5 Lessons in Negotiation from an FBI Hostage Negotiator

i'll start with this chris i don't know if you could see this but i'm riding down today's date because today is the day that i become a better negotiator i feel like got the rude where i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a goal less travel never evolution you're a master negotiator former fbi negotiator for twenty plus years now you've been consulting teaching the art of negotiation to business people and anybody who needs negotiation and the funny thing about negotiation is it's this skill we all need that i feel like i personally never got taught i never i it's all self taught anything you learn and one of the things i realized was so often i was negotiating and i didn't even realize it whether it was with an investor or with a with a you with an employee or a customer life is full of negotiations but so i'm excited because i think this is gonna be quite useful so maybe my starting point is this if today was the day i'm get better at negotiation where do i start yeah well first thing is let the other side go first and then is the difference actually listening is a challenge because they're when the other person talking this time you wanna jump in it's almost impossible to resist it's basically if there five six steps to get becoming a better listener the real challenge comes at step two it's a hijacked point if you're listening at all as opposed to completely focusing on your internal dialogue where you're waiting to speak most people get past that stage but if you're listening at all either listening to re robot here's where you're wrong the urge to correct is irresistible i mean like it's insanely impossible to overcome so you'll jump in there to hijack the conversation to correct the urge to correct is so irresistible that we actually use it as one of our negotiation skills i'll i'll say something wrong on purpose because you will not be able to resist the urge to correct me with the truth and it's a great way for me to trigger getting hidden information out of you they won't regret giving me because you won't the old saying we don't remember what was said remember how we felt in the moment dear to correct is so satisfying that you'll never regret telling me something you shouldn't have told me because it felt so good in a moment so that's that's the power of this hijacked moment hijacked to correct now the other thing that you're you'll do frequently is hijacked to relate and it's called storytelling stealing and you you won't mean to do it but the other person will say something it triggers this incredible memory in you of a past experience something it happened to you it's one of the file of common ground and you'll completely be unable to resist that urge to jump in to tell me your story oh my god the same thing happened to me and you feel incredibly good in that moment not realizing how squashed i feel and it's one of the peep one of the reasons why people refer to it to stories stealing because it feels so good to you you can't imagine that what i feel it's like how you had to have a better story than me you had one up me get it do better than me and you can't imagine that that's the case because the memory triggered in you was so good so actually listening through that hijacked moment is one of the big channel when probably the single biggest challenge of becoming a better negotiator because you gotta listen so somebody all the way through and then and here's how powerful it is to make somebody feel heard because just because you've been hurt doesn't mean you feel her just because i do understand does it mean that you feel understood mh so i've at a wedding a couple weeks ago on ireland and it's my first substantive of conversation with the bride the night of the you after the wedding ceremony and as as you could imagine she's unconscious on her feet she's making the rounds through the wedding reception dinner she's obligated to speak to everybody because that's what bride gotta do it at the bride and groom was supposed to walk around say hello everybody make them feel happy that they were there and thank him for shaun up and all i'm doing when i'm talking to her my first real conversation with her is telling her what she went through that day i'm telling her what she went through i said you know this this is this is probably it's probably easier to run a small country in south america than it was to pull off this wedding and you know you're here to celebrate the union of two families and your your husband is here because he's gotta be you know so i'm laying all this outdoor all of of what she's going through showing her completely that i understood everything that she went through leading up to that point she runs to me the next night at dinner and she walks up to me and she gives me this big hug and she says i have no memory of what you said to me last night i just remember how good it made me feel and that's the power of making somebody feel understood she literally couldn't remember work but she felt bonded to me because i thoroughly understood her that's the challenge of making and the the mission and the goal of making feel somebody feel completely heard and understood you have no no idea how many times i wanted to interrupt during that story and i just knew this if i'm ever gonna do it this is the one time i need to just listen the way you're what you're describing and and and also like you've you the urge congratulations on resisting at urge because in the moment you had you're like i wanna speak right that mean good job that urge is huge i have trouble resistant it sometimes and so you're saying that the starting point is skill of truly listening not waiting for your turn to talk not trying to hijack you the what you called the the fallacy of common ground where i think i'm building this bridge with you and you're like dude you just sides swiped what i was trying to tell you and you're you wanna tell me about you what i was trying to tell you how i'm feeling or what i'm going through and what what's happening in my life and so those techniques are not even i mean negotiation is just one small part of that that just seems like how to win friends and influence people that seems like you know it should be relationship you know the foundation of any kind of communication of relationships so is it that negotiation fundamentally is just connecting with other people is it that or is it that these skills apply to other domains i mean what's the right way to think about that well yeah it's across the board i mean and first of all negotiation if your objective is to have a long term relationship of trustworthy we both prosper now if your complete