we've all experienced, almost Everybody said yes. 98% of the people said yes just.

By planting that seed of getting them to focus on where their brain goes.

And now instead of 30% giving them their email address when they were later told about this new product, 75.6% provide that risky, chancy thing.

That's fascinating. It's almost like the study you did with Hare Krishna's in influence where someone would go up and put the flower on their collar in airports and it was more difficult for someone to step away than reach in their pocket and pull out a dollar and give them donation, walk away and then throw the.

What do you do first?

Yeah, so I mean, like the way that I look at that piece of information, which is again, so incredibly valuable by how you direct the brain to think about something before you then ask them for what you really want. So if a single person, if a guy was afraid of going up to a woman and asking for her email or asking for a phone number, if they said, are you adventurous? And just plant that and say, oh, by the way, would you like to go on a date? You've just probably in this case tripled your chances of getting a yes.

Here's a piece of research that shows how you can increase that even more. A study done in France, researchers had an attractive young man walk up to young women who were by themselves strolling through a shopping mall. And he stopped them and said, I wonder if you could give me your phone number so I can call you for a date later. Another risky thing to do. And indeed, only 13.5% of the time did he get a phone number. If he did that. This is an attractive guy, though. They got an actor, a matinee idol kind of looking guy.

That's part of persuasion also.

Right.

But even that, only 13.5, unless he asked in front of a particular kind of shop. And it doubled, almost doubled, to 24,4% success. A flower shop. In the environment of flowers, women are put in mind of romance. And now romance is more important than risk.

Wow.

Where do you put people first?

So the environment has everything to do with.

It can be a word that you use like adventurous, it can be a setting that you arrange, or it can be an image that you provide on your website.

Right.

Wow.

Let me give you an example of the image.

You can talk about these examples for the next week and I would love them all because they're fantastic.

A study done with an online furniture store. They sell sofas. They sent Half of the visitors to their site to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper fluffy clouds. The other half they sent to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper coins, pennies. Now they then track what happens to those visitors who were randomly sent to one or the other place with different images. The first thing they can counter is an image of clouds or an image of coins. Those who experienced the clouds rated comfort as the most important feature for them to decide on a sofa. They then searched the sofa site for information about comfort and they preferred to buy more comfortable sofas. Those who got pennies rated cost as the most important feature for determining their choice. They searched for price related information and they preferred to buy inexpensive furniture. And not one of them recognized, they were asked afterwards. So do you think the clouds made a difference? Not one of them believed that the clouds or the coins made any difference. This stuff flies under the radar totally.

You have a real power to where these sort of things could be used in very manipulative ways. And for the time that I've known you, I mean, I would like to think in the same way, you know, our relationship. I've never overly asked for anything. You've not either. You've always approached us. You're very cognizant of the ethical use of persuasion. And you know, this is filled with literally a ninja assassin methodologies if used in the wrong way and incredible human betterment methodologies. And the other side, what is your advice for the people out there about the proper care and feeding of others utilizing persuasion once you learn what is in persuasion? Because this is, I mean you literally teach people how to get what they want.

Yes, it's dynamite. And dynamite can be used to build a bridge or blow up a bridge right between people. So Joe, we've been friends for a long time and the reason we've been friends for a long time is what you said, that we share values. Right. And the reason I've liked interacting with you over that time is that your ethical approach, you take an ethical approach to this. So here's why I am recommending that people who understand the the pre suasive strategies that are available to them only use them in ethical ways. We've just completed a research program where we find that those organizations that use influence attempts in dishonest, deceptive, unethical ways produce too big damages to their viability. The first is there are some people inside the organization who are just not comfortable with the unethicality and they are stressed by it and they try to leave they don't do very well on the job. Because of that stress, they try to leave. When they do leave, you get all these turnover costs that are associated with that big cost. But here's the one that was most interesting to me. When those people who are stressed by the deception leave, who remains is those people who are comfortable with dishonesty and cheating. And they're going to cheat you.

Wow.

They're the ones who are going to steal equipment. They're the ones who are going to run these under the table deals with vendors and partners and suppliers. They're the ones who are going to pad their expense accounts. Count on it. They've been selected for. They've been selected for. You've pulled the viper under your coat.

Yeah, exactly. You know, that says a lot about people that have toxic cultures and are toxic in general and cannot. And then they have a worldview that everyone's out to screw them because that's just their frame of how they view the world. I mean, I've always like the saying I said earlier, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. And that I heard Dan Sullivan say this years ago and I've said it to so many people because I'm constantly trying to reinforce this to people, is that money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And if you're going to go out and ask people to give you money, you better damn well give them value because it takes a lifetime to build a reputation. Like you said, with social proof. The one thing I do like about it is it makes it much harder for scumbags to exist for as long as they were able to because now it's out in the open.

It's out there.

Yeah.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, you're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.