Reject Them Gently (Using No-Oriented & Calibrated Questions)

i threw that out on my instagram a couple of months back you know what's the difference between a veteran or a dealer stress and stimulation you know and i got a bunch of neuro can oh stresses cortisol you know people want to give me i know the neuroscience the answer is how you filter it completely you know how do you look at it is it happening for you or to you are you lucky to be here or uh or you're unlucky i'm in a negotiation a couple years ago with somebody whose values i detested and thinking about this person made me angry every time that's hostage or business business negotiation personal person was a liar person person lied had no problem lying and uh that you know i got an ex-girlfriend once said to me you'd sooner get your arm torn off then tell me a lie and i remember thinking at the time well the words i find highly complimentary but the way that you said it makes it sound like an insult like that you know yeah but wait a minute you said that like it's a bad thing so integrity is really important to me so when i deal with somebody who likes it they're going to trigger me and if they're triggering me negatively i'm having trouble prepping for the conversation because i'm dumber when i'm angry and then i remember the only pers reason this person is persistent in these negotiations is because my company is a success and in point of fact i'm lucky to be in this conversation and as soon as i did that i reframed that i was like i instantly i found myself in a different frame of mind so you know you got to find the phrase tony robbins says i think he's the guy that said you know does life happen for you or to you life is happening for you for you like wow i don't have to do this i get to do this you know however you reframe that which takes some practice pick pick out your phrase practice it up a little bit because your your negative circuitry is going to kick in the default circuitry for human beings is negative interesting we inherited from the caveman and the optimistic caveman got eaten by the saber tooth and the negative pessimistic caveman made a run for it or killed it but the optimistic guy was like you know yeah you know i like i know i know i you know this this thing it look it's not you know it's just how hard could it be how hard could it be it just needs a hug yeah so uh uh the negative cavemen that we we were gifted with the wiring of our ancestors and the negative guys survived it's interesting how much you've leveraged an understanding of human nature to get people where you want to go i want to talk about some of your open-ended questions i think these are really powerful so the the way that why questions are accusatory but how questions invite people to do the thinking for you and explain that like the explain the power of how yeah it will it uh to use common condiments phraseology triggers slow thinking or in-depth thinking you know because it's logistical uh yeah you know how how largely is implementation or logistical is another how's this going to get done um it feels differential so i'm going to kill these [ __ ] if you don't give me 20 million right now and you say how am i supposed to do that go to the bank call the president do whatever you need to do this is somebody's life give me the 20 million right now how am i supposed to do that right now you want me to call the president you want me to go to the bank do they not just keep screaming yes that's exactly what i want you to do all they got to do is come down a little at a time now i'm not resisting i'm an implementation and it triggers in-depth thinking any point of fact those are legitimate questions you know the the ask a question that the whether the other side likes it or not is actually a legitimate question it's not resisting i'm asking in a way where i'm deferential i'm not saying i ain't doing it i'm asking for your help now how you respond to that is going to tell me where this is really going you know there's 93 percent success rate means 7 percent of the time it ain't gonna go anywhere this is nothing but bad i gotta know which one i'm dealing with and so you know my how and what questions early on and occasional the the strategical use of why surgical use of why i gotta diagnose what i'm really dealing with and i gotta do it in a way where you're not feeling like you're being diagnosed but you know i cause i gotta do everything i can do to avoid triggering you but i got i gotta i gotta get a diagnostic on what i'm actually dealing with to begin with and how do you handle telling people no in a way that doesn't shut them down yeah you know uh a friend of mine here in town ned coletti used to be the gm for the dodgers brilliant negotiator good guy like him a lot ned is still around i'm still affiliated with the dodgers first year he was gm they went from wars to first that's a sign of a capable gm okay you know and we're talking about this one time and that said that someone had taught him to let out know a little at a time i'm like that's exactly what we're doing like you have to be able to say no to people what your job is to not let them get blindsided by it where they feel like they were clotheslined and caught off guard so you let it out a little at a time and how am i supposed to do that is really a way to get the other side thinking about the difficulty of the situation about the difficulty of the ask and it's the first way to start letting you just say that's really going to be hard further down the line we're gonna get there but first i really kind of need the how question is designed to get stop you in your chat your tracks and get you thinking it's calibrated which is why we call them calibrated questions to start to trigger a state change in the other side now we gotta let out a little more know in a little firmer way as we go along then we got we got a whole succession of ways to eventually ultimately if forced into it to say no which then also is not no it's no but we don't need to go like if if you here know from me or my side we've been hitting at it for a while so you're not going to be cl feel blindsided by it you're going to yeah and we're gonna continue to demonstrate collaboration because i you know i don't want to go all the way to know if we're talking