social path that should be your objective because it's low maintenance it's at least amount of effort and it's a maximum amount of money i gonna make i'm you know i i get a number of people i get one of our top level coaching clients said i have made so much more money being collaborative than i ever made being cut your relationships you make deals faster your relationship flow more smoothly that should be your goal like you you if you're the most mercenary person in the world and the only thing you care about is making money then that's the fastest easiest way to make the money but not that's not everybody's definition most people think of it as win lose you know battle of arguments i'm gonna get the upper hand on you i'm gonna i'm gonna have you over a barrel i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna force you to do what i want you know the the people of power negotiations if you will that that puts out of business you lose you lose friends you lose collaborators you lose college alright let's take a quick break because we got something for you you know we pinned a survey to one of our videos so we asked what's the biggest challenge you have right now in your business and the number one thing that you guys said was getting your first hundred customers that was the most popular response and it's of course that's the challenge because if you can't get to a hundred customers you're definitely not gonna get to a thousand so what the team at hubspot did was they went through all the old episodes and they heard the stories where i talked about how i got customers for my first business how sam did it for his first business and some of the guests that came on and talked about what they did how they scrapped and claw and got those initial hundred customers to get the ball rolling and then they put those together in a report it's a pdf it's totally free and you can get it and it'll give you some exploration some ideas around how you might be able to go get your first hundred customers check it out it's in the description below so what is the right way to think about negotiating because in my mind you know my simple to brain if i imagine a a great negotiator if you said think about the best negotiator i think somebody who's either very powerful maybe slightly even intimidating or they're just very charismatic they're able to sort of manipulate when the other side over and i definitely default to a win lose dynamic i'm trying to get as much as i can and they're trying to give as much as they can and let's see who wins this negotiation whether i'm buying a car i'm going and getting a nintendo off of craigslist or wherever it is i'm that's the the default for me and so how do how did you do relationships if you're i mean maybe this just doesn't imply but if you're a hostage negotiator i i mean are you trying to have a relationship with these people that somebody you've never known and they're clearly you know off their rocker if they're let's not let's not put them in the author rocker category let's make that simpler to start with okay let's let's say it's not the first person i would think of i say i a long term with this person and so can you tell me a story about maybe i don't know your first high stakes hostage negotiation and how you approached it and i guess what the mindset is there well i i learned for the three things i suppose to start with i learned the application of empathy from a crisis hotline and what we now refer to as tactical empathy but just you know demonstrating understanding not understanding but demonstrating understanding in a way that the other side feels heard it draws them into telling you more removes you as a threat first move a negotiation is to remove yourself as a threat because why would they make a great deal with you if you're a threat why would they they they might make a deal with you if you're a threat but they're not gonna make a great deal with you so one of the one of the first really counter moves is to move yourself as a threat and hostage negotiator does that with a non threatening voice calming soothing late night fm voice and expressing genuine concern for the bad guy like i'm i'm i'm here to get everybody out that includes you mister bad guy now whether or not you let me get you out is gonna be up to you but that's my objective first first of all and i need to find out whether or not you're good with that some some baggage i wanna die i need to know that right away now here's the counter crazy counterintuitive thing when you talk about relationships hostage negotiators have repeat customers so i might not see you again but if i get you out alive another of negotiators going to which means if i lied to you if i deceive you if i didn't take the time to understand you that's gonna be your experience when you run across the next guy and things are probably gonna go bad so in point of fact you know the the whole idea of a long term relationship i i i gotta i gotta be willing to step in to be open with that and you're gonna be bad guy gonna be able to smell that what was your first big case first big situation where you you had to deal with a a hostage situation and you came out with a successful outcome it was a very rare event that i was lucky enough to get involved in a bank robbery with hostages where we trapped them inside with the hostages and so what happened you get the call that this is going down and i mean just well i mean what was that like tell me tell me about it so we didn't get the call we we became aware of it and we just went which is a a really a philosophy that i live by which is called run to trouble it's it's amazingly liberating if your philosophy is run to trouble and so we ran a trouble we showed up since it's a bank fbi i n ny are showing up the negotiation team from both sides knew each other really well we had a great relationship we had a bank robbery task force in the new york of the time so the the pd and the bureau already aligned on the criminal prosecution so the two negotiations teams blended and the the first hostage negotiator on phone was a was a pd detective i was his coach the pd commander was in charge of the negotiation operation center on the inside the bureaus lead negotiator or coordinator at the time went to the outside of any event any voice to voice bull stuff was needed when negotiated for a number of hours the commander decided to sort of disrupt the dynamic a little bit it was stalemate at a very low threat level and so he pulled the penny negotiator and he put me on the phone with the bad guys and i had one of the bank one of the bank robber out about ninety minutes later would you start with when you got on the phone we went disruptive to