FBI Negotiator Shows You How To Negotiate Like The RICH w/Chris Voss

Buckle up for today's episode as we welcome master negotiator and businessman Chris Voss to the Main Street Business podcast. You may be wondering, why do I need to listen to the FBI's former lead international kidnapping negotiator? How would that help me in my life in Main Street America today? Well, people, you'd be shocked about how much of your daily life is one big negotiation. From the minute you wake up to you go to bed at night, you're negotiating for what you want out of life. And being a master negotiator in the way you operate in every relationship could change your life. So today we have the honor of learning from and listening to the master negotiator, businessman and the best selling author of Never Split the Difference. Join us as we now uncover the true art of negotiation with one of the world's best. Really, Kris, this is the heart of the interview I wanted to talk about is that I think us small business owners, and I'm speaking for them too, we really don't understand how much negotiation is going on in our life. And there's a lot of misperceptions. So thank you for being here. I hope we can clear some of that up today because we need you. We just don't know it.

All right, very good. I love it. Yeah. The most dangerous negotiations, the one you don't know you're in.

Yes. Okay, now I've got an example for you on this that you gave just the other day. And I loved it. It was really insightful. And of course, I follow you and have your book I was reading again in preparation for today. You talked about an experience of losing your luggage the other day, I hope you remember. And you said you walked in and I would say you smooth talked the lady and you got your luggage. You may want to share that story, but to me, I would have never thought of that as a negotiation. But you use it as an example of negotiation. Can you tell us that story again? I loved it.

Yeah. Anytime you're trying to get collaboration and anytime you're trying to get consideration or even anything extra, even if you're trying to get somebody to do the job, like, half the people out there, they're battered, especially if they're in customer service. So I lose my. My suitcase doesn't show up at the carousel at my home airport, Vegas. And it's a direct flight. So I know it's gotta be there. You know, it has to. It has to be somewhere in the airport. And I traveled enough that I've lost luggage it's gotten misplaced. You know, I'm not one of these guys that carries all my luggage on a plane with me and hogs all the space. Yeah, it's most convenient for me to travel light and let everybody carry my bags anyway, so it ain't showing up. And this other poor schmuck is standing around waiting for his too. And it's late afternoon and when you're normally tired, not at your best after a long day, but I'm home, I'm happy. Thank God that, you know, that was one of the things that saved me. I'm kind of in a playful mood. I know I'm going to get a good night's sleep that night. Sleep's really important to me these days. So I roll into the lost luggage office, luggage services office. And of course, lady behind says, how can I help you? Which in point of fact, you should know. That's why I'm here. There's only one reason I'm walking through this door.

Yeah, you almost wanted to say, really, you're going to ask me how I can help you, but you did it. You bit your tongue. No.

And that's a well intentioned. You never know how often that question is just stupid. Yeah. So. And, but I'm playful and I'm thinking, as battered as these people are and the way people treat them, what they're thinking to themselves is, you know, these idiots that walk through these doors, they think we got magic wands, like, and they. And people treat them like that. So as soon as she says, how can I help you? I go, I need you to wave a magic wand. Because I know that's what she's thinking. Yeah, clearly you lost your bag. She looks at the tag, she says, it says it's here. And I go, well, yeah, I've been standing out there for a while and it ain't there. And she says, come with me. And she comes around the counter like, this is not my first time. And I have never seen anybody from lost luggage services come around the counter. Normally they type some stuff in a computer and go, next, you know, stand around and wait or we'll call you, go home, you know, all this horrible stuff. But she comes around the counter, she heads for the carousel. And I'm like, I'm going with her to see what happens. And she says, you sure somebody didn't walk off with it? And I'm like, no, it looks exactly like this one right here. It does. It's green. It's got big white duct tape stripes with my Name on it. Ain't nobody walking off of this baby. And she walks up to the carousel, and then she walks down the ramp that the suitcases come out of. It's like, there's no way that this is OSHA approved, you know, union approved. And she sticks her head through the plastic curtains, and I could. I don't know what's down there, but I've heard it looks like a super highway of luggage carousels beneath the airport. She comes back and she says, wait here. And she heads for the side door. You know, it's probably about 20, 30 yards away, and disappears in the door. And I'm like, you know, what do I do? What do I do? She said, wait. And I'm standing there, standing there. Pretty soon the carousel starts up again, starts turning, and my bag. And this other guy's bag pops out. And I'm just. I can't believe it. And I'm standing there, I'm waiting, and there's another lady standing there. And finally, you know, I gotta go. I gotta get home. And I look at this other lady and say, please tell her, you know, that that was wonderful, and I appreciate it. And as I'm walking out, I happen to be walking past the door that she disappeared into. She pops out the door, and when she comes by me, she gives me a high five. She goes, how's that for waving a magic wand?

