Blog: The Negotiation Edge

To get your point across AND save your relationships, implement this mechanism when you’re in a disagreement:

“Before I disagree, let me make sure I can summarize your point of view …”

They will listen. And they will be warned in advance that you have an opposing viewpoint. No one is misled, and your integrity is intact. (Although your integrity was intact anyway. Tactical Empathy™ isn’t agreement. Those of you who have used Tactical Empathy have already found this to be true.)

What makes a good negotiator? Constant practice and a dedication to learning. And what’s one way you can continue learning? Read. Here are two must-read books for negotiators.

What are The Black Swan Group’s 7 Deadly Sins of Negotiation™ and how can you ensure you don’t fall victim to them? Here’s what you need to know.

The Black Swan Method™ was originally designed for the cut-throat negotiator. Check out this quick clip to learn how to deal with these folks (and keep reading through to the end of the article for a bonus tip): 

At Black Swan, we teach our clients all sorts of tactics they can employ to achieve better outcomes in their personal and professional lives.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to flip the script a bit and talk about tactics to avoid. Here are three common negotiating tactics that make it that much harder for you to get the results you want:

1. Cutting your price
2. Emulating the lizards
3. Not finding out

Let’s explore each of them so you can learn what to do to avoid stacking the odds against yourself.

You enter a negotiation. What if there’s a Black Swan-trained ninja on the other side?

In such a scenario, you’re most likely dealing with one of three tactics:

1. How am I supposed to do that?
2. A No-oriented question™ 
3. Some sort of Label™ (that’s giving you a bad feeling)

Accusation Audits™ and Labels™ (more specifically, Asking Labels™) are two expert concepts that have evolved significantly since Never Split the Difference was published. 

Read on to learn how we’re advising our best clients.

This blog was originally published on 11/26/2018 and updated on 10/22/2020.

Seven seconds.

That’s all the time you have to make a first impression, and you need to make a good one.

But how?

Watch these short two-minute videos to find out what you need to do during those seven seconds. 

(Hint: It’s not confidence, and you don’t get there by asking yes-oriented questions. You also don’t get there by clubbing them with their first name over and over again.)

How can you practice negotiation skills by yourself? 

Read on to learn how to build yourself into an elite negotiator using a technique great athletes use: visualization.

Everyone wants to get to the decision maker (the DM). They’re the person we need to persuade to get what we want, after all.

But the decision maker isn’t always at the table when we are. Here are three tips that will make you much more effective when you find yourself in that scenario.