start with which is was not the usual protocol the commander sensed gall great instincts great instincts he listened long enough to realize that the secret to gaining the upper hand and the conversation was gonna be how each conversation closed bad guy was constantly saying hey i gotta go they're coming they're gonna hear me or i gotta i gotta put you on hold i put you on speaker and and he just get off the phone so he said no matter what happens you extend every call you end every call he tries to get off the phone i don't care what you gotta do you keep on a phone five seven ten seconds longer than you end the call we're gonna take control of this but taking control of the end and the other thing we normally the normal handoff off is hannah hannah phone up to the next negotiator and the next negotiator does a an elaborate summary of everything's been set up now because what you anticipate is a bad guy saying like oh chris who's this chris guy does he even know what hell going on right and so normally chris gonna say have been sitting here for a long time and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so i'm up to speed you don't have to why do you hand it off at all it could be for a variety of reasons normally it's to take a harder line okay no negotiation team whether it's business or hostage hands a negotiator off to another negotiator to be nicer ever business or hostage if there's a change in negotiators on the other side it is always to take a harder line always and why why is it better to handed it off to somebody else who'll take the harder line versus you yourself escalating to a harder stance it's gonna catch you other side off guard a little it's destabilizing without necessarily being threatening right away and if i've been a push over up to now and suddenly i'm demanding you have reason to believe i've been you know which guy is the real you the other guy or this guy right so there's a there's an authenticity issue involved and so how did you get out you said ninety minutes later you got hostages out what resolved it or what was the breakthrough point the inflection point for that one well i you know i threw the the first guy was high highly manipulative negotiator i in hindsight i now referred to him as the great corporate ceo negotiator a great corporate ceo if you're in negotiations with them it would be like oh my god you know my board's gonna fire me if i make a bad deal you know i mean there's my board is gonna kill me if i agree to that you know blaming people that are not in the room right so that that guy doesn't get cornered diminishing his influence at the table because if he does that that had to do this call in all the shots he's just smart enough to knock and corner at the table was always gonna blame somebody outside the room so the first bank robber at chase was telling us how dangerous his colleagues were and he he kept saying like you know these guys are crazy like you know i'm scared of when when he was calling all the shots so i took a harder line with him i was taking away comfort level and being more confrontational without being aggressive he gets rattled and while he's trying to figure out what to do hands the phone off to the other bank robber on the inside who does not like how this is going down it was not part of his plan to be stuck in a bank surrounded by snipers with fifty caliber guns that might you know put a gaping hole in his forehead which he he would no longer could wear his favorite hat if that happened like he's scared a death about getting out of there and so i start in with them and i'm i've i still got the late night fm dj voice which is calming and soothing to him and then the real critical issues where somebody else on the team heard what was really bothering him and they handed me a note and i listened and i and i adjusted my stance in a moment on the note and he felt so heard and understood then in very short order was meeting him out in front of the bank he was surrendering to me wow what was what was on the net we were pressuring him to let a hostage go they had three hostages on the inside shocking that the hostage negotiators would be trying to let the bad guy get the bad guys the let hostage go and the note to me said ask him if he wants to come out and in in a blink of an eye i switched from ask him about the hostages and letting one go to saying do you wanna come up and his response to me was i don't know how i do it which is a great big giant yes just just tell me how get me out of here well i wanna count and when when we had him on that thread then i completely focused on the consequences that he was looking at how he was gonna get out of there he was most concerned about what was gonna happen to him in the instant he stepped out the door and as soon as i got enough reassurance i almost i almost had this guy out and then i got another note as it turned out from the same negotiator and then o said tell him you meet him outside and i said you wanna just meet me front and he says yeah i'm ready to end this shit and so we scrambled i i went around i got on the bowl on on the outside i got him out in front of the bike listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and gross smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot design for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod when you talk to ceos and business people you know obviously different situation than a hostage negotiation what's the first message you try to get through to well you say you have a room of a hundred of the most you know a fortune one hundred ceos we're in a room and they're all here to listen to you europe on the stage what's the first thing you really wanna get through to them to to income where that this information they need that they could only get at the table i remember a long time ago somebody wrote a book i don't know if they call it a ten commandments on negotiation you know i don't i remember what it was call but i remember taking a look at it and one of the one of the commandments was and which is i completely disagree with by the way it is what it is which is your experience you were not new it's not your first rodeo you've dealt with these people before it is what it is so i'll i'll ask these ceos when are you ever in a negotiation where you don't have closely held in information you don't wanna reveal to the other side whether it's your budget whether it's your pressures deadlines on other deals quarterly profits demands from your board when is there ever a negotiation where you don't have proprietary information that at the other side had it it would change everything right you have yeah like all the time and i go i go okay so that means the other