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During the Negotiation - Leverage Agreement

What I like to do here, is try to leverage agreements. Specifically, how do you listen to their answers? What are you listening for? I do think you have to listen very, very carefully. Agreement is everything, we know this. What the most, biggest predictors of positive outcomes, Self-Disclosure, which we talked about, interestingly, Cooperation, and creative problem solving. You want to frame this with them as let's figure this out together. Not I want, you give, but let's try to figure this out. I really want to make this a win-win for us. How you listen, there's a couple things that I want you to try to listen for. I find that it's easier to listen when you're trying to fill in the blank. So, Cheat Sheet Fill-Ins, leave, if you can, two bullets blank at the bottom of every column. If you leave two bullets blank and you know that you have to fill in the blank while you're listening, it helps you have kind of a goal for why you're listening. So leave two bullets blank at the bottom and...

try to fill in the blank. Than these all come together. Anytime you can say, me too, I agree, I feel the same way, you're listening for those moments, because every time you say, I agree, me too, we feel the same way, that's my goal too, you're creating these nice little mutual ties of agreement and that's how you get them into that agreement mindset. I call this goal-oriented listening. Your goal is to fill in the blanks or to say me too. That is what you're listening for, those highlighted moments. Listening for points of agreement, mutual interest, and similarities. How you talk, okay, so you've listened, you've heard it, you've filled in the blank, I like to in that first third, the transition from the first third into the second third is now talking about all the similarities. So now you're taking the ball, right, you've been going back and forth, and now you're saying, okay I'm gonna transition us into money talk. What you're talking about is, so I know that for your company, this transition is incredibly important, it's probably very stressful, what I want to do is make it so that your team has actual tools to make a good transition. You mentioned, you said, I agree, and you're literally pointing to different ideas on your sheet or things they've brought up as a way to transition them into talking about money. I call this the Yes Ladder, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit. Specific examples of how this sounds. In the beginning, oh you're learning how to garden. I love to garden. I'm so excited to work with you. Me too! This should be a perfect partnership. Our goal is to increase customer retention. Absolutely, that is one of the 3 pillars in our presentation. Right, taking their words and making sure that those are part of that pitch. This is also called verbal matching, and specifically this works online as well. This is a great technique if you're doing a lot of email negotiations. Participants were asked to negotiate via virtual chat, and those who were told to mimic, so in the first 10 minutes they were said, mimic back someones answers and words, which sounds crazy to us, but that actually achieved significantly better results than those who mimicked later or not at all. That first third is really important for rapport building. So the more that you can verbally match, the better. By the way, in some instances, mimicking solely at the end of the negotiation resulted in worse outcomes. So I am really talking about this first third. Especially 'cause I think that what happens at the end is someone's like, wait a minute, this didn't happen before, but now that we're talking about money, all of a sudden you're marrying me. Nonverbal matching, so we talked a little about, there was a question about nonverbal before. I have to be really careful when I teach nonverbal mirroring because it can be done very creepily, right, just 'cause they like put their hand on their face doesn't mean that I also want you to put your hand on your face, right, but retail sales people who subtly mimicked customers speech and behavior are 17% more successful than those who don't, so it gives you a little edge. What I would say here is the key is subtle. These customers, actually after the sales experience, reported a more positive experience with that person. When you mimic nonverbal rapport, you build, when you mimic nonverbal, you build greater rapport. There's a lot of studies on this, however, I do not want you to mirror negative body language. So if their in blocking body language and slumped over and have their hand on their face, you do not want to mirror that negativity, 'cause then it creates this really awful cycle of negative body language. More so, it's a subtle matching. So if someone comes in, and their like, hey it's so good to meet you, if you're like, hi nice to see you, good to see you, that's a little bit of a nonverbal mismatch. So what I do, is if they have a lot of energy, I kind of just dial my energy up a little bit. If their a little bit more calm, a little bit more stoic, I might dial my expressiveness down a little bit. It's more of a dial and less of a switch, and that feels a little bit more authentic. Again, power