there's a reason for us to talk the episode is the situation so if there's a reason for us to collaborate and talk we can both be better off i also don't want to let out know too quickly because there might be a better way and i want to discover that so let's let me let me let me start telegraphing that there are problems here inviting collaboration see if we can tease out a solution before this thing goes down to tubes have you ever had a negotiator or a hostage taker give you an answer to something that you were like i actually don't have a rebuttal to that we should try that not yet yeah i was i i'm running these scenarios through my head and i'm like what would i do if they like offered a suggestion like yeah like actually sounds maybe we should try that like how do you because there are scenarios where you end up paying apparently 20 million dollars well we first of all wasn't the u.s or paid debt or anybody on the u.s side the u.s would never do that uh correct the u.s does not pay ransom now that doesn't mean that there can't be bait money go downrange give them money that you know you're going to take back or you're going to trace like like money is ridiculously easy to trace like ridiculously easy and it could be a very smart move it's like eject injecting dye into their financial circulatory system where are they buying weapons who are they paying safe houses for they got a larger criminal network terrorists are not supported by the red cross they are supported by a larger criminal network of illegal arms dealers and illegal this and illegal that and you want to know who they're buying their guns from and the best way to find out who they're buying their guns from is to give them some money that you could trace and find out where it goes follow the money as they said a long time ago in the watergate scandal that's a tremendous investigative tool and if you there was a in 2000 that was exactly what happened because there was a criminal gang out of ecuador that had been taken hostages on oil platforms every year about october and they were a combination of former terrorists and criminals and so the third time it went down a payment was made because they if they'd assaulted the the oil platform they'd only got the kidnappers who the low end of the food chain but they made a payment and they ended up dismantling the gang in its entirety and they never hit again over 50 people were rounded up because they were tracking the money back in the money the whole organization was dismantled as a result of the ransom payment so it became a great way to take out a criminal organization that had been operating completely freely prior to that and a rescue would have only taken out the bad guys on a platform it would not have taken out the whole organization they took the whole thing down and these guys never reserved resurfaced as an organization again so going back to the magic words that you use as a negotiator why is getting them to say no more important or better much better if i remember your words correctly yeah then yes yeah it's it's shocking um and a friend of mine that i'm flattered that were acquainted andrew huberman hubermann labs podcast amazing guy brilliant neuroscience stuff uh met him for the first time recently was sitting down at lunch and i'm like all right so i don't know what the neuroscience behind this is but people feel safe and protected when they say no they feel better they're more likely to collaborate and then plus we know so weird what the other thing is crazy that we know for sure is like when you're exhausted mentally you could still say no but yes it's hard yes it's hard or even as answering how like if if you uh if you're tired and one of my colleagues did this to me recently and i could instantly tell the difference they wanted to follow up with me when i was exhausted and i knew that if they'd asked me what are you thinking what great question triggered deep thinking i didn't have the mental gas in the tank to answer that question but they answered me a question that was built around no and i went boom boom boom boom boom i laid it all out and i was like wow i don't know how that happens i just know it does and we've seen time after time if i need to close a deal at all especially if i know that you're tired instead of saying do you agree do you want to do this are you in favor of this i say do you disagree is this a bad idea you're against this is this ridiculous and you'll either go no let's do it or you go no but here are the problems and you'll lay them all out for me and feel no obligation which means you're gonna lay them out to me honestly like if i say do you agree with this you're gonna afraid to say yes but here are the problems because you feel that yes is an obligation and you're gonna be worried about digging yourself deeper in by saying anything after that but having said no you feel you have no obligation i think it might be that simple so you will you will lay the rest of the stuff out not being worried about digging yourself into a hole it's really interesting that some part of our brain is tracking the even though it's not like obviously a contract but that some part of our brain is like yeah we've just agreed to that and now i have a sense of obligation and they have the right to like take me to task on it very interesting yeah yeah and we stumbled over that one by by accident and it is just the the good and the bad about getting people to say no is it makes such a huge difference in all interactions that sometimes that's the only thing somebody learns and we're like look there is so much more here like i know you're making a lot more money now and you're doing better than anybody that you see around you but you're not doing as good as you could be doing and you cannot stop there a lot of people i see it all the time they just learn how to trigger no instead of yes and they're instantly significantly more successful and they quit they don't keep going all right what then if you were gonna bring this all together if no is that first bit that shows people like whoa you can frame this in a new way what are the the few key tenets of like all right if you had to bestow quickly upon somebody what the core tenets of the black swan way are yeah you know let the other side go first um