side's got that too which means it isn't what it it's not what it is and the other side will tell you if they could trust you not to hurt them with it so your first negotiation is trust because they got stuff as they can tell you it would change everything and that gets people out of the perspective is i gotta make my case or i gotta what's my leverage what's their leverage what are our giveaways what are our what are what are our a lot of executives say you know what are our must haves and what are our giveaways well if they've got proprietary information that would change everything then you you must have and your giveaways could be completely wrong right and you have and then so you've got imperfect information and what you wanna do is you wanna sit down and gather information and trust and then rethink what the best deal looks like and it's really hard to get experienced executives to do that because you know i know the lay landscape is not my first rodeo i've seen this before getting them out of this is something i've seen before is a really hard day right okay so that's great so i'm a i'm a executive in that room and i hear you and i say okay first of all even though i've been through a lot of negotiations there's more to learn so i'm open minded to this secondly i buy i buy what you're saying which is that if i had more perfect information we can we can make a better deal that might be mutually beneficial if we were willing to trust each other what are the simple ways to build that trust when you do meet with the other side and they're naturally initially gonna not not just be super willing to trust you what are these simple ways to build trust well the the the simplest way to build trust and gather information simultaneously it is nothing anybody's ever learned okay so basically what they're you're saying here is number one i gotta build trust number i gotta get the information so number one build trust common ground let's find out what we have in common did you play little league baseball growing up the the you kids you know you made what are kids doing you know how many times have been married know this whole common ground thing because they felt so good when they shared it they didn't realize that they were squash the other side so there's there's that's one of the worst ways to build trust and then gathering information you talk gather information bias asking good questions well questioning somebody makes him feel cornered which then diminishes trust because nobody trusts you your corner them or interrogated them so the the the counter answer is the you know the hostage negotiators tried and true tool called and hostage negotiation it was a emotional label in business negotiations negotiation just a label and i i i can start triggering information out of you right away if i sit down and i'll take a a sense of you and i said this to a colleague recently i hadn't seen him months i looked at him instead of saying hi how are you how are you doing today how can i help you and anita how nonsensical how questions i looked at this guy and i just i just kinda soaked them in for about three seconds maybe it sounds short but always feels like an eternity and i said you you seem centered and he set there for a second he said you know i just came off the mountain and the mine is where i go to meditate and i work out and he's all this asian philosophies and martial arts it's makes him feel phenomenal he said the last time you saw me i hadn't been on the month and months and i was just wound really tight and you know i just came off the mountain and i've been up there for about a months now if i'm listening he just told me a lot about himself and he also told me where he's at right now if i just sat down and said hey nick how are you he looked at me and went they are fine you right right and you did it with a observation a label but it was almost a compliment too it wasn't like you said oh you seem stressed out where you'd get defensive right you you said you you seem centered it is it important if it's a positive or negative label in that way it's just gotta be what it is okay like if penis seems stressed i said you seem stressed or if he seems stress one i like when somebody seems stressed is it's probably that day and i'll say tough day and you can watch them get their balance back when you say that and so the observation gotta be you have to observe what it is because of if they look stressed and i go like you seem centered then i'm an idiot okay so you you put the label to give some information that was what what happens next what's what's the next move to to continue to build the trust yeah well you know i'll probably i a i may feed it back to him i'm gonna i'm gonna sit back and you know i'm gonna let it i'm gonna let the other person talk and then i'm i'm gonna see if they got a next step and then i'm it's it's a little bit like there's gonna be a little bit of a dance here we may need to take a circuit route to where we both need to be but if you pick the root we'll get there faster by pick the route i you know i don't know what where where where you're going through i don't know where the friction points are for you i don't i don't know what i don't know what what's gonna make you lee i'm gonna let you pick the root because it's gonna be faster so i'm a sit back and wait to see if you if you pick a next step i mean try to trigger you to see if we can go is it you know is it ridiculous to talk about what we're here here for so you caught that question that yeah it was a no oriented question yeah instead of do you wanna talk about what we're here for which you're drive for yes because that going for s creates friction but going for no creates protection safe price no no it wouldn't be ridiculous for us to do that there you go exactly yeah and so that's how i wanna when i when i wanna when i wanna maybe go someplace place i'll i'll trigger the decision via no versus yes mh and you know there's all these words when it comes to negotiation the sort of classic words you know compromise tell me but tell me your thoughts on compromise do you think the united states congress is deserves an a plus rating no but they compromise all the time think so if you think politicians are awesome then you think compromises is good and it's a crazy thing about it because everybody preach compromise how do you feel about compromising your principles and not good yeah it's it gives you an instantaneous uneasy feeling inside right so it's compromise is to by definition make something lose lose and that is not compatible with a long term relationship of trust and prosperity it's it's compatible with being a c player mediocrity compromise is correlates