How to Grow the Pie in Negotiations with Patrick Tinney

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide, and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Patrick, thanks for joining us today.

Hey, Kwame. Boom. Let's do something big.

I'm excited to have you, man. We have been engaging on LinkedIn for years now, so it's great that we're able to finally meet. And I feel like this is long overdue. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do, really.

I started working as a little boy, so my view of the world is a little bit different than others. I joined the publishing business very, very young. I went and did a co op when I was in high school, and they said, do you want to go off and check out the steel factory, Pat? And I went, no, I don't think so. There's a newspaper in town, a daily, the Hamilton Spectator. I'd like to go there. They said, sure. So they sent me. I walked in, there's all these people smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, making little drawings and stuff like that. They're on the phone, they're great time. And I thought, oh, my God, that's me. I belong here. This is fun. So I went back to high school and I said, I don't do sciences, I don't do math, I don't do geography, I don't do history. They said, what do you do? I said, anything, this business, otherwise I'm not in. You got to find something else for me to do. So long story short is, is that I did switch over, but I was many times the only guy in the class. It was all female because in those days what they did was they trained women to work in office environments after the second World War, women who were making munitions and trucks and tanks and all the rest of it, they had to give those jobs up for the men when they came back from the war. So what they had to do is they had to upskill into office jobs. You got to make a better life. We're either going to strengthen our back and learn how to be self sufficient or we're just going to end up working in a factory. And that doesn't work for me.

For the listeners who are listening just auditorially, can you give them a background on what years we're talking about at this time?

1971-75, and I would have been 14 to 18 years old. I lied at age 15 to get into the piano moving business because the money was good and it was just like a great journey. So what I do is I created my own education so that I could build out. And Now I coach PhDs on how to write books, launch products. I help them with things like product distribution because I'm a launch guy. I launched a lot of products for the three or four biggest companies that I worked for near the end. So I spent just under 30 years in corporate sales. And my lifetime deal book, as we spoke about beforehand, is between 350 and 400 million dollars. But I, you know, it could be more, but it certainly isn't less. I launched a lot of products because I knew how to do it. And you know, my colleagues were spending all of their time trying to figure out how to market stuff. I wanted to figure out how to resize things. And the reason that I left the business was I had been in line for directorships forever and I didn't really care about management. I really cared more about the impact that I could have on the publishing business, which is how I came to write my books from a news perspective, not from a I need a book perspective. I didn't intend to write any books. I just started writing stuff for my company, Centroid Trading and Marketing. What happened was that I was getting all these weird calls from people saying, I just read what you said. This morning, talking to a couple of training companies. They want me to fill in all these forms. And you just seem to have this hedge on what we should be doing. And quite frankly, in some cases, we're just not brave enough to do what you're recommending. So would you come on in? And that's how I built my business out.

It's incredible, and I love how organic it was. This wasn't contrived in any way. Looking back, the steps make sense. Obviously, at that moment, you're probably saying to yourself, where is this going? Now? It makes complete sense how you got to this point. And, Patrick, one of the things that really drew us together online was our love of negotiation strategy. Disdain sounds strong. Our frustration with the focus on tactical thinking in negotiation versus strategic thinking. And so I want to get your thoughts on. First of all, when you think about negotiation strategy, let's just start on a very basic level. What does that mean to you?

Well, to me, it means really understanding what it is that the other side needs. I have to understand what's meaningful to my company. And what you end up with is an expectation gap. And so the question becomes, is there a framework that you can design? So I often say that, you know, there'll be honor among ladies and gentlemen or there'll be honor among pirates. You just got to let me know which one. All acclimate from there. I think you do. You know, you ask the really hard ask to qualify super hard, and just ask your negotiation partner. And I've done, like, a big deal for me was 12, $13 million a year. And I would just sort of say. I'd say, you know, like, what do you guys really need? What are they pounding the table for? And I usually get a reasonably honest answer. And I'd say, all right, let me go back, talk to our side. And there's always the question of, you know, do we get more rate? Do we get more business? So for me, it was, if I couldn't get as much rate as I want, I wanted to convert business that I didn't have. So for me, I look at the whole win, win, win, lose, lose, win, and whatever the fourth one is, and I kind of go, it doesn't apply. What really applies is, can we build a bridge of trust that allows us to go back to our individual companies and say, you know what? Pat's trying hard, Kwame's trying hard. Let's give these guys a little bit of leeway to work some stuff out. And, you know, can we get Pat to De Risk A deal enough so that we don't have to be worried if we move some more business across the table to him. So you might say, what happens after that? And so what happens after that is, in my view. So I talk a lot about cost modeling, cost modeling up, cost modeling down. It's kind of an odd topic, but none of us see numbers the same way. You know, we could talk about units, we could talk about gross net price, we could talk about percentage up and down, we could even talk about moving decimal points. And I can tell you, I can share with you for sure that I've sat in front of some of the top tax experts in Canada and just sort of said, we don't see numbers the same way, do we? They went, I don't know about that. I said, well, let's get up on a whiteboard and I'll show you why. So I have this theory of two and a half percent saying to people, if you could walk into a place of business where you could talk to the owner or the head of the department and just walk in and say, I'm ready to buy a product. I have the money, I have the credit card. I mean, I'm going to do a deal today with somebody I really like you. I don't want to negotiate, but you know what? I really deserve two and a half percent off. How do you feel about that? You know how many people say, you know how many people say no? Almost nobody. Unless you're selling bananas. Unless you're selling, you know, apples. Two and a half percent of an apple. What are we going to do here? I don't know. Let's just get that extra apple. I actually went into a car dealership in a little bit of a rushed state one time, and I just said, here's all the things that are going wrong with my life. And I just sort of said, can you point out a car that's going to work for three years? Because I'll be good by then. And he says, come on over here. It's got 200,000km on it, but believe me, this, this thing's going to go for three years. I said, I'm going to buy a car today. I'd love to buy this car from you. You know what kind of shape I'm in. I'm going to go for a little drive, and when I come back, I'm wondering if you can help me with an elegant number. So when I came back, I rolled in and I just stood there. Sales guy comes over and says, sales manager wants to see it. He said, you know, you're not really negotiating? I said, no. I said, I just need some help today. He said, okay, six and a half percent off. I didn't negotiate. I did the backwards. You see, I actually think that if you reach out to people and just say, you know, I'm not really a confrontational guy. I think a lot of people who think negotiation is all about this pounding the table stuff, it's the opposite. As the money gets really big, the conversation becomes softer and softer and softer. Unless people are under a lot of dress, in which case they become the 10,000 pound moose charging. And I've seen both. And the thing is, you know, can you acclimate and just around strategy. So this whole thing about being tactical, From World War II, the end of World War II, which is around 1948 until the year 2000, sellers were able to use tactics. And you would say, why? Because we couldn't build product fast enough. You always suffered the potential of scarcity. Just think of the cabbage patch doll. Parents punching each other out to get a doll for their little kid, right?