Oh, my gosh, she probably loved it.

I think I just put her in a good mood. Sort of like, hey, look, you know, I know how we treat you people. And she just. The key is, like, people can do extraordinary things for you if you approach them the right way.

Maybe you can help explain this to the average business owner, too, because I'm. I'm in this bucket quite often when I think of, oh, I'm going to be talking with Chris Voss, and I want to talk about negotiation. I think the average person, like, okay, when is the next time I'm going to buy a house? I got to make an offer. They're going to come back with a counter, and they're like, I better read Chris's book because I'm going to have to negotiate. But the more I listen to you, the more I'm like, I'm negotiating 10 times a day. How do you tell someone they don't realize how much negotiation is going on?

First of all? Well, if you think of yourself as a collaborative person, you got to think of yourself as highly collaborative. Because a lot of people think negotiations, they don't want to do them because it's making the other side lose. It's win, lose. It's a zero sum game. And it's not. And neither is life. And also you think, well, I got to compromise. I got to meet in the middle. And that involves loss. Automatic. A horrible way to negotiate. You know, what you need to do is blend efforts. Like steel is a blend of, I think it is iron and carbon, but it's not a 50, 50 blend. Like it's only a tiny amount of carbo added to iron make steel. So maybe you only need to give a little bit or give, you know, add a little bit of your 2% to get something extraordinary. If you rethink how you see negotiation so that you're not offended by it or that you're not concerned about offending others, then you're willing to see that it's happened around you all the time. The opportunities for collaboration with human beings. If you have any communication with anybody, that's probably a negotiation. You're negotiating for information, you're negotiating for their cooperation, which is cooperation is you just need them to do what you want them to do. Collaboration is when they contribute. It's a, it's a mutual thing. And in point of fact, there's a difference between cooperation and collaboration. And the best things come from collaboration.

We're working together. Another fallacy, I think for at least for me, is that, okay, I've got all this negotiation going on in my life daily. I'm on Main street building a business. I'm doing, you know, just hiring employees. I'm trying to get things done. I'm going to the dmv, I'm going out for lunch and I'm trying to get things. Is it really a negotiation if they don't want anything? Maybe I just, I want something and I'm trying to get it from someone. But it's not the same thing. Like I think of a negotiation, we both want the same thing, or we've got to split the difference. But how do you negotiate? They don't maybe want anything. Are you trying to find something they want in exchange? Does that make sense?

Well, give me, give me an example where you think they don't want it.

Okay, now this is a funny one. I would, I didn't know if I was going to throw this now. All right, so we, we recently moved to Arizona. It was in last year. We both have cars that my partner, she came down, she was driving along on this road and gets pulled over. I'm with her. And it was, we hadn't changed the license plate yet the tags were. The insurance hadn't been changed. And the cop was like, you got to do that within 60, 90 days when you move somewhere. And he's like, gives her a bunch of tickets, hit her with everything. We're on the same road. Two weeks later, same road.

First of all, I tell you how you could. She could have got out of those tickets in the first place. But we'll come back to that.