very strongly to mediocrity and you gotta decide whether or not you're good with mediocrity and so what's the replacement to compromise because i don't think it goes in saying i can't wait to compromise they sort of feel like it's a necessary evil i guess we'll have to compromise in order for us to to agree and i think that's where people land settle for that that's the mediocrity part so what's the more more effective more powerful way of thinking is besides expecting to and accepting a accepting that you need to compromise well let me find out where let me make you feel heard first if i can make you feel completely heard on your position my guess is more than thirty percent of the deals were made in your in in my favor on the spot and about half of the deals are made on the spot once the other side feels completely earned but let's say let's say it's only twenty five percent and it's it's well more than that alright so now you've knocked out you've just accomplished you have to negotiate twenty five percent less because you just made the deal dealerships by making other person filler just not twenty percent of your work off the table now what happens the remaining seventy five percent their position going to move closer to yours and they're going to be more honest with you about what exactly the position is they're gonna tell you what they perceive that it must haves to be they're gonna move away from their throw away right away so either gonna make the deal on the spot or e i'm gonna find out what we really have to negotiate about immediately which is also gonna save me a massive amount of time now there's a difference between compromise and high value trades and you know i'm not a hundred percent sure whether or not this is a great example but i like it steel is two percent carbon and ninety eight percent iron so let's imagine the carbon and iron were two negotiating factors and they said we gotta compromise and go fifty fifty because we need we need a fifty percent representation here now been point of fact two percent of one person's idea and ninety eight percent of the other person's idea made a stronger ally that mankind had never seen before so your real challenge is what's the blend not the compromise right what's the blend you know there was a guy who came on this podcast and he said something great i don't know if this aligns with your philosophy and he said he told me something that really helped me in negotiating he said you know most people when they go into negotiation they see themselves on one side of the table and then the other person on the other side the table and it's sort of me versus you and i'm tugging this while i'm pulling this one you're pulling that way and he said this is a guy who buys companies and he said the best thing we did was we realize that that's the wrong mental model the right mental model is meaning and you are sitting on the same side of the table and across the table the problem maybe the problem is you think the price is x and i think it may be why you know there's some problem that's preventing us from just doing this deal instantaneously but it's not me versus virtue it's us together jointly looking at this problem on the other side of the table and that was a very like effective visual metaphor for me is that something you would i don't know agree with is that something you you you would you probably know more about that than i do no i agree completely i mean for the longest time on my side we've always said the adversaries is a situation and what you just did was explain what that model looks like through that example and it was very real when you describe it that way and yeah that's a very smart way to describe it and where does a leverage come commit come into this because you know when i've negotiated i always think about you know leverage deals i deals i feel you know i do but i'm not a hundred percent happy with not not too happy with it's typically because i feel like the other i had a lot more leverage in the situation and this was my best option to go with it was ninety eight percent their blend and two percent mine and in other situations situation where i have leverage or create leverage or i apply leverage you know i tend to feel like i do better but is that a is that too simplistic like how do you think about the word leverage because for me that's always been key in negotiation it's not simplistic it's a step up from flounder entirely to you know and it's gonna sound harsh i mean you get yourself to b level negotiator there you'll never get you never get yourself to a a plus on leverage because leverage is the ability to inflict on and if you're making deals based on the ability to inflict harm these these are not those those they'll go stable long term relationships they don't go for the other side sharing information with you that'll that'll change everything because if you got leverage you're a threat and why would they give you important information if you're a threat and vice versa mh how much leverage do they have on you holy shit i can't give them i can't tell them that they'll let more leverage oh my god so it can be useful in some situations but it'll never get you to the best outcome and because in many cases you can talk you can think about when you made a better deal because of leverage then that becomes really addict really satisfying but and you lose track of the deals that you should've have made but you didn't because you didn't have a that thought you had leverage or right you know the the it's a it's a very limiting factor it gets you you know into a passing grade and it just doesn't get you to the top of the class gotcha and so what does get me to the top of the class so we've talked a little bit about it right i truly listening using labels to collect information plus make the other side feel you know heard and understood what else is kinda key to get me to the to the top of the when it comes to negotiation well what you're really negotiating what what people really don't understand is how poor trust is and trust is based on your how predictable you are take out the word trust to put in the word predictability you all it automatically become more trustworthy because you're predictable and so then the ability to collaborate as we deal with issues because there's always gonna be issues you know the the making the deal is the beginning you gotta get into implementation and if we don't trust each other then problems are gonna crop up and we're not gonna tell the other side if we've compromised i'm gonna resent that compromise and when problems crop up i'm gonna keep my mouth shut it's gonna hurt you because i didn't like i didn't like the leverage you used