and then you're the cliche the other side's got to talk five times as much as you not twice as much five times as much it doesn't mean that you go uh that you go mute you drop in occasionally you let the other person know that whatever they're thinking is it's okay to share it like one of our favorite things you gotta have some go-to labels go to labels yeah label is one of our negotiation techniques seems like sounds like looks like feels like no matter what anybody says you can say seems like you had a reason for saying that like no matter what they say i hate you and everything you stand for seems like you got a reason for saying that it's disarming they'll talk with you about it i want to do business with you and i want to deal with you right now seems like i had a reason for saying that well yeah here's why i want to do business with you um one one of my son came up with again like bring a guy we you know we would not be our team without him clients call on the phone say how are you today how are you today is it diagnostic they want to know if they could talk if you're in the mood to talk about what they want to talk about brandon's responses seems like you got something on your mind yes matter of fact you know because they've been they've been planning this call how are you today is not like genuinely how some people really want to know but most people want to know are you prepared to listen to what i have on my mind how are you the temperature check are you in a bad mood because i'm wasting my time you're in a good mood we could talk and you the only pushback he ever got on that was he had a guy say yeah you know there's stuff i want to talk about really i want to know how we are today and some brands say yeah i'm good you know we talked about it and then they got down to business so you know the more you encourage the other side to talk the more likely it is that you're going to get to this moment of collaboration quicker never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better how do you get something better you get the other side to talk you spend a lot less time talking and appreciate that they're bringing something to the table that you could use the black swan the tiny little thing is going to change everything you trigger that you're going to make great deals that's it we've got our our basic principles uh chris it was great meeting you i'm well thank you it was great meeting you the other week and i loved your story about meeting jack welch and uh asking him to come speak at your uh class i believe was it sc um by framing it in a no question i want you to know i've been using that with my girlfriend i've been using the would it be ridiculous or would i be out of line if asked for this and i wanted to know if you had any other good no questions to ask that are really yes questions you know i don't i i don't all of them i mean i don't ask any yes questions uh i just know that people it works better it hits the brain better so you know uh is now a bad time to talk um is it a ridiculous idea have you given up on um is it a bad idea are you opposed do you disagree i mean with with the slightest amount of practice you could switch any yes question into a no question and it it just works it works better across the board i mean we don't nobody my company asks yes questions nobody nobody asks uh have you got a few minutes to talk nobody says do do you agree it just across the board it makes it safer for people to answer and also the real issue always is if there are problems i want you to feel free to tell me what the problems are and you're going to feel free to tell me those problems after no so with just a little bit of practice uh and it takes practice you know all of these are or you know get your practice reps in in the low sex conversations and pretty soon the stuff starts starts flowing out of your mouth i'm a couple of weeks ago i'm i'm in a uh i'm making a pitch in a hotel for a room upgrade and i don't got any room upgrades but i've worked so much on no oriented questions and because like i'm pushing this guy hard for something extra that i'm not paying for and finally he i says well is it ridiculous for you to make it up for me at the bar and he's like he's like no no and he goes and gets a bunch of free trick drink coupons for the bar so you know no oriented questions is a great one to practice you'll find it'll bail you out when you're trying to get free drinks love that thanks why do we use the no oriented question we use the no oriented question because it protects the autonomy of the other side people know when you're driving them for a yes and most of the time they resent it the people on the globe are yes addicted and yes battered at the same time we're seduced by yes when we hear it we get all giddy inside and uh when it's used against us we resent it because it we feel like our ability to say no has been encroached upon but they're very effective at breaking them past helping people to think clearly or getting them to respond to you when they've dropped off the face of the earth some examples of no oriented questions appear on the right side of the screen and these are all alternatives to the yes oriented questions that are on the left side of the screen would it be ridiculous is it out of the question am i out of line would it be off-putting have you given up on are you against is also one that i like to use quite frequently are you against x christians you have something or are you spazzing what having my favorite no oriented question which is is it be ridiculous oh is it be ridiculous yeah we got rid of that once we got you through grammar school we felt it was no longer necessary to keep that up thank you all right um so yeah that's any any question where you're driving for yes a little bit of mental power can be changed to a no oriented question and i am continually amazed at what people will agree to by saying the word no that they would never agree to or say or say yes to and and this is not a heckle but it's one more i want to thought because this is particularly in in dealing with the bosses guys we have counseled people to say to a boss do you want me to fail and it has broken impasse and uncovered answers and reoriented the negotiations and the oriented questions originally started the