Blog: The Negotiation Edge

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.

In a good faith negotiation, hope is high and relationships are great! 

What’s wrong with that? Hope is not a strategy.  

Keep reading to learn how to keep yourself from getting blindsided and losing when you find yourself in the throes of a good faith negotiation.

I’m on the wrong side of customs in Australia, and my bags are still inside. I’m not interested in getting stranded or missing my connection, and I’m also not keen on wearing the same clothes for five days and brushing my teeth with the hotel-provided toothbrush.

Here’s how I got out of this jam: I’m here to sign up for the Stupid American of the Year Award.

But first: How did I get into this predicament to begin with?

We’ve all learned many things due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past few months, we’ve even learned three new things about negotiation:

1. You will be faced with three types of counterparts.
2. Safety, trust, and need are the keys.
3. The Accusation Audit™ is the game changer.

Keep reading to learn more about each of these ideas.

In the world of negotiation, the word yes doesn’t always mean the same thing.

At The Black Swan Group, we teach that there are three different types of yeses:

1. The confirmation yes
2. The commitment yes
3. The counterfeit yes

Here’s how to navigate each of them when you find yourself in the throes of a negotiation.

This blog was originally published on 10/26/2015 and updated on 8/27/2020.

“How do I know whether I’ve gotten everything I could have out of a deal?”

This is one of the most common questions people ask me. To be fair, it’s a great question—and one that nags all of us.

What if I told you that you can make sure you haven’t left anything on the table by following a simple three-step process that requires very little energy on your end?

When you use empathy in the business world the way we learned to use it as FBI hostage negotiators, you get revenue. 

Is revenue boring?

In the book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It™, we call this kind of empathy Tactical Empathy™. Very simply, Tactical Empathy is the process of knowingly and intentionally influencing your counterpart’s emotions to make deals. It’s how you give your family a better life.

This blog was originally published on 11/14/2016 and updated on 7/23/2020.

Does yes really always mean yes?

Absolutely not.

When we say yes, we’re committing to something. And immediately after we’ve committed, we begin worrying about what we’ve just signed up for.

Which means, at best, every yes is a conditional yes. And oftentimes, it’s even worse: a counterfeit yes that’s uttered simply to get the other side to shut up.

Would it be ridiculous to find out that getting the other side to say no is actually what you should be gunning for when you sit down at the table?