on me i didn't like the way you forced me into this deal yeah you know what threaten me find find make me cooperate make me tell you about problems in the early stages as opposed to when they're turning it to the land mine has gone on it's really an issue of you know how we're gonna do the implementation and so the whole issue of you know do we start and then and then you're even gonna talk about how we're gonna pro cross the bridge bridges when we get to because there are gonna be problems you know i i i'm gonna train a long time ago before the book came out as ceo said this is my cfo and i want you to teach him how to put clauses and contracts i don't penalize the other side for non performance and my thought was if pen the other side of for non performance is your biggest problem it started a lot sooner because you're not making great deals if you can't you're telling me you can't get your deals to implement it that's what you're telling me so you need to back way up and find out what the problem was well before that because implementation is where it's at and if we don't trust each other if i can't count on you to work through problems with me gonna cost us a lot of money alright this episode is brought to you by mercury they are the finance platform of choice for over two hundred thousand companies shouldn't be surprised because i use it myself for not one not to i have eight different mercury accounts i have seven for different companies that i i'm a part of and then i have my own personal account because now they have a personal banking which is really cool feature i highly highly recommend it like i said i use it myself the reason why is because the way that mercury works is beautiful it's very intuitive and you could tell that it's actually made by a starter founder it's an entrepreneur you could tell somebody made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and and annoy and decided to you know actually fix it himself and really any type of entrepreneur you are let's say you're an agency well one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices easily create them send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers well you can do that inside mercury and so i think that mercury is great highly recommend you check it out and thank you for sponsoring the show for more information check out mercury dot com mercury is a financial technology company not a bank check show notes for details what are some examples of kind of the great deals you've seen maybe the great deal makers are great deals that you've you've seen i think oprah is a great deal maker and visible examples of that he gets lance off armstrong to come on tv and answer yes or no questions straightforward as to whether or not he dope and whether or not he did things now i'm not a acquainted with over i am a acquainted with lance and i like lance a lot and when you look at the the totality of the circumstances you get quite a different picture as opposed to somebody given you a very narrow view but anyway the lance on a armstrong interview he wasn't caught off guard by those questions that was a negotiation between him and her in advance as to whether or not he was gonna get on camera and what she was gonna asking you don't see anything in the media about lance armstrong being upset with oprah winfrey which means they negotiated a great deal upfront that they were both good with and then they executed it and it was a no bad blood after the fact that to me that's a great deal and that's an example and a reason why and also and if you look at the totality of oprah think about the fact that she's dealt with some of the most difficult to handle people on our celebrities who are used to getting their way at all times and she she she doesn't having any dust up city arguments within any of them now how is that possible when in today's day and age the celebrities love to have feud with each other all the time as a way to gather attention but that's not her method of operation and her such success is extraordinary especially thinking about where she started and i i'd take i'd take some very small percentage of her network and be quite happy do you have a sense of what she does or how how she accomplishes that the the interesting thing is it's very similar to did the chase manhattan bank because i was talking about a woman talk with a woman in los angeles several years ago to work for oprah and i'm laying all this out and i said the last impression is the lasting impression we didn't lieutenant did a buy instinct that the chase bank i found out later on from i was at a a gala poll conference on human nature you know the gala poll a long time collectors of polling data of course they're sitting on decades of human performance information and this one speaker stands up and says people don't remember things how they happened they remember and they don't remember at how it started they remember the most intense moment and how it ended the last impression is the lasting impression so i'm laying this on my colleague who worked for oprah she says oh yeah oprah live by that all of her whole life she said in in the entertainment business the joke is in an limo out of a taxi as soon as they get what a want from you you know you're out hitch out front finding your own way out but at oprah it was in an limo out in an limo and the philosophy was no matter what happened on any interaction no matter what you had to make sure they felt respected heard appreciated and loved at the very end and i've had several conversations related to me when oprah i didn't see something i'd eye with somebody else and her last words are will always no matter what i will always love you and i will always be supportive of you and the last impression is the lasting impression and she's she's a master how do you prep for an interview for negotiation so you usa you're gonna go try to make a deal and some people have this idea of like a what's it going bat we're the best alternative to whatever you know they they sort of think about their their desired outcome and then the worst case scenario they're gonna accept other people do lots of research and they try to try to you know find as much as they can about the other party to be you know fully armed when they walk in for some people who do power moves how how do you prepare for for something that's in negotiation in the business sense in the business context it's gonna be combination combination of two things i'm gonna first of all i'm gonna think about what negatives you're gonna harbor about me in advance and i'm and and i'm not gonna and everybody everybody got that actually interestingly enough if everybody could do this right away even if