Yeah, exactly. So we're going down the same road two weeks later, and I get pulled over in my car. Same story. I hadn't changed anything yet. I didn't learn from her lesson. Two weeks earlier, I did put it off. And I talked to the cop and I don't know what it was. He's like, ah, you're good. Get her done, sir, we'll see you. And I've got like the last 10 times I've been pulled over, I get out of the craziest thing that every time she gets pulled over, it's a ticket. I'm like, babe, you gotta. There's gotta be a negotiation going on or something. But see, the cop didn't want anything in return, but I got what I wanted. I wanted a warning. I. I guess that would be a negotiation where I don't know what he wanted from me, but there's a kind smile or just be a better citizen. I. It was a wonderful.

First of all, each time the cop actually, what they want is to feel like they're doing the job and they're effect, and they want to feel good about it. So giving you a ticket or not giving you a ticket is an option of whether or not they're doing a job. You know, whether or not they see it as public service, public safety, fighting crime, however they see it, they want a feeling of purpose and mission.

I like that.

And so rethink what kind of vibe are you giving? And clearly if you're getting out on a regular basis and she's not, then whatever she's radiating as they approach or whatever happens in the first few moments of the exchange is what makes all the difference in the world is to the decision the police officer is going to make. You know, what they want to know is that, you know, that you were a wrongdoer. That's what they really want to know. And that you somehow disturbed the balance of the universe by whatever transgression that you committed. And so there's a certain amount, there's a defensiveness when they walk up. They don't know who you are. They don't know. They don't know whether or not they should be concerned about who you are. Like, there's all, there's all these potentialities are going through their heads. You can be, be preemptive. Like, typically the typical answer is, you know, do you know why I stopped you?

Well, you said something really interesting in there. I'd like to dive a little further if I could. You said that the officer, he did want something. He wanted a feeling. He wanted a feeling like, I'm respected, you understood you did something wrong, and he wanted to feel like he was doing his job. I mean, we can make a list, right? How many times in negotiations where someone's saying, I want a ransom of money or I want this or I want that, do you think? Many times there's an. A feeling they're wanting. They want something other than just the object they're negotiating for. Like the feeling that they might get out of this is as important as what they're negotiating for.

Right. So let me give three parts of the answer. Part one, human being on the other side. Human beings are wired to think and react and assess the same regardless of circumstances. The only thing that changes in how people react is the intensity, but not, not the dynamics. So it doesn't matter if they're a terrorist or if they're your counter. People need feelings of self esteem, self identity. What's the future hold? There's three or four things that happen with everybody, no matter what the circumstances. So there's three types of conflict. How you view conflict, fight, flight, make friends. It's universal for the world over. My company, we have no shortage of data that backs that hypothesis up. In each one of the types is something more important than the negotiation than the deal. Each type has something more important than the deal. Now, for the assertives, my particular type, it's more important that I be respected and I be heard. If I'm respected and I'm heard, I really don't care what happens to the deal. Like you, you know, I mean, we may not have agreed, but you treated me with respect, period. I'm good and I'm heard because being heard makes me feel respected. More important than the deal combinators make friends type. It's more important to have hope for the future and that we have a pleasant interaction. More important than the deal. If we, if we're pleasant with each other and there's hope for a future relationship, I care more about that than a deal. Flight type analysts fleeing from conflict is simply an option. And head to head Conflict. Conflict is highly inefficient and messy and bloody. So the analytical type, what do they want to know? They want to know they've got the information. They're hoping for the best decision. But even more important than the decision is the information because there's always more information. So we should hold the decision off till we get more information. So regardless of circumstances, there's always something more important to the other person than the deal.

It's almost like you're hacking the human nature. If I go out on the day as a small business owner and know that I'm going to get more done, I'm going to get more of what I want, more sales, more relationship building, more la la la. Whatever it is. If I can understand going into it that there's a need on that other person's side of something and I. The sooner I figure that out, I'm going to get more of what I want. Is that seem to make sense?