of body language, if you have trouble mirroring, that's in that course, I'm not gonna go into it here. So you primed, which goes to asking, which goes to advice seeking, and agreeing, so you're mirroring. Now we're gonna go on to what's called the Yes Ladder. Has anyone heard of the Yes Ladder before? So the Yes Ladder is an idea that when you're in a really good negotiation, you are both focusing on points of agreement. I offer value here, you see value here. I want to solve this pain point, that's your pain point too, and on this, you're able to climb deeper into agreement. That's kind of the metaphor of why it's called the Yes Ladder. There's great evidence of the Small Yes of starting with those small agreements. I don't know if you've seen this study, but researchers asked people to put a very large, drive carefully sign outside of their house. Only 20% of people said yes, but when they asked them to put up a smaller sign first, just in their window, that said drive carefully, 76% yes, and then eventually ended up saying yes to the larger billboard. In other words, asking for the small agreement works in negotiations as well. That is why I want you to be constantly referring back to your Negotiation Cheat Sheet of where they agree and disagree on assets and pain. So you'll notice, I have a section here in your Negotiation Cheat Sheet called Agreements. What you want to put in here is where you think you're going to agree most, and start with the smallest one. So where do you think you're gonna both agree. For example, with a wedding photographer, your smallest agreement is definitely gonna be having a smooth, calm wedding, right, real easy. Next agreement would be having amazing photos that last a lifetime. Maybe the next agreement would be making sure that you're helping deal with family drama. It's a little bit more of a specific one. So, the reason why I have a couple of lines here is I actually want you to think about where could my rapport building questions take us? Where do I want to go in the frame of the negotiation? For those of you who do this naturally, you may not even need that part, right, you already do this, but for those of you like me, who need a little bit more of a step-by-step, I literally think through my rapport building questions systematically. I think, I want to start on industry news, than I want to go to teambuilding, than I want to go to new hires, than I want to go to offering a really good training, and I actually will outline it that way, 'cause that helps me with the flow of a negotiation. So in the Yes Ladder, you're starting with this big goal, right, and the goal is right on top of your Yes Ladder. That one money goal and those BATNAs. Working backwards, where do you agree? Where are the similarities between the two of you? Where are you aligned? This could be values or interests, and this is how I sort of think about the Yes Ladder. So there are four different buckets that you could potentially agree with. Again, I'm going through these very fast 'cause there's prompts in your workbook for you. Logistically, example, so it looks like we have a timeline of about 8 weeks, is that right? That's a point on the Yes Ladder. You're saying, I can make 8 weeks work, can you? Yes, we're on the same page, check. Literally in their mind, you're trying to get them to say, yes, absolutely, me too, I agree, I'm there too. Values, I know we both put a high priority on quality working in attention to detail, you're a very detail-oriented person, is that right? Right, that's another step on the Yes Ladder, which also says, I am also a person who likes attention to detail. Goals, you and I both want this to be a win-win outcome. I know we want to both walk out of here with something really good. That works also by the way really well when you're also trying to save money, right. You're tying to buy a car, they really want to sell you the car, you really want to buy the car. That's a really good goal to remind them of, and similarities. Hey list, I know we are both go-getters, I know we could find a way to make this work, don't you agree? It's a very formal way of saying like, let's make this work. So all of these different prompts, are ways to get them back on that Yes Ladder, and I like to think through them, but they also can come back organically. So, pulling up an example of a Negotiation Cheat Sheet, you have Material Benefits, the Current problems, painkillers and vitamins, as well as the research on who they are. In this section you're trying to answer, where do you agree already? Where could you agree? So some of these might be questions, right, you can leave those blanks of where is the possible agreement that's there. So I'd like to ask you guys, very quickly, when you're thinking about agreements, where, what popped into your head first? What do you think that you can agree with your partner right off the bat? Maybe some smaller things or non obvious things. We don't usually, by the way think about agreement before we walk into a negotiation. Any ideas? I know I sprung that one on ya. Want to try any? Where, yes? As you guys are thinking, I knew that this would be a hard prompt. This means that you're gonna have sticking points in the negotiation, so the more that you can think through these and fill