it's a first interaction what are the things you wanna deny i don't want you to think that i'm gonna be greedy i don't i don't want you to think i'm i'm i'm know this slimy salesperson i don't want you to think that i'm here to maximize my opportunity i don't want you to think i'm i'm wasting your time that i always tell people what would you wanna deny walking in that your gut instinct telling you a negative is air and you make the shift from a denial to the straight observation but become probably gonna seem great i'm probably just gonna seem like another slimy salesperson i'm probably gonna seem like somebody that's wasting your time that then instantly makes me the straight shooter the honest honest person and so i'm gonna think about what negatives you're gonna you are likely harbor because the brain is seventy five percent negative and that's the fastest way to for me to build a relationship deactivate the negatives it make me look like a straight shoe which increases your trust in me and then there's gonna be some stuff that you're gonna be thinking about that you're gonna be offended if i don't appreciate and you're gonna be offended if i don't appreciate how hard you work the fact that that i'm talking to you at all means you have value and that you have legitimate reasons in your own right to be respected and admired and it's taking what a lot of people would refer to as flattery but then articulating that it's not vac as flattery it's genuine appreciation from where you're coming from and i might say something like you worked very hard to get to where you are today you have been in this business for a very long time and you know what you're doing otherwise if you didn't you wouldn't be sitting here in front of me at all and you have things that are valuable and worthy of my attention and of my respect and you put those two things together and you kinda got empathy that's what you were calling tactical empathy earlier right yeah because the it there's there's brain signs that backs up that approach particularly starting with the negatives before the positives right and why is it so important for i mean this is gonna sound like a dumb question but like it it just seems like it's the most important thing so i wanna talk a little bit more about it which is why is it so important for somebody to feel understood and heard and why do we default it seems like what we default to is i can't wait to make my case so the you so that you understand me and i feel hurt right like right right it seems like the biggest swing i could make as a negotiator is to let go of my need of that or at least initial need of that and really hone in on your need for that and if i just did that one switch i'm a much better a much better trust builder and therefore a much better negotiator when it is that the right summaries from what you said yeah you know it it really is and it's fascinated to think about the fact that people come to the table with such a desire to be heard and to make their case they can't imagine that's what's driving the other side it's blinding and neuroscience wise what differences it make to make somebody feel hurt i will trigger to release a in you of your neuro chemicals oxytocin and serotonin if you get ahead of oxytocin in interacting with me you're gonna bond with me and you're gonna be far more honest with me oxytocin just it's bonding and truth serotonin is a drug a satisfaction which means you're gonna be less demanding so if i can make you feel heard you're bond with me you're more honest with me and you're less demanding that's a pretty good start for a negotiation how does how does chris v you know buy a car how do you do in day to day everyday situations have you had any any implementation of any of your techniques that on like the low steak stuff we've seen the hustle negotiation but like what do you do when you're on craigslist do you need a couch or you're you know you're at the market yeah well you know i i tell the other side why what they are selling is worth what they're asking you know what i make their case because that's what they're gonna say to me so what i've done is i've just now left them with nothing to say and then like see i can i can i can i can pound you down on price i mean i i and i still if i choose to be i can be i can really pound you down but i better never need to come back to you for anything and there are a few deals that are complete one offs so if i'm buying a car depending upon who i'm buying it from i will tell you i do not have great regard for car dealerships across the board i no longer ever get any vehicle i own service that car dealership i don't care what the warranty says because i don't trust them so i don't mind passing down a car dealer right i got no problem with that and i and i will do that to them i will i will make their case and then i will become very passive aggressive and you know my favorite is how much wilson to how i supposed to pay that well you would have said all the things that i just got insane if i hadn't said first but now if i said all if i if i took away all the wind out of your sails took all the bullets out of your gun then when i give you the opportunity point that got at me you got empty you got empty chambers you got nothing to say and i know and your dealer a margin and in in real short order i'm gonna get you down to your bottom line and then if i like it we'll make a deal if i don't i'm more walking or but i better that i better i better not ever need to come back to you because once i killed you on price you are not gonna forget that and you were not gonna lift a finger to help me ever again right okay what about other sort of day to day negotiations this is i i got little kids i have a five year old a four year old and no one year old and so my my most frequent negotiation is with them and i'm just curious do you have any parenting negotiation tips maybe it's just don't negotiate at all but i don't know i find myself in that pickle a lot now well you know with your kids this is the you know their are ages for thinking if you will but you're what you're really trying to do as a as a as a parent has help your kids think and so recognizing where they are in the stages i heard a long time ago up age five treat kid like a king five to fifteen you know working like an servant at fifteen let them go there's a lot of brain science that that overlaps very closely with that in the development of the brain but all along the way is you you want your kids to feel slightly challenged and you want them to get them to think now that do they have the ability to process that at about age four slash five six they start to cross over into ages where they're starting to