That's. That's one of the two critical components. The other critical component, to get more each and every day without getting any better is just eliminate the friction that you're setting yourself back with every day that nobody knows that they're doing. And that's one of the reasons we teach people ask questions where the answer is no instead of yes. Instead of saying, do you agree? We say do you disagree? Instead of saying, have you got a few minutes to talk? We say, it's now a bad time to talk. My company actually We've got a PDF that we give out the top 10 most common yes questions and what is the no oriented question to ask instead? You will be astonished at how much friction is nearly instantly eliminated from your life. If you can switch from the desired response to move forward of yes to recrafting the question so the no moves things forward. It's ridiculous how much faster your life goes.

Wow. In this process of ongoing negotiations every day in our lives. This is so insightful. And I wanted to ask about what you just said about listening and asking questions and letting them feel they've been heard. I've oftentimes heard the other side of trying to get what I want or whatever. The first one to offer loses. And I don't know if that's true, what your take is, because I'm not listening enough. Why is that true and why.

All right, so we're in a Las Vegas world. And what do I mean by that? Nothing works all the time. You just need to know what works more than anything else. Now there's a A small minority of people that want to make the first offer and they win a minority of the time. What's wrong with their data is they don't know how many deals they drive from the table and they're missing out on deals that they might have otherwise made number one. The other two that's absent from their data, those that want to name a price and anchor high, and there's academic data out there, flawed data that supports it, is you may have anchored low and you didn't know it.

Yep.

I had a student in my class at Georgetown, thought he was anchoring way high, asking for $110,000 salary, found out that they were prepared to offer him 125 and he opened his mouth too soon and they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, you can have one. Ted he thought it was a big victory until he found out about four or five months later how much money left on the table. So that's the problem with naming a price first. You drive a significant percentage of deals from the table and sometimes you came in low and you didn't know, and then you think you got this great victory. So get back to what you asked. He or she who names price first loses. I'm a complete believer in that. I need the data. I need to hear what you think the range is. I need to be able to craft a way where I need to find out what you think a great price is. And I'm actually going to come in just probably right on that price because I want you to implement and deliver over deliver, just like what you promised you were going to do initially. And if I beat you on price, you'll never over deliver. And if I give you too much, you won't over deliver. But if I can hit your sweet spot, and I need you to tell me the sweet spot, and that's why I'm not going to name price first.

So if the antidote to winning more, well, winning may not be the right word, but getting what I want in negotiations more, if the antidote is listening and asking more questions and trying to think of what's in what their want is, it seems to me that for me, I'll even say, and a lot of people, that's scary because I have to have enough confidence that I can listen to someone. Maybe the person making the first offer does that because they don't know how to handle the answers they might receive. Is there a level of confidence that's a part of that equation?

Yeah, probably. And it's confidence from finding out how much Information you get by actually listening. Like, I don't care if you ask great questions. If you don't listen to the answers, it's worthless. And there are a lot of people, I run into them all the time. They ask a stock question, and they don't listen to what I actually say because they got some advice at dying again.

Yeah.

You know, and then do I have the capacity to ask, to answer when you ask? Like, I'm. I'm at a conference a couple weeks ago, Nashville, Tennessee. End of the day. What does it mean at the end of the day? I'm tired. There's decision fatigue. Each decision, think of it as money. And I've spent my money because it's the end of the day. Now this guy walks up to me, says, you know, what has to happen for you over the next three years for these three years to be a great success? And I'm thinking, like, dude, that's a scripted question. You think you're the only genius that walked up to me and asked me that scripted question? Like, I know the scripted what questions, and you're showing me no original thought whatsoever, Number one. Number two, it's the end of the day. And asking me that kind of a question, a deep philosophical question at the end of the day is a stupid idea. Number three, I can tell from the look on your face that whatever it is that you do for a living, you want to spring your value proposition all over me no matter what I say. And I just looked at this guy and I said, you know, that's a bullshit question. It's not original, and there's no way I can answer that. And even if I do answer it, you don't have the capacity to make any of it happen. So I'm wasting my time. So what's the moral of the story? You could ask a question. Number one, make sure you aren't asking the same question every other bozo out there is asking. What keeps you up at night? What has to happen over the next three years? What's your budget? What's the biggest challenge you face? These are all scripted what questions that every other unthinking bozo is out there asking and not listening to the answers. So then secondarily, have you got a value proposition all waiting to spring as soon as they finish answering? Well, what you just did was not listen to me at all, and I'm going to know that. And if I don't figuratively, literally tell you it was a stupid question, I'm going to react like it was, and Our conversation is going to be very short lived.