out these sample Yes Ladders, the easier it will be to get to the money talk, yes? I have more of a question here. Sure Because, like as you're going through all these agreements, I'm like yes, yes, that all makes sense, I'm agreeing (laughing), but then when it comes to me, I think I have a block, because I feel like I'm like talking some, it's all, those are true things, but I feel like I'm talking someone into it, or I feel some sort of sleazy weirdness coming up when I think about doing it with myself. Yeah, so I would think about the moments in the past where you've been working with clents, and they went, oh my gosh, that's so me, or yes, that's me too. Maybe it's, for you it's not a question, maybe it's a story, right? So maybe it's saying, you know, usually I like to work with clients, and we will go through sort of three or four phases. In phase one, we clear out your kitchen in phase two, does those feel familiar to you, where do you think you are now? Right, could be a question, it could be a story of a previous client. I would think back to the moments where you genuinely had those me too's, so it doesn't feel so spammy or smarmy, because you've had them. We just don't think about them that way, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's helpful, thank you. Oops, thank you. And where you agree, would it be where your research ahead of time comes handy of no, okay this is what their beliefs are, this is what they think about, okay, I agree with these and I can start, is a negotiating point there? Yes, I think that you hit the nail on the head. So what you're doing is, your taking everything from that research column and you're trying to pull out what are the single items from that research on that ladder that you might be able to bring up. So it could be emotional, it could be a way that they work. It could be something that you've seen or a goal that they had, exactly. But how do pick which are the most important ones to bring if their are a list of ten of them? You can't just bring them all at them at once. The ones that are going to elicit the emotion that you want. So, you might agree, you're both family guys, right, you're like, you have big families, but maybe of this negotiation, family isn't exactly like the emotion that you're looking for. Really you're looking for a hard-hitting, efficient, great presentation, so in that case, you might be able to talk about how you both did MBA and JD at the same time. Right, that would be a very different emotion. Hey I saw that you, you know went to Georgetown, we're you getting a co MBA JD, that's great, I did that back in my days too, I mean it was kind of crazy times, right? That's a different kind of question. So I would think about, what is the emotion you want to elicit? How can you pick the agreements that are gonna get you closer to that. That whole priming thing (mumbles). Exactly, it all ties into the priming. And also, you were talking about you script things. Yes. Before you go just to your style-- I do, yeah. How do you make this studies not scripted or cheesy? Ah, good question cause, so I should, correct, this is a good correction. I never literally type out the script, so I'm never like reading my script, I'm talking about bullets, which is why this is only one sheet, right, like it's usually bullet points. So A, I'm not, tell me do you agree about the value system that our companies at, like I'm not doing that. You're not telemarketing. What? You're not telemarketing. Yeah, I'm not telemarketing, although I was a telemarketer for a couple years, which people know from my power of body language class. So I never script, so please don't script out your answers. What I would do though is practice doing this on the phone when at least you can have your notes right in front of you. So in person, it's a little bit harder to be like, furiously writing, so what I did is I started on the phone, which was really easy to have kind of detailed bullets in the front of me, and than I was able to sort of hop around, and be kind of covering all the points that I wanted to cover while I was also taking notes. So start on the phone, if you must, start on email. Email you prepare, right, so you could even say in an email, hey it's so good to see you, so excited that your team won last weekend, so I want to make sure that I'm getting everything covered for you because I know you're on a quick deadline. Is that right, it's still July 1st? Okay that's agreement number one. I'm preparing this, right, 'cause I can think it through. Next thing would be, next agreement maybe is values. I know that you've worked with previous clients in the past who were a little bit slow on the details, they didn't finish all the phases on time. I really want to make sure I hit every phase on time and get all the details covered. So here's what I'm planning, tell me if this sounds right to you? And that way you're practicing it out on email before you dive into it in person. That's kind of a long answer. And so you use all of these to come up with the style that works for you? Yes, exactly, and you're gonna find your own, right, like some people might not be as scripted as me, but that just helps me feel more controlled. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, good question.