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And then around the year 2000, it flipped over and everything became globalization. 24. 7. Couldn't go to sleep because if you went to sleep, somebody would be circling your bowl. I want what's in Pat's bowl. Where are you from? Chile. But that's what the Internet did. And so that's why we have the kind of marketplace we have right now. And so up until about the year 2000, sellers could be tactical. Now they can't. We have to be strategic. Let's say that my CEO calls me and she says, Pat, we got a $2 million problem on the phone. Does she want the 5,000 word answer or does she want the 500 with great efficacy and three ranked doable, workable solutions? I'm thinking the 500, right? So what if I had gone the tactical way and hung my head between my knees and said to my CEO, what am I supposed to do? I think by the time I landed, the eagles would have a nest built on my butt. She drop kick me right out the window. I don't care how many stories up I'd be in. I'm hoping the fall would kill me. You see, like, to me, that's how much the world has changed. And we talked briefly about just styles of negotiators. Beautiful book on styles written by Marcus Buckingham. He expands the whole style thing. I think it gets a little bit confusing. Then you go to the other end of the spectrum where you've got, you know, in the negotiation world says there's only three negotiation styles that exist. Well, if that's the truth, then there are really only three people styles that exist. And we know just through simple work with models like disc, there's creativity models out there. We know that, you know, there's at least four. Generally with disc, what happens is you've got a primary and a secondary style. So you've got things like people who are sort of a type thinkers. You've got conciliatory types, you've got analytic types, and then you've got communicators. And everybody's tried to use the same model over and over again. They've tried to use birds, so and so's a budgie, so and so's a canary, so and so's a crow, so and so is an eagle. But the truth is there's. There's those four basic ones. And then when you stop and think about it in a corporate setting or even an academic setting, you have people who are highly political. So whatever way the wind is blowing is the way they're going to go. That's just the way they are. And then you've got people who are always looking to curry influence. So they always sort of think to themselves, all right, so what is in it for me? And then in my view, you've got people who are highly emotional, and they just swing. When I get thinking about aggressive negotiators, these people to me are people that are volatile. It doesn't matter what environment they're in. They're just like that. And so you have to kind of look at these people and you have to say, all right, so can I figure out this Rubik's Cube today? You know, can I figure out what their puzzle is? And you see, the thing is, if I sit with somebody for more than one negotiation, I got them, I can just neutralize them going Forward, I anticipate their needs, I insert deeds. In a negotiation, I always want to be the first person to give something. See, I really believe in the law of reciprocity. I just think it looms large. Now, are there high self interest people? Of course there are. But in the corporate world it generally doesn't work that way. Now I used to negotiate with Walmart for about a decade and I can tell you is one of the wild. It's like the wild West. When you go in there, you know, you go into a little meeting room, there's four stacking chairs, there's no painting on the wall, there's a little window about that wide. And every 27 minutes somebody's pounding on the door saying you gotta get out of there. Where the next in. And so what you have to do when you go into Walmart is it's like boom, your proposal hits the table. Sometimes you put an executive summary on the front just to get to price and then you just kind of go through, here's the value equation, here's how I've de risked it. Here's the reason why if you don't buy it, you're gonna wake up in the morning and you could just go crazy. That you didn't do and somebody else did. Does it work all the time? No, but that's the impact of their, that's their corporate culture. I believe. I know that when I walk into any building, I'm walking into their house and their rules and their culture. And so it's up to me to try and figure out how I sound like them as quickly as possible. So I'm laying down those trust planks across the bridge so that I can start to sound like an insider. And as an insider, I can offer up creative options which are meaningful to them. You see, the worst thing you can do in a negotiation is go in with stuff. Anybody can buy stuff. What people will pay money for is creativity. You show anybody in the business world, in the legal world, in the medical world how they can have a market advantage for two months and they'll crawl over broken glass to get at you. And price is not a problem. Competitive advantage, think about it. It's huge.

So I'm picking up some themes here. So first we're talking about the need to establish and build trust. And we're also talking about how we can minimize risk so it feels safer to them to do business with you so they're not worrying throughout the interaction or worrying about giving you future opportunities and also creating that recognition that working with you isn't just buying a commodity, it's giving them a competitive advantage. And then, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like for you, strategy is figuring out what you need to do to accomplish those goals. Trust, minimizing risk, and those type of things.

So my philosophy on negotiation is remove negative risk, add positive risk, maintain the relationship, and do smart deals. Don't do deals that don't have enough profit in. Because a profitless deals always leak. That's known as a strategic deal. That was the fourth one of the of the four quads. We only used strategic deals on very rare occasions when we tried to block somebody. So it's the only reason we do it. Otherwise, why would you do it? Why would you do a profitless deal? You wouldn't do it.

Exactly.

You would do it. You would do it based on futures. Now, as far as strategy goes, I think in swat, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And then I shorten that to key leverage points and business implications. Key leverage points. If you take a crowbar and you put it up against a chest that weighs 800 pounds and you just tip it down like that, the whole chest goes up. Now, theoretically, that shouldn't happen, but it's leverage. And we, we often use the word leverage. I can leverage the fall. No, relax. Leverage is a scalable thing. Do you have a little bit of leverage or do you have a lot? See, the only time you really get stuck in negotiations is when you have no leverage. And that's when you'll even do deals with people you don't like and think scarcity. When we run out of food or water, we run into people that we generally just don't like. We fork over the money because we need food and water. But if we don't need food and water, we're not buying from them. We may not even talk to them as far as strategy goes. So if you think in swot, then what I've done is I've done something a little bit different. So I've done a SWOT analysis on the seller, on the buyer, and as our highest predatory competitor. And when you spin those three things together in a deal where you know, you may not be the only person trying to win. So I always think about conversions. How can I grow the pie with my customer? So, you know, if I got a customer who's $10 million customer, I'm trying to figure out how to get them to a 103 or 10 4, 10 5. And that means I've got to take some business from a Competitor in that light is I have to have. It's kind of a weird thing. So I'm aspirational. So I always think about how can I fill the gap from where my customer is to where they want to go? And the question that I often use when I walk in to see a customer is what revenue can you see but not touch with the current negotiation skills that your people possess? Because you can tell how much yield people are getting in your negotiation channel and how many times you get sick to your stomach and have to crawl out of your channel because you have to keep feeding the troops. It's hard. But you know what happens is that people at the beginning of quarters, they will just do the craziest deals ever. And as they get closer to their quota and they hit quota, all of a sudden they become Mrs. And Mr. Relaxation customer comes in, says, I need help. The world's not fair. I know the world's not fair, but that's life at the beginning of the quarter. Cheese. Things run fair out there. And then you get senior executives. I love senior executives because they're some of the worst negotiators in the world. They're great managers. In many cases, they're great leaders. But the reason that they don't do a lot of the negotiations in companies is they need a firewall in front of them and really bright negotiation teams. So they're trying to keep the CEO away from a customer because you know, when a CEO says something, it's, you know, it's not wet cement that firmed up. You can't undo. A CEO said it will do it. Because it's all about the brand. We're all walking, talking brand. When I came on camera, you made 50, 60, 70 decisions about me within two seconds, instantly. So what happens when the CEO says, yeah, I think we can do something there. It's a little bit outside of our realm, but I'll give it to Pat. Oh, so those are some of the things that happen. So as far as strategy goes, I think I've talked to you about, you know, how I think in SWOT and leverage and business implications, which is the thing that keep you up at night. But there's also age old strategies that have been around forever. The one that most people can remember and it's in the real estate business, right? If you've ever bought or sold a piece of property, what people do is they shame you into splitting the difference. If somebody ever says to you, split the difference, look at them and say, all right, you've already determined what you can give away and you want things I don't have. Think about it, Think about it. So let's say that you qualified for a $300,000 mortgage. You're looking at a place that's just outside. It's like, you know, it's like, I don't know, it could be like 340 or 350 because your real estate agent took you there. It's an aspirational thing, right? The seller comes back and says, you know, I know you've only got $300,000, but you know what, if you can meet me around 319.5, then we got a deal. Well, you haven't been qualified for 319.5. You got to go back to the bank now. But that seller always knew that they were slightly over pumped on the price, which is why splitting the difference for them made perfect sense. It's the laziest negotiation strategy in the world. It's one of the most manipulative. Let me go the other way. Oftentimes in the corporate world, I ran into a friend of mine, Steve Kosik, and he was like a da Vinci. He was a Michelangelo. To watch him negotiate, he was the most beautifully theatrical, in control negotiator I'd ever seen. And his annual budget was $100 million in media spent for the Hudson's Bay Company department stores. So I remember the first time I saw what he did and I went, oh, man. So what happened in the newspaper business was the on page advertising started to become less compelling because we just raised rates so much. And so what they wanted to do is put things in the center of the newspaper that were full color where they can control the, the environment, how the ink laid on top the paper. So it's a perfect replication. As opposed to on a newspaper page that's being printed at 20,000 pieces an hour. You don't always have the control, but in a, in a, in a situation where you can control humidity or dryness, you can slow the press down, you can speed it up, you can do all kinds of things, right? But in the newspaper business, you can't do it. You got to, you got to pump it out, worn piece every 24 hours. Out the door she goes. And with morning delivery, it's even worse. So we go with our rate increases on the on page advertising. And he would just battle like hell on those rates. And I remember the first time I saw it, I kind of went, all right, well, kind of, you know, if I was him, I'd be A little bit off, but this is a little bit over the top. And he would just elongate that part of the negotiation. And finally we come to an end, and he said, you guys just made me sick. I can't believe what you've got me agreed to pay for on page advertising, which, I mean, I'd rather be in flyers. And by the way, don't even dream about raising rates on flyers. You have scalded me in the first round of this negotiation. Negotiation over. Go right up the contract. Don't put a penny on those flyers. Nothing. That's how badly you bruised me on the first round. He was never interested in the first round. It's the secondary target that he was interested in.

So that's an example of being a little bit theatrical to make your point and in order to. To get what you wanted.

But it's predetermined. So once I saw it, once I started to notice it again and again. He also had another one, which I referred to as the bonus round. And as a buyer, he could do it. So we always had these guys coming in from out of town. They would come in from Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, all over the place. And the head office for the Hudson's Bay company was in Toronto. And these guys were always, like, jittery, right, because they wanted deals. They wanted to go back to their bosses and say, you know, we took on Steve Kossig at the B. And, you know, we went to Walmart and we really showed Walmart what it was all about, right? But inside, like, I knew that they were just like. Their stomachs were. It's like one of those Pepto Bismol commercials, the guys with the pink jumpsuits on. But you could just see the stress rolling off these guys, right? And so what would happen is, you know, these buyers, Steve in particular was the best at it. Steve Kossick from the Bay, he would. He go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And all of a sudden he'd drop his. And he'd go, I just thought of something. The guys upstairs are never gonna go for this. I just can't play. I don't know. And he'd start lifting up pieces of paper and he'd go, oh, no, that's even worse. Oh, God, what am I gonna do? And so my guys are on the other side of the desk, and they're looking at Steve and they're going, we're that close to the deal. It's like we had him. He was right in the bag. It was a lock and all. Of a sudden, it all fell apart. And so Steve would continue with this confusion, and he'd look around the room and he untie and tie his shoes. He would just play with all kinds of stuff on his desk until finally my colleague would lean over and say, steve, you seem troubled. Steve was like, yeah, how can we help you? And Steve would say, well, what do you have in mind today? And years later, we met on a golf course. And I said, okay, Steve, I watched you do this thing over and over and over again. And he starts laughing. He goes, it was good, wasn't it? I said, good? I said, how much money did you make on that? I bet you made like an extra three, four, or five points every time you turn around. He goes, pat, it was millions of dollars over the. Over my career. And he said, that was the way that, you know, he says, I secured a lot of my bonuses and my, you know, my increases and my promotions. I literally named my third book the Bonus Round in honor of Steve. And that move.

Wow.

It's perfect. It's almost like when you see people do what I call the. It's almost like a more and more so. Or it's. It's. It's like an add on kind of strategies where somebody. It's right. Well, it's bigger than that because it can happen at the beginning or it can happen at the end. So I'll give you both examples. Yes, sir. So at the beginning, somebody looks at you and you give them a piece of information which you would normally bill for, and they go, that's a great piece of information, but don't. Don't bill me for that. What do you do? You're stuck because you haven't got a deal done yet, but you've got the information, and it should have been billable, but they went, don't bill me for that. So that's the front end, all right? Now the back end is where they're sitting there. They've agreed to everything, and they're signing the order, and then they stop their signature, and they look up and they say, oh, by the way, I know this means nothing to you, but could you add in that, that, that, that and that? You corporate guys, you've always got a little bit of fat left in there. So could you just kind of pour that in? If you do that, I'll finish the signature right here.

That's an aggressive nibble.

No, that's a strategy. When it happens on the front end, what you always do is you write in your contract that will never Happen again. If it happens on the back end, you make a calculation of what it is that they almost cajoled you into accepting, and you say, this is what that meant in real dollars, and that won't happen again. You always control the contract as a lawyer.

Definitely know that one. That one is very, very important.

So I've unbundled about 25 of these. I've got a catalog of 30.

This is great. And we're just scratching the surface. Patrick, before you go, can you let the listeners know about the books that you have and where they can get in touch with you?

Yeah, sure. I wrote a book called Unlocking, Yes, Sales Negotiation Lessons and Strategy. It took me seven years to finish, and I'm one of three solo authors in the world that has finished the trilogy of a sales negotiation book. One on consultative selling and one on sales prospecting. The other two authors are Jeb Blunt and Brian Tracy. Typically, you need collaborators in order to get the negotiation book done. It's so hard. I went back and I rewrote Unlocking S and give you some. So much more value. If you can just memorize the back of the book. You are going to be a force at any negotiation table. You're just going to be able to turn a lot of things around because you'll be able to explain the end game. The bonus round is all about business cases. So if you understand how to build business cases, then you understand how to de risk deals. So it's all about does it make sense? Does it make sense from your company's perspective and from the customer's perspective? Never deliver customers ice in the winter. They can just go outside and shovel all kinds of ice. But you deliver them high quality, meaningful value that they can go internally and say, if we don't buy this deal, Kwame, we're crazy. Perpetual Hunger is is about my view, about bringing new customers into your life. They're not just average customers. They're dream customers. These are people that are going to be your friends for your entire career because once they've done business with Kwami, they don't want to do business with anybody else. You're a gem, sir. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. I'm a great admirer of your work, your POVs, the way that you approach the community. Great humility, but with great confidence, and I love it.

That means a lot, Patrick. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I really, really appreciate you and I cannot wait to share this with the audience. So thank you for coming on the show. Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.