I feel your pain. I'm also very concerned about the next question I ask. I want to make sure it is not scripted. The more I listen to you, the more I realize how important this negotiation concept really permeates our lives. And as I started at the beginning of the interview, I think so many of us don't realize it. How can we be more cognizant of this? I need to think of it more myself, more frequently. And I'd get, I'd have more success, I would think, with that perspective, you

know, just being more cognizant, cognizant of it and being better at it simultaneously. Here's what I'd offer and it'll come to you. Stop asking people how they are, period. Because you get 4, 5, 6, 10 opportunities a day to interact with somebody. It's your opening conversation, how are you. Whatever information they give you based on their tone of voice or based on if they're on the phone or if you see them in person, make an emotionally intelligent, educated guess as to how they are. And it's like, seems like a tough day. Seems like you got up early, somebody looks really tired. Somebody told me they shared that with somebody behind the counter at airport the other day who was having a tough time with a customer and he looked at him, said, seems like it's been an early day. You know, you can throw out an observation out there that makes them feel seen and they will immediately start to open up with you. Now you practice that skill, then when you get a real negotiation, do the same thing. See what happens. I promise you it's going to be delightful. Whatever happens, happens and it'll actually. Which seems like the indirect approach to solving a problem ends up accelerating everything.

This sounds so much to me about just being a caring individual is going to put you in such a better position in anything you're negotiating for. Just intrinsically caring and listening. Do you feel like you've become, if that's true, that proposition, but do you feel like you've become more caring in person as you learn to be a better negotiator? Or was that always part of your nature? What are your thoughts on that?

No, I think it's part of everybody's nature. You know, there's some data out there to how many people are actually social paths that are around us. Whatever the number is, they're minority like that, you know. And the word narcissist gets thrown around all the time a lot too. That's, that's Overdone. Like, everybody's a narcissist. We got a society that encourages narcissistic behavior. And then we go like, I hate these narcissists. It's ridiculous. The vast majority of us are caring human beings. And one of the stats, maybe 1 in 35 sociopath, that means 34 out of 35 people you encounter are going to be caring human beings. If you let. If you're one of those people and if you assume and it's a. It's a high percentage assumption because this is a Las Vegas world, you win 34 out of 35 times. It's pretty good percentage. Then interact with people as if they're caring, and it will come out in you and them.

I had a good friend, I told him I was going to be talking with you. And your history with the FBI is just fascinating. We were joking about. And he asked if I'd pose this question too, about when you're reading people. I suspect you had a lot of training how to read an individual body language. What they're saying, is it really true that it's that do you have an incredible skill of telling if someone's lying? Are you able to immediately tell? Or what would you say? Your percentages of being able to indicate that it's.

I don't really look at it as body language. Read looking for tells. I think a lot of that is low percentage. What I really look for is I learned to rely on my gut. And the more information I get from you, the more my gut. Your gut instinct is ridiculously accurate. I mean, never mind all the body language. Never mind all of them. The more you listen to your gut, the more reliable your gut is. The more you exercise your gut, the more reliable your gut is. There's some data out there that indicates our gut instinct comes from our subconscious mind. And the computing capacity is literally 500,000 to one. Subconscious versus conscious mind, 500,000 to one ratio. So your gut is a supercomputer. If you listen to it, if you can separate it from your fear centers, your amygdala. The more you listen to your gut. And you can even say, what does my gut tell me? You can say that out loud. You can say it to yourself, just to focus on what your gut's telling you and then collect the data. And if somebody makes you uncomfortable, your gut's telling you you got a problem. If somebody's saying, like, my fe center's telling me this doesn't seem right, but my gut's telling me it's okay. You go for the ride. The more you rely on your gut, the better your life is going to be.