process that and what a lot of parents wanna do is just order kids around like go to bed because i'm day i'm why because i said so i'm because i'm the father that's why right well that's not that's not really helping them think it's demonstrating to them that the only way you can get stuff done is by through use of force now that doesn't mean you wanna put up a bay behavior either there's know one of my favorite videos is some you know this mom trying to talk her five year old son into getting in the into backseat of the suv and she's come on you know what and he's crying to make a noise and his nine year old sister walks up and grabs them and throws them in the suv and they get up they they leave at some point in time you get a toss a kid in the car but in the meantime you know your your your jobs parents just help them think and and it's not to shield them but it's to challenge them and make them better people help them think and after all these years of helping people be better negotiators and you teach certain you know and certain frameworks for for this what do you think is the most easy to implement of all of the frameworks meaning the easiest way to get points on the board and start the process of improving in this area well it it it's really gonna be the different ways to repeat back to somebody what they just said you know label you're you're focusing on their emotions or affect mirrors and para phrases focuses specifically on what they said it seems like it's got a waste of time and it ends up being a relationship accelerator which then is a deal making accelerator so how do you do it the more you can make somebody feel hurt the less you could be a threat and they're yeah sometimes charm is involved charm and if here very close yeah but who's the most interesting at the table if i make you think i'm the most interesting person okay cool we had a great conversation but are we of gonna make great deals now if i made you think you're the most interesting person are likelihood for collaboration is very high right and how how do you find that balance or do you need a balance between like my business partner ben he's like this he goes into a lunch he asks so many questions because he's genuinely curious and he's he you tends to know a lot about the other person and what they're interested in because he's paid attention he observe he remembers what they said he remembers where they went and he's just so he'll feed them things that he knows they're interested in not to minute but them he's just that's like who he is i don't know it's his nature is to be that way and he leaves the lunch and they've talked ninety eight percent of the time he's talked two percent of the time he's asked them a couple questions that he knows everything about them they know nothing about him and they go this was amazing we gotta do this again this was one of the this is so fun i would love to do this again and you know he comes back at the same time i'm curious if there's a sort of a downside to go too far in that direction where you know you haven't sort of demonstrated value or you know provided the other side with an you know sort of a almost like a in tech like an api connection like an ability to understand what needs are and how they might be able to help or intersect with what you what you do is there a danger in going too far down to kind of like let the other side talk route well first of all curiosity is a superpower like it and it and it like it is a superpower like it's ridiculous where it shows up in terms of your survival their survival long term relationships your resilience your ability to discover new things like curiosity i can't tell you so many different ways it's a superpower so now what's the danger at some point in time we gotta keep in mind while we're talking and if you get too curious then we have a finite amount of time we got an hour together if i if we got an hour together and we get nothing accomplished what do you gonna remember you really enjoy the conversation but we didn't get anything done so you might feel like it was a waste of your time you have to be aware the progress that has to be made and i my team what we always do is we set finite periods of time for meetings period and we never go over it doesn't matter where we are we'll we'll set another meeting before we'll go over a meeting because time is this commodity is so limited that if i don't help you manage your time and your interactions with me then person you're gonna start avoid me well speaking of you seem like a guy who is very conscious of his time i wanna make sure when it looks like we're eleven minutes over and so i wanna i didn't mind i enjoyed the conversation i i do wanna tell some people about some stock yeah tell please so we've started this new thing called the black swan negotiation community and you go to our website and find it and it really is that across the board amazon one stop shopping for where you are in your negotiation journey you can't afford anything come into the community because membership is free and get started getting a return on the investment of your time in terms of dollars so you get started on your journey any incremental change could be monumental very quickly awesome well chris thank you so so much for coming on also for i don't know all the content that you put out over the years i've always picked and picked and chewed on different little bits of it especially whenever i was in the process of either raising money or selling my company it was these very brief periods of time maybe three weeks four weeks six six weeks where the value of my years of effort would swing by fifty percent depending on how good i was at negotiating and understanding you know the other side and being able to find a a mutual beneficial deal so it's one of these arts where it can make a really big difference at a very small amount of time being you know the difference between being bad at it versus good at it versus great at it and so i i i appreciate you coming on and helping us be a little better at it today i was a pleasure i enjoyed the conversation i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break because as you know we are on the hubspot podcast network but we're not the only ones there's other podcast podcasts on this network too and maybe you like them maybe you should check them out one of them that i wanna draw your attention to is called nudge by phil ag and whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make the new habits you could do the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference that's what that podcast is all about check it out it's called nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcast