The Power of Balance in Negotiations With C. Ryan Jones.

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 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.

Ryan, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

It's a pleasure to have you. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Absolutely. So my name is Ryan Jones. I'm a senior director of Enterprise Industry Sales at Microsoft. Been at Microsoft six years now after a 15 year career at Verizon. I have done pretty much all types of sales. Account management, relationship management, contract negotiation across a wide swath of clientele. I've served public as well as private sector. As I referenced think that the private sector sales starting to get a little bit more specialized within the last decade. So I spent a lot of time within our industry sales teams. I've done industries ranging from media and entertainment. I've done stints in public sector, department of defense, aerospace, and then I currently run the construction and real estate business for Microsoft in the northeast corridor.

Very, very impressive, my friend. And listen, don't, don't forget to shout out the business too.

Yes, absolutely. So in addition to the core day job, I run Adapt and Advance DAP and Advance is a sales excellence firms. We work with clients large and small we bring best practices from the enterprise sales teams to the smaller medium businesses that are just getting started. We do a lot of strategies on growth. On business development, we work with individual clients, sometimes that are already within corporations and then other times we work with nonprofits who may be looking for ways to grow their own revenue capture strategies. I love giving back. In addition to the businesses and the corporate work, I do a lot of work with Black Microsoft. It's an employee resource group, 30 plus years old. And so I lead the worldwide career development aspect and then I also lead the local D.C. chapter. We have about 600 members strong. We do all sorts of things, but the core three things that we work on are improving the experience of African American employees within Microsoft, improving sales, recruiting, retention efforts to bring new talent in, and then we look to influence and impact the next generation of tech leaders. So we do a lot of work with nonprofits, school systems, universities, and sure to help accelerate the path to success for other young students. As if that wasn't enough, I also serve on the board for Beacon House D.C. it's an organization in Northeast D.C. that's dedicated to closing the education gap for kids ages 5 to 18 in the Edgewood neighborhood of Northeast. And then I still have time to keep a happy wife at home along with two small kids that take up all of my time and are looking to take up all the money that they can too as well.

That is impressive. That is impressive. Well, we're glad to have you here. And everybody, if you want to connect with Ryan, we have the link to his business website and his LinkedIn. Those will be in the description of this episode. And today we're going to talk about balance. And after hearing the incredible amount of things that Ryan does, I know you're thinking about work, life, balance. That needs to be another conversation. But we're actually going to talk about balance within the actual negotiation itself. And this is a really interesting concept. And so Ryan and I were chatting about this before the episode began. And Ryan, how about you start us off by just telling us, when you think about the word balance as it relates to some of these negotiations that you're having, what does that concept mean to you?

You know, I think that with any negotiation there's two parties that are trying to get to a future state, they're trying to get to a goal, they're trying to improve something, they're trying to move something forward. There are generally other factors that make up the negotiation, price, time to buy, other competing factors, quality of service, et cetera. Et cetera. But at the end of the day, you're trying to get somewhere and get something done. I feel that those two forces can sometimes move. If you think of the negotiation as kind of a vehicle that's going along a path. Right. Those opposite forces can sometimes sway that vehicle to the left or to the right. If you get too far to the left, then you're going off track. If you get too far to the right, you're to going, you're off the path. And so there's always a balance that needs to be maintained. Now, that balance can be emotional as well as strategic. Particularly with high dollar negotiations, emotions tend to get involved. Right. Oftentimes you're talking about a very large line item on someone's budget or in these current economic conditions that we're facing, we could be talking about jobs and people's job security and the ability to hire people to then provide for their families. So I think that attempting to balance the emotions and attempting to balance the various factors that get brought into it, understanding that, you know, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and then maintaining kind of that basic law of physics throughout the negotiations. Vital.

This is great.

Yes.

And I especially love that last part. An equal and opposite reaction. I think we can all think about conversations where it just. It was those two forces going back and forth, throwing fireballs at each other.

Right?

Right, right. So we've all been there. So let's break this down. When we think about the balance, like, let's think about the optimal balance. So when you look at a negotiation and you say, you know what, this, the balance that I'm describing is in a good place, what are some signals that tell you that we're managing that balance the right way?

You know, I think that the, the cadence or maybe the cordialness of the communic. And that's probably the biggest indicator, Right. If people are upset, if they're angry, they're talking in short curt tones. If they're not communicating, then right off the bat you know that something's off. I think that one of the other things that tends to come up are the asks versus the concessions. And so if one side of a negotiating party has all of the asks and there are zero concessions, well, then there's an issue with balance. Likewise, if someone's offering all sorts of concessions and the party on the other side has no asks, well, I don't really know if there's a negotiation at that point. Right. That may just be someone trying to push something on to someone else. But there needs to be give and gets in every scenario. And I think understanding what those gives and gets are, I think, the art and the science to it. Right? There's a science and kind of collecting the gifts and understanding what gives are appropriate or balance. I think the art to it is kind of forecasting those gives and gets or hypothesizing, if you will, on those gives and gets. Right. What could someone be asking for in round three or four of a negotiation? Right. What hints do I know about either their current business climate or the way that their business runs or their future implications that'll help me identify what a future ask could be and how do I prepare that? So I think a lot of what I've done in different roles has really been forecasting not just the revenue that might come in from a negotiated deal, but forecasting how the negotiation itself is going to land. Right. What can I get approved in terms of concessions and then what concessions should I introduce at the right time? I think that oftentimes you have to sometimes calm, particularly your, your junior salespeople down because they will rush to offer just kind of everything that they've got potentially stored up as a concession for that customer. That's not always the case. Sometimes the customer doesn't want things or, you know, there's an ask that you, as the company can make from the customer in order to justify that concession. So, so keeping that balance, keeping it even keeled, it's a lot harder than it seems. And it comes with practice. I don't think anyone's going to come right off the gate and do this kind of their first negotiation. It takes getting burned. It takes maybe getting yelled at. It takes losing some deals to kind of understand the postmortem of where you lost the balance in it and how you can retain it if you ever find yourself in the same position in the future.

Yeah, this is, this is really great, Ryan, because what I'm hearing is that there's a, there's a feel aspect to this, right? Because we have the blend of art and science. We have the strategies and tactics, but we also have that, that, that artistry that's necessary. That's more of a feel thing where you can't look into a book and say, okay, well, I'm going to run this play. If they do this, then I do this, right? There's an element of being in there and then feeling the. And then making nimble adjustments as necessary. So when you're going in there and you're assessing the situation, when you're doing that feeling work, what are some of those elements of the interaction that you're looking at to get a vibe of what you need to do next?

So I think it's key to understand the company, the party, right, Whoever the other side of that negotiation table is, it's important to understand where they are, where they're trying to get and what's involved in that. Delta.

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Because ultimately that's what they're looking to achieve. I do a lot of nonverbal body behavior reading, right? I took a phenomenal course at George Washington University School of Business by Professor Sal DeVita who unfortunately is no longer with us. But he talked about something that he called Uncommon sense. And it was being able to read nonverbal body language in order to understand someone's personality traits and their value systems. So I've employed a lot of that over the course of my 20 year career. It's been fairly successful so far. But understanding someone's personal points, right, like what personality are they bringing to that negotiation table? Kind of what their values are will sometimes give you an indication of how they're willing to proceed from a business perspective. And it'll allow you to know if I'm dealing with someone, perhaps in the Midwest, there's a way that I open that conversation, right? There's a way that I have an actual conversation. Whereas if I'm negotiating with someone in downtown New York City, I'm getting a right to business because that time is valuable. There's probably somebody else coming in and the next 30, 35 minutes is going to be doing the exact same thing. So I think that sometimes it's that. I think that sometimes when you're negotiating internationally, there are other pieces that come into play. I think understanding previous negotiations is also valid. I can tell you that anyone that works at Microsoft has run into a scenario where they are making up for the sins of an account Team or negotiation going bad over the course of the last 40 plus years, right. And so having some sort of an understanding of what that client's experience has been within those negotiations, what that experience has been, utilizing those products, utilizing those services, lets you know kind of how educated of a consumer that you have. And if you've got someone that maybe you need to help them understand some things more, or if you've got someone that kind of knows it and is kind of looking the angle and kind of see what's the best deal, the best price they can get out of.

You, this is good for a number of reasons. Because what I'm hearing is that even though there is a significant amount of feeling that will have to go in, you have to go in, assess the situation, you're not exactly sure what's going to happen. So you need to make moves and reads at the table, which can be daunting, can feel daunting, especially for people who are newer at this, who don't have those reps. But what I'm hearing is that the process is assisted by the amount of dedicated preparation that you put into the process. Right? Because you're taking those, taking the time to do research. You're understanding the context, you're understanding the other side, you're understanding what their wants and needs are. You're understanding the historical context, which could include the, like the market, the organization and the past people from your team who have interacted with them, good or bad, right? You need to understand all of that. And then from there you can hypothesize what may or may not occur. And then we can understand some, create these hypotheses, but then also recognize when there are deviations where we say, okay, I anticipated the deal range to be around here, the concessions to look like this. Now if there's a deviation from that, that triggers a little bit of curiosity, like, oh, you see now, Now I'm making a read based on the. What I anticipated this is going to, this was going to be. And then the deviation from expectation and reality. So there's a lot of preparation that goes into feeling confident in the assessments you're making during the conversation.

There's a ton of it. You know, I'm a huge NBA guy, right? So I love the stories, particularly the stories of Kobe Bryant that have come out in the years since his passing. And so like the NBA players, right? You may have scouting reports, you may have film, right? You may have some form of scientific knowledge that you can utilize that you could learn from in order to Deduce how this negotiation could possibly go. How could it, you know, how could it pivot? What should I be prepared for? But just like that NBA player, you still got to actually play the game, right? And so you still have to get involved. You still got to play the game. So, yes, fortune definitely favors are prepared, but there's an element of just playing the game and kind of learning as you go along. And then again, the more you play, obviously, the better you'll get at making those reads and making those split second pivots and of being able to maintain that balance. Because there's also a human element of fear that comes into play. And if you fear that you're not well prepared, if you fear that the deal may be lost or that this is going to poorly reflect on you, if any of those internal saboteurs get a hold of kind of the control in your mind and start steering it, well, now, once again, that vehicle is kind of going off course. The balance is being lost. You've got to bring it back front and center.

Absolutely. This. So this is really important, Ryan, because we're talking about the internal work that goes into this. Because even if you take the time to prepare, if you're preparing through a lens of fear, you could see data but interpret it differently based on that fear. That's absolutely in a different direction. So what does that look like when you're going through that internal work beforehand, when you're preparing your own mind for the negotiation?

Well, I think everyone is different. I think for me it's fun, as weird as that may sound. Right. I look at this as somewhat of a sport. And so there's a certain pride that I take in the prep work in understanding, you know, particularly if it's a deal that we're negotiating in Microsoft, there are tons of people that are involved in that. And everyone has their piece of the technological real estate that they're looking to get pushed into the deal or that they want as a part of that deal. They may not necessarily want the discounting or they may not be wanting to be using that technology as part of the negotiation lever. But the reality of it is that anything that kind of gets thrown into the pot has the opportunity potential to get mixed up and mixed around as you're kind of making the stew there. And so there are tons of other people who are involved in it. I think that there's a lot of individual information gathering. I feel that there's a lot of kind of gathering feedback from stakeholders, understanding what stakeholders are looking to get out of a negotiation, understanding what they'll be content with, realizing that they're not going to get everything that they want. And I think that that exact same motion happens, interestingly enough, on the selling side of the negotiation as well as the buying side. Right. So while I'm having these internal conversations that I'm researching kind of what a customer is looking for, what they've done in the past, how negotiations have gone, what the experience has been, what they're looking to invest in now, and what some of their must haves versus nice to haves are, there's someone on the customer end who's doing the exact same thing with their internal stakeholders. What happened last time we negotiated with this company? How did it go? What happened after we negotiated? Did we get the return on the investment that we made? What are the new technologies, the new services that we're looking to invest in, and what are our contingency plans? If we're not able to meet an agreement and you don't get maybe everything that you want, but you only get maybe 40% of it, how are you still going to somehow show a win? And so again, that's where it comes back to balance. I think that once you have relationships with clients and there's a common respect there, so much easier to maintain the balance because the person on the other side has their own balancing act that they've got to come up with. And if you show that willingness to support, to engage, to be respectful, then you're able to kind of make progress. And, you know, you'll find kind of those confection points where either the company isn't able to make any other financial concessions, or the buying company isn't able to make any additional financial obligations. And that's kind of your happy point where, okay, now we're at an agreement, let's execute this and let's make sure the follow up is there and that, you know, we operate in good faith moving forward.

Yep, this, this is really good. And one of the things that you mentioned in passing that I want to dig deeper into is the fact that you said a common respect makes it easier to find that balance.

Yes.

And I think that we can't overlook that too, because a lot of times we think about these strategies to solve simple problems, and sometimes the strategy that we need is quite simple and mutual respect can help us to manage that balance. So instead of thinking about complicated strategies, like I'll say this, I'll do this at this time, it's like, okay, no, if we just think about it from the common principles of mutual respect, it makes it easier for both of us to strike that balance. And so when you think about mutual respect in these types of interactions, where we have two people whose interests seem to potentially align but can conflict at certain areas, how do you demonstrate and cultivate mutual respect in these tough negotiations?

That's a great question. So I think it depends on what the previous relationship has been with that person. But let's jump right to the hard one. So let's say there is no previous relationship with that person and you're meeting for the first times now to negotiate through something. If you are the selling party of that negotiation, that buying party is probably coming to the table with their wall up, their defenses up, and they're looking to set a tone. And sometimes the method which they go about setting that tone may not always ring of common respect. It can be demanding, it can be demeaning, it can be flat out curtain rude. Sometimes I find it best to remain professional. It's one of those scenarios where you may kind of have to take that hit in order to at least let them get that one out and then kind of engage in meaningful conversations. At the end of the day, everyone is looking to get something done. And I think that continuing to bring it back to the shared goal of what are we looking to accomplish and. And achieve here is paramount. There have been instances when negotiations have kind of gone off the rails. There have been instances where people have yelled, screamed. I have heard words that I probably would not use in church on a Sunday morning that have been used in conference calls, sometimes in person. And I may have even heard stories of people having things thrown at them in order to leave offices. Right. I mean, emotions really get pulled into it. But I think that attempting to at least maintain a common level of decency and respect, understand that it's two people trying to achieve something. So understand what are they trying to achieve? What are those internal obstacles or political battles that they're fighting? They may not always disclose those. Right. Sometimes that information may come from gatekeepers. It may come from other members of that organization that you have some sort of a relationship with. It could come from the people who maybe have invested in your tools or your services over the last few years and actually use them. I think attempting to quantify that return on invested time of invested dollars, looking for ways to make your, you know, your negotiation. I hate to use the word adversary, but your negotiation adversary. Finding ways to make them look good at the end of this. Right. So they can kind of walk Back into the company with their head held up high. I've learned from being at two Fortune 10 companies that other companies, they like the feeling of saying, hey, I negotiated a great deal with Microsoft. I negotiated a great deal with Verizon. There's a pride in that and they want to feel that. So making sure that they're able to walk back in and say, hey, I negotiated a good deal. I didn't just take what they gave us. I got something out of it. That something isn't always discount dollars. That something can sometimes be investments. It can be marketing relationships, it can be agreements, it could be executive connection. Kinds of things that people can define as kind of give and gets within that concession, but making sure that there's a fair exchange of it at the end of the day and that you stay dedicated to that, that central mission of trying to accomplish something and move the business forward in some way.

Oh, this is great. It reminds me of what's called the acceptance speech test. And so when you're making an offer, you try to formulate it and frame it in a way that's so positive that they could take that offer verbatim and say to their stakeholders, this is a win, because.

Yes.

And so it completely changes the way that you make your offers. And like you said, you want to find ways to make them look good and feel good to their team and helping them to save face so at the end of the negotiation, they can go back with their dignity and self respect. And now let's go deeper, because it's cool to think about this theoretically, Ryan, but we glossed over some things. So we heard some bad words, right? We've. Right, we've seen people throw objects, we've see some crazy behavior. Right? That happens. And now what I think would be interesting to the audience is the fact that people from the outside looking in would say, okay, Ryan Jones, hi, high flying executive here at Microsoft, closing these big deals, Fortune 10 company. This is massive. So you always are coming in with the leverage, you know, bullying people around, throwing them around, getting the deals that you want, and if they don't like it, then they could walk. I think that's the assumption that people would hear that, come into this podcast with. And so I think they'd find it really interesting that sometimes you are seeing the bad behavior of other people. And then you said you sometimes you have to take that hit and let them get that one out and then refocus the conversation. And so how is it that you're able to work with people who may Even though our goal is mutual respect, come in flagrantly disrespectful, very aggressive, not treating you well, how do you take that one on the chin and still stay focused and then seek to be the leader in the conversation who finds that balance?

You know, it's interesting. So as a former athlete, a contact sport former athlete, right. I kind of like when you get that first hit because now you feel that you're actually in the game. So there's a, there's a small degree of that. Now. I've had to calm some people down that have worked for me that have been in that scenarios where a customer maybe has gotten out of pocket and helped kind of guide them on how to bring it back in. The reality of it is it's actually a win for the party that remain calm, right. When that person kind of loses their cool or when they kind of come to the table in some sort of a way because they're kind of showing their emotions and kind of what's guiding that there's typically going to be something that's guiding. It's either price or product, or there's some other deployment concern. There's some other reason behind that. And so I think that the, the judo move there is to identify what sparked that, what sparked that communication style in the first place, perhaps put a pin in it for later, perhaps go back and, you know, circle the wagons and kind of have a conversation with your team about it. But there's something there, all right. Now, there are rare cases when there isn't something there, and that's just someone's prickly personality. I think that there's also an appreciation that we need to have for the procurement officials or the other executives that may be negotiating this job. They are protecting the shareholder value of their own companies. And so they're looking to make sure their companies can spend as little as possible and get the maximum benefits out of it. But I think that identifying kind of what created that emotional outburst and then sometimes a one on one conversation helps drastically. I love it when my team comes to me and they say, hey, someone's furious. They want to speak to someone in leadership. Because now I get that one on one conversation. And it's completely different, as you well know, when you show up to negotiation and I've got my players on my side, they've got their players on their side. And even if a point is made, there's a certain Persona, a certain perception that needs to be maintained because everyone's watching. And so there can't be Any display of weakness. Sometimes when you give folks one on one, they're able to disarm that and you get back to it just being two actual people kind of having a conversation. Now everyone's not a nice person out here, right? And so I've run into scenarios where I have had team members that have had to deal with racist comments, sexist comments, homophobic comments. Right. Something where similar to a parental relationship, you say, oh no, no, no, I'm stepping in now and now I'm having a conversation. And that's still a one on one conversation. Sometimes it's a verbal communication in order to make sure there's a timestamp associated with it and that people know that, hey, we can negotiate, but we're drawing the line on certain things and certain things won't be brought into a negotiation. I try to always look for the silver lining. And so we've had scenarios where we've negotiated deals and where people have just said things that just really don't have a place in the actual business negotiation itself. Well, what that does is that now actually creates some bit of a leverage for our team because we can escalate that on the customer end. We can make people aware of that. Typically that's going to bring in either a peer executive or a higher ranked executive that's probably going to handle things going forward. And they're going to come into it a bit repentant, if you will, looking to make up for that because they know that was inappropriate or that someone didn't reflect their business accurately does not happen very often. And when it does happen, and I don't want to say like it's something that we look forward to, but when it does happen, it's almost like a flag getting caught in a football game. And now you kind of got a free play. So how do we maximize this? Right. Because we know they're coming back with some form of apologies for this. How do we maximize this? How do we take the negotiation to the next step? Or depending on how heinous this was, how do we close the deal and be done with this and then perhaps move on to the next thing?

Oh, this is so good. And I love the fact that you brought up judo. Right. Because judo is all about using their energy in your favor. I learned that the hard way in an actual judo class where I was.

Like, this doesn't make sense.

So yes, this is great because you're right. Essentially what you're doing is you're recognizing, hey, this outburst, the emotionality that they're showing me this difficulty, whatever it is, it's an opportunity like that is a choice that is based off of your mindset. And so typically, if you just leave it up to chance with your typical emotional state, just as a human being, you'll get defensive, you'll get angry, you'll try to clap back those type of things. And those are emotional responses. They're not strategic responses. What you're doing is once you see that outburst, you're saying, interesting, where's the opportunity here? What is it that is making them this emotional? What's causing this? There's something there. I'm going to figure this out so it can guide your curiosity. If it's bad enough, then we can say, okay, well, I'm going to, we're going to make sure that this. They don't, they understand that they will not treat us this way. And at the same time, I'm going to think strategically. How can I actually use this as a leverage point? Because you're right, the power of regret and repentance is very significant. And you can capitalize that in the, these difficult conversations. So a lot of times people approach it from a victim mentality. I was mistreated and I need them to do better by me. But instead you're, you're taking and you're having a more assertive response where you're taking control of your well being and saying, yeah, they mistreated me and I will turn this into a good opportunity for me. If I have the right mindset, it'll lead me to see those opportunities and then I have the negotiation skills. I could put it into practice. So I think this is really great. And then the last thing to recognizing that sometimes somebody's outbursts, sometimes it's an indication of some kind of duress that they're under. Sometimes it's an indication of just their personality. There are difficult personalities, like documented psychologically. Okay, cool. We can, we can take that. And the thing is, if we recognize, oh, this is just how the person is in general, kind of protects us because we don't take it as personally. Oh, this isn't just about, this isn't them being mean to Kwame Christian. This is a mean person being normal.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. And there's all types out here. There's all types of people out here. There's all these people on, on both sides of negotiation strategy. And, and that's one of those things that's learned and that comes with practice. Right. I've lost my temper before negotiations. Right. I have said some probably not so choice words in certain negotiations. And I learned quickly that it's the first person to show emotion. You lose a point, right? You lose it. If you're keeping score, you lose a point for that because the other side now has an opportunity to not just react to it, but to respond to it. So let's try to make sure that we're the ones that maintain our calm and are able to respond accordingly.

I love this, Ryan. You know, I could talk to you all day, but for the sake of time we gotta move toward the end. But I know connecting with you on LinkedIn LinkedIn is a good spot to reach you. Can you let the listeners know again, like about your, who you are, what you do and your company, how to get in touch and all that stuff?

Absolutely. So LinkedIn definitely the best place to contact me. And again, Ryan Jones, Senior Director of Enterprise Industry Sales for Microsoft. I run the construction real estate business within the East Coast. I'm also the founder and CEO of Adapt and Advance. Adapt and advance is a sales excellence coaching firm. We work with firms large and small on employing the practices that enterprise level organizations use to close deals, capture revenue and overall grow the business. For anyone looking to connect on the community impact level, I am huge about giving back. I'm very active within the George Washington School of Business. I'm very active within the Blacksmith, Microsoft and Employee Resource Group that focuses on improving the overall experience of African American employees within Microsoft, improving our recruiting and retention efforts and then impacting the next generation of of future tech leaders. And then I also work with Beacon House DC organization Northeast DC that focuses on closing the education gap for students 5 to 18 within the Edgewood Commons neighborhood of Northeast DC.

Love it. Ryan, thank you for coming on the show my friend. Really appreciate it. And listeners, make sure you connect with Ryan on LinkedIn and my LinkedIn's in the description as well. Ryan, thanks again for coming on the show.

Thank you for having Kwame Looking forward to future shows.

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