Well, the takeaway I'm already getting here is that this questioning and listening has multiple payoffs. Not only are you helping a person feel listened and heard and seen, you're also putting data in that gut check odometer, if you will. Gosh, people just don't listen enough. They really don't. That's probably a core problem in this whole equation.

Well, it's true, but the flip side is as soon as you start listening, you have nearly an instantaneous competitive advantage over everybody else because nobody listens. And imagine how much better your life gets in interactions if you're the one guy that does.

I'd like to ask too, how we can help our Main street followers just get more of you. Your book is phenomenal, but I know you're doing classes and you're teaching constantly. Do you have any place that we could send our listeners to just learn a little bit more about the techniques of listening and negotiating and communicating better?

All right, so two things first easiest, and they both start with my company's website, black swanltd.comb L A C K S W A n l t d.com now when you go there, you're going to get an opportunity to sign up for our newsletter. It's complimentary, it's actionable and it's concise. We're going to ask you for your email and we're going to send you an email on Tuesday mornings at 7:30 in the morning, regardless of your time zone. Send you an actionable, concise, usable negotiation article that you can implement that day. That's the easy way to keep one up. You're going to get, then you're going to get training announcements. Now when you have time to explore, then you go back to the website and you can take a look around and you can look at stuff that's specifically tailored for you. Now this decision fatigue that I talked about before, realize that that's a little bit deeper dive and you want to do it when you can process the information. There's a lot of information. But in the interim, if you're signed up to the edge, that's a little bit of an autopilot way to slowly sharpen your skills and keep up on a training announcement. When we're going to be in what city we're going to next month, June, we're going to be in Dallas for some for the negotiation Mastery course. Two days of negotiation Mastery. We're going to be other places after that. And so you find out about those by subscribing to the Edge, our newsletter. Perfect.

And we've got so many followers in Texas. We were just down there for our last event last month in Dallas and we love our Dallas citizens. You brought a black swan. And I already know the answer, but I'd like to share it with our listeners. The reason you named it Black Swan, I presume was because of this. Again, listening, that if you're listening in your negotiation, you're looking for that black swan reveal. Is that a fair way to say, could you explain that?

Yeah, it's got kind of a double meaning. Number one is there's always hidden information that's going to change everything. Like everything. And also the impact of the highly improbable. What are the tiny little things you could do that's going to make people want to deal with you? And the improbable things that accelerate communication skills, such as switching from yes to no. Massive impact. And we teach people what those mechanisms are too.

I love it. Huge takeaways today. And Chris, again, thank you so much for being with us. Any final message to the Main street followers all over the country that are just in their little world of a small business and and maybe don't realize how important negotiation is to them. Any recommendations or final thoughts?

Yeah, it's about the way I teach it, the way my company teaches it. It's about long term trusted relationships or great collaboration. It's not a fight, it's not something to be feared. You can use it as a great defense mechanism against a person that's attacking you. But it's not about attacking. It's about great collaboration. You can even convert the person who is attacking you into a collaborator. Just change your mindset. We help people change their minds.

I love it. Well, Chris, thank you again. Our newsletter ironically goes out every Tuesday morning. Been doing it for 15 years. And I'm going to make sure that the links to your site and your event coming up are there and I encourage all of us to. This has been a wake up call of how important understanding negotiation is in our daily lives. Chris, thanks so much for taking some time with us. We truly appreciate it.

Thanks Mark. The pleasure was mine. Thank you.