first trigger point on this came from a woman negotiating with her boss and she ultimately completely got her way by starting with the no oriented question so understand do you want me to fail do you want this to fail is a legitimate question to a boss who has given you an impossible task the bad news if they've given you an impossible task it's an impossible task and point of fact the good news if they've given you an impossible task they think a lot of you and they're looking for you to save the day so no answer questions with the bosses are very effective thanks for sure good ad so essentially what you're going to do when you're doing no oriented questions is you're going to make no work for you okay you're going to get them to give you a yes but they're actually going to be able to say no yes when you're when you're going for a yes from somebody and you're constantly trying to get them to say yes you're taking away their autonomy and when someone says yes sometimes it seems like a trap to them it also seems like no matter what the question is if they say yes it's some kind of a commitment that they might not be ready to get into so instead ask them a question that they can answer no to but it actually means yes to you because saying no makes people feel protected makes them feel safe makes them feel like they still have all their cards hidden and they just feel better about it so if you put that question in a way that allows them to be negative it works out better for you also when you're constantly asking questions that you want to yes answer to you look like that demanding mother who says did you clean your room did you do the dishes did you do this did you did you make your bed because you know everyone had heard that from mom growing up right yeah and you're like yes yes yes yes and it's just like so annoying so no one wants to be equated to the demanding mom so instead you can say would it be impossible for you to make a copy of this for me and they're going to want to say no because maybe they don't want to make the copy i don't know but they're going to say no but is it going to be no it's going to know it's going to mean yes to you because the way you phrase the question so it's really kind of magical how this works um essentially you are demonstrating concern for what this ask what the impact that ask is gonna have on that person because you know when you're asking someone to go run an errand for you oh would it be impossible for you to run to the store and get this for me okay you're saying yeah by my tone of voice i'm letting you know that i know this might be inconvenient for you but would it be impossible for you to just do this for me proper tone is important um davey take the next one sets of the powerful feeling of graciousness you're better at this one than i am so um because you can use the i mean there are a few phrases that are really go-to for an oriented questions so would it be impossible to would it be ridiculous would it be out of the question like those are three really good go-to's um if you want to make it a little bit more specific so for example like um say that you have to move a meeting like this happens to me a lot right um then you say would it throw off your whole like i know you're already busy would it throw off your whole schedule if we moved this meeting so it's it's almost this opportunity again to express understanding to express like hey i know you're busy this might throw everything off so you can even phrase the question in that way right or something i really like to do is would it be really difficult to or would it be bothersome to so like you can use whatever you think like well they might feel like this is annoying or they might feel like um this is going to be really problematic for them and so then you say that in the in that knowing to question it's almost like a way that you can kind of address whatever it is that they're going to feel within an oriented question essentially so it makes it feel kind of gracious because you've thought about this you've thought about how is this going to impact you instead of just making an ask and making sure they do it you're thinking about okay this is going to impact this person in in this way and you express that and then they're even more likely to want to do what you're asking essentially it also depending on the kind of question that you're asking and some of the things that davey was just saying kind of fall under this makes the other side feel like the decision to do the action was theirs so if you and you can double whammy with an accusations audit um yeah you may think i'm i'm being so irresponsible with my time and my schedule would be impossible or would it put you in a bad position if we could move the meeting to three o'clock and then they're gonna say oh no no it's okay we can move me it's gonna feel like the decision was theirs because you you basically asked that question in a way that it feels like they can decide whether or not they can make the movement but because it was kind of geared at a knowing a question it makes them feel like they were nice enough to take that action for you and it was their decision yeah it's like always in their court they're doing this for yeah and it doesn't feel like they're being nice exactly and that is huge when you're talking about um where you stand psychologically with somebody because the more you make somebody feel like they are in control the better they feel even when they're not in control because you know you're asking the questions in such a way that you are literally in control but you're letting them feel like they have the control um so that does do something for people in their brains so it's just something to really keep you know in the forefront of your mind when you're about to ask someone a yes question that you want to yes to take two seconds to frame it so that they can say no but still mean yes to you yeah exactly then they feel like they're the ones that are that they're maintaining power essentially yes because no is a powerful thing to be able to say to someone i didn't feel comfortable using the calibrated questions and saying how am i supposed to do that so i changed it a little in a way i felt more comfortable and i would say like that's going to be really difficult and we're going to have to try to think of a creative solution and then without kind of trying to imply how am i supposed to do that um and i mean they talk after it and give suggestions so i i think it's working it is working and and here's here's the difference between what you did and how am i supposed to do that first of all how am i supposed to do that is a phase of no that is an assertive move so you want to hold on to that for later in the conversation or the relationship when it's more appropriate but the way you set it up means that you are you're priming them for it you're lowering the expectation so that if it does become a how am i supposed to do that it's not going to be a shock to the system because you've already set them up so i i love the way you're playing around with it now you're starting to make this stuff your own which is the ultimate goal is to take these skills and make them a part of your repertoire you say and do things differently than the way that i say and do things troy says them in a way that uh it's different for me as well everybody's got their own spin on the black swan method yeah i i've seen the ability to take someone off their guard and to have them really disarmed and having an open discussion and then the slightest little thing can throw that back up and it's not necessarily something where i say something really difficult to you just the slight trigger can bring it back up and i've been listening to other meanings we have with other people at my office that hosts those meetings and they have someone completely disarmed and then they say something like hey i've been in the business a long time too implying you're not the only one that knows this [ __ ] and then when that happens like you had them for like an hour they were just stringing along saying yeah i could see that i understand that and then you threw that in you just worked backwards so i'm trying to use the ways to keep them disarmed as long as possible and then when i have to get serious you drop the tone and say that is something that will have to remain and then they know like that it's they're not going to get movement on there because i've only said that with that voice twice out of 50 other times you know yeah um but i've seen people arm up so quick so i'm trying to be aware of you can get everything right ninety percent of the time and that ten percent can completely burn you for all that work you put in yeah if if if you're not if you're not careful that can happen but at the end of the day you're going to have to drop the bomb on somebody at some point you're going to have to draw your line in the sand and so when you're switching into that late night fmdj voice to convey your assertiveness remember that that's assertiveness is the precursor to that should be something from the tactical empathy side of the ledger as well as the accusations on its side side of the ledger so you know i i'm sorry i ran up the flagpole nobody saluted we just can't do that i'm sorry i ran up a flag pole nobody saluted this is going to catch you off guard this is going to be disappointing to hear it's going to feel like i punched you in the stomach we just can't do that vaughn what do you got a similar kind of uh how am i supposed to do that question we've been negotiating with the customer for about three or four months it's a customer we really do not want to work with but at the price we would be willing to do so uh so we've been going back and forth and back and forth with them uh raised our prices quite a bit and then they started uh to do something very interesting instead picking a part our proposal uh kind of a la carte uh and that was going over about a two week span uh until i went in and i just said you know how am i supposed to do that how am i supposed to let you pick apart my proposal like that and they went completely dark for two days and then friday they said you know what we're gonna go ahead and sign the proposal so i don't know what the two days was i don't know why it did that i don't know what prompted that but it really made them make a decision because we all all i said was my email was just how am i supposed to do that and i just let them stew for two days and they came back with a signed proposal that's one of the purposes behind why or how am i supposed to do that or the other phases of no is for them to go back and start to bargain with themselves so that you don't have to yeah it's a thought-shaping question you're shaping their thought you're engaging the the the problem-solving or the critical thinking portion of their brain and so that's perfect let them go back and stew for two days you haven't told them no and you haven't offered any other solutions you have in essence told them you go back and figure it out which is what they did nicely done jack welch author of jack in winning alongside his with his wife susie they're coming through uh los angeles a couple of years ago they're they're they're hustling their book the real life mba i go to the book signing jack walters at i want to come speak the negotiation course i'm teaching at the time at usc how many people try to get jack welts to say yes to something at that book signing pretty much every one of them right they're going to come up there jack how are you yeah my kid makes my wife makes a great meal if you want to come to the house tonight god knows what they're gonna ask you jack i got this invention would you pose with it how many people are gonna ask him to try to say yes that day that week how many people try to get jack wells to say yes to something you're me you come up to jack welch what do you say and how much time do you have you maybe got seven seconds and even if you get to the second response after him there's 300 people standing behind you in line they walk you up there before you get to them they say what's your name chris write on a piece of paper so jack doesn't get it wrong really that's so you know so you don't talk to him and that you keep moving on top of that have they patted me down do they know whether or not i've got a gun have i been through a metal detector as a matter of fact i do have a gun but he's not in trouble for me they don't have my identification they don't know i'm not going to hurt him i'm going to get within arms length of jack welch action is quicker than reaction they can't stop me from doing anything i want to do this is this is the dilemma of bodyguards you get within arm's length as a target you can only stop them after they've done it you grab them after they've killed your target but you can't stop them i'm going to get with an arm's length of jack waltz i could do whatever i want i could walk up to him and kiss him right on the lips if i want to right he was falling asleep want to make sure he's waked up he's going to wake up screaming in the middle of nighttime [Applause] i walk up to jack welch and this is what i say tom is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course that i teach at usc he looks up and to the left he gets this really intense skull on his face and he just freezes and i think to myself i just killed jack welch he had a stroke he's so furious he's gonna die and the security's gonna tackle me i'm gonna drag me on cuffs i'm gonna say but i'm an fbi agent we don't care he killed jack welch so initially when he doesn't die i'm relieved but he still doesn't move finally unfreezes he looks at me and he says this is my personal assistant's name this is a special twitter account we have set up to communicate with her i will call her and tell her who you are and what you want i think we're going to be in los angeles in the fall if we are we'll come in and speak at your class calibrated no is worth at least five yeses amazing rahul what's up what's your question yeah nicole uh thanks so much for having me on stage uh and chris i'm a huge fan of you and uh read your book uh never split the difference uh negotiations of your life depend on it so i really love that book and don't want to give you yeah it will come and want to give a huge shout out to everyone on stage and not in the audience and um yeah my question is um it's about uh saying no so actually if i read one of your blogs um communication skills the three ways to make new for you uh so what would be the best piece of advice you could give someone like me who finds it hard to say no sometimes and how can i build my confidence by saying no during the right time so yeah that's that's my question thanks so much yeah well yeah great question i mean they're kind of like so like any word there's two two aspects you know if you're saying if you're hearing it but in in every negotiator's life there's a turning point the biggest turning point is probably coming to grips with the words yes and no and i thousand percent i remember the moment it's about 2002 i'm walking to an airport and i'm always looking at the books shelves and i see a book on a bookshelf says start with no and i literally do a double take stop me in my tracks like start with no in the business negotiating section this is nuts i got to look at this book it was jim camp's book on and he wasn't really trying to get people to say no but it was about you being okay with hearing it and then you being okay with letting the other side know it's cool to say no and his whole approach he called it the right to veto he said at the beginning of the negotiations say the other side it's okay you can say no to me at any time say no and this is over you're free to say no whenever and then camp writes in his book that people will die to preserve their autonomy and when you take away their right to say no you take away their autonomy and they'll die to preserve it and i remember thinking like no [ __ ] we learned that hostage negotiation a long time ago that's why we got ourselves negotiators because people are getting killed right and left over losing their autonomy over their home so coming to grips with yes and no will move you forward as a communicator now hearing it and saying it uh i'm my buddy in l.a ned coletti former gm of the dodgers great guy good human being i borrow this phrase from him he he said i like to let out know it a little at a time don't let the other side be shocked with the word no you know how can you begin to hint that there's a no coming if they don't watch it you know we start that out i start that out in the book i wrote the book never split the difference with my son brandon and tal roz brandon's uncredited co-author we start with the number one way to let out know a little at a time which is how am i supposed to do that the other side's reaction gives you a clear picture of who you're dealing with and how collaborative they're going to be you're not saying it to get an answer from them you're saying that to begin to warn them that no is on its way i never want anybody to be shocked when i flat out say no i'll start out by saying how am i supposed to do that one time in 10 they're going to come back and say that's up to you to figure out if you want the deal you got to do it my way one time in 10. when that one time intend comes my answer is i'm sorry you've been very generous that just doesn't work for me that's a little stronger way to say no that hits a couple of more emotional levers from the other side if i say if if a black swan says to you i'm sorry there's bad news on the way and we are warning you we never let you get hit with bad news and then say i'm sorry i'm sorry is our precursor to us taking a stronger position and giving you a chance to brace yourself for hearing a tougher drawing of a line you know a stronger boundary i don't want you to run into the boundary and be shocked by it i'm going to warn you it's coming after i've warned you a couple of times if i need to say no then i'm going to say no and then i'm going to say i look forward to the day when we work this out because my intention from the beginning was for us to have a great long-term relationship and when we're prepared to make mutually beneficial commitments we can continue this conversation and then it's peace out from my side now know from the other side you feel safe when you say no you feel protected if you feel safe and protected you're more likely to collaborate with me freely because you feel safe and protected so i'm going to say we were talking about before earlier with brienne have you given up on whatever it is do you disagree are you against is this a ridiculous idea if i'm worried that you might react negatively i just opened a very emotional negotiation tonight within my family on some very emotional issues in reference to my mother's recent passing and i don't want anybody to feel like i'm intruding on their feelings of their autonomy so i started out with are you opposed to me wanting this because i want to know if they're opposed and i want to i want them to not feel guilty over their emotional feelings so the best way for me to start that out is to start started out in in that fashion and that negotiation which is meant to be collaborative in nature with nobody losing has started out well yeah really appreciate that thanks so much for that answer and um you'll love to see if uh you'll be interested in coming maybe on one of my clubs love to interview but one of the biggest surprises that i took really to heart in the book was getting to know yeah first where we're so wired i mean we're completely wired for the opposite for example on a recruiting call if i call a typical agent you know who doesn't know who i am i might say hey you know chris this is alex vidal with related blah blah how you doing today by the way i see you're a great agent i was calling to see if you would be interested in learning more about my company and the typical answer is no i'm happy where i'm at it's a 30-second call right i read your book i sit down with my leadership team and i say guys i want to try something different just hey just hang out i'm going to put it on speaker so i call chris and now chris answers the phone and i said hey chris this is alex with now with related as you international realty how you doing today i'm doing great how are you i'm like oh man i'm doing great i already know you're a great agent just the fact that you even picked up your phone to begin with and they start laughing you know because and realtors in south florida never answered their phone so then i followed let me ask you a question do you want to make less money this year than you did last year and they said no i'm like no no of course not of course i want to make more money this year than i did last year oh it sounds like you want to make this your best year ever i do well that's why i was calling i want to show you how my brokerage can help make that happen for you and i got to know right away and then you got to know out of the way that i followed it up with you know the mirroring and the labeling and all that and it was very interesting my average recruiting call went from 30 seconds to 10 minutes wow and just using that opening line i don't care i'll share it with my competitors i really doesn't really bother me they're just spewing out information literally using the mirroring and the labeling what is it about people's to want to say no and what are the benefits of getting that no out of the way first yeah you know um we're conditioned there's some conditioning out there that we got to recognize it's just true so we've gotten conditioned that every time we say yes somebody's trying to lead us into a trap somebody's trying to get us to say yes you know the momentum selling says each yes is a tie down a tie down takes away our autonomy a basic human driver of what we are as human beings not what we are as males or females not what we are as westerners is human beings and this is about human wiring you can't point to a civilization in the history of mankind it was content as slaves it's driven us since we crawled out of the swamps so these tie downs take away our autonomy and immediately begin to diminish rapport as we take away somebody's autonomy and so we've been conditioned that if somebody's trying to get us say yes we're under attack we've also conditioned ourselves as when we say no we've just protected ourselves we've just done something to preserve our autonomy we're safer every time we say no which is why so many people's default answer is no not because they thought it through but they've conditioned themselves which means they feel safe when they say no there's a neurochemical response the chemicals that you feel when you say no make you feel safe and secure consequently you're more willing to listen your guards not up you've protected yourself so you start out with that question right away where somebody says no then they've just gotten ahead of all the chemicals that make them feel safe and now they're willing to talk to you and then you've got it you've got to your uh your follow-on moves are all designed to make them feel heard like you're interacting with them instead of against them i mean it sounds like you like to make more money that was based on their response you instantly prepare yourself to go into a collaborative conversation again they're not threatened they're not being attacked they're not under siege and now it's it's i'm not the least bit surprised that you're going from 30 second calls to 10 minute calls because soon as you preserve the other side's autonomy now they can talk to you candidly plus you're different than all the other bozos out there that are trying to get them to say yes that's it and you know the typical answer is well i'm happy where i'm at oh it sounds like they take really good care of you yeah they do awesome what is it that they they take you know maybe i can learn something about i can do in my company what is it that they do to take care of you and then you start finding all these holes and then the wall just keeps coming down we had a conversion rate of 75 percent from calls to appointments it was it was unbelievable and that's why i believe so much in the book i read a lot of books but very few making a direct immediate impact the way the way yours did just curious all right so you got to conversion rate of 75 what what roughly were you doing before that oh probably we would get maybe one out of maybe every six seven eight calls maybe we'd get an appointment wow and then those opportunities had to show up the fact was not only were we at a 75 conversion rate but that the bond that we had created with those people during that phone call was so good that they actually showed up for the appointment versus and i don't even have questions about the yeses but we you know you talk about in your book the three types of yeses that we get that we typically get um and so by spending 10 minutes on the phone with them we actually get the approval action-based yes that moves the ball forward not just something to get us off the phone interesting i guarantee you there are very few people who are using proof-of-life questions there are very few people who are using no oriented questions and there are tons of people who are enamored with yes and we'll talk about why that's problematic i often get asked how did you get hostage takers to say yes to you and the answer was we never did yes is a useless word it does you no good it's one of the it's one of the hurdles that you're going to have to navigate in order for you to improve the way you communicate between people there's this nonsense out there called yes momentum in academia they call it mere agreement which suggests that you're likely to get an agreement to a big ask if there have been micro agreements previous to the ask example uh do you like clean water do you think people who abuse animals should be held to higher account do you think the women's national team should get paid as much as the men's national team buy my product the yeses that precede the big ask they say doesn't even have to be related to the ask itself some people refer to it as the yesable proposition or my favorite the yes tie down think about that for a second someone is trying to use yes to tie you down and you like that or the other side of the coin you're using yes to tie someone else down and you like that yes is commitment yes encroaches this encroaches on autonomy yes makes people defensive their anxiety goes up um people will cite studies where guessable propositions mere agreement yes momentum work and i'm not here to say that it doesn't work i'm just here to say if you're using it your batting average is not as high as it should be yes is a lure it's a hack it's seductive we know how good it sounds and in that moment we fail to recognize that we have put the other side on the defensive so we got to get out of the habit think about it like this how do you feel when the phone rings and the person on the other side i don't care if they're close to you or not they ask you do you have a few minutes to talk most of you don't think to yourselves oh my god yes i do have a few minutes i'm glad you called four things usually run through your brain almost simultaneously first how long is a few minutes second if i have a few minutes to talk do i want to talk to you third if i want to talk to you do i want to talk about what you want to talk about and fourth how can i get off the phone we have been hammered with yes yes we know we feel it instinctively when people are trying to drive us somewhere when people are trying to commit us to something and we resent it we don't like committing to something that we haven't volunteered for and so instead of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it's usually set up for a trap we love to hear it so much but in that instance we should know that we're putting the other side on the defensive talk about the phases of no we call this letting know out slowly so when you're trying when somebody's trying to get you to do something or trying to get you to to buy something or whatever they're trying to get you to do and you want to say no you don't necessarily want to go along with it um there are different phases of no that you can use now anyone who has read the book knows the line how am i supposed to do that you need to be extremely careful with how am i supposed to do that people throw that line around like it's god's answer to everything and it really isn't unless you're using it appropriately okay when you say how am i supposed to do that it is basically an assertion when it doesn't have the precursor of empathy in other words if you've not used empathy if you've not tried to get that tactical empathy all the way through your conversation if you come out with the how am i supposed to do that is gonna come across as assertive because what you're trying to do when you say how am i supposed to do that is you're trying to trigger empathy in the other side so if you say it like this how am i supposed to do that am i going to trigger empathy with that tone of voice no okay so how you want to say this how am i supposed to do that or how am i supposed to do that wherever you want to put the inflection but it's like a thoughtful seriously i need you to tell me how am i supposed to do that okay but you people are not going to care to help you with implementation things and how you're supposed to do that if you've not been using empathy with them all the way through the conversation because they don't feel any empathy toward you because remember if you've used tactical empathy and you've sought to understand the other understand the other side when the time comes they will seek to understand you they will use a little bit of that reciprocity we hope most personality types will and they will try to understand you and when you put that out there like that with that implementation question if you're using the right amount of tactical empathy they will it'll trigger in them okay and you can work with that so how am i supposed to do that that's the first way of saying no if you say it wrong they may come back with i don't know that's your problem figure out i'm not my job to do that if you've not used the appropriate amount of empathy before you try to make that it's going to come across as an assertion and that's the response you're going to get okay how am i supposed to do that you want an answer from them that's going to give you some information about really how you're supposed to do that they might give you some kind of an explanation if you're still feeling like you want to say no you can say you know i'm sorry your offer is very generous i just don't know how i can do that talking goes on a little bit more you're still not liking what they're offering you're going to say i'm sorry that just isn't going to work for me and then when they get down to that last one you're going to say no basically by doing all those things if you know you want to say no to somebody but you want to protect the relationship for further down the road in case you want to actually do business with these people again letting know out slowly is the best way to do it it's like a thoughtful i've really thought about this and oh my gosh it kills me but i'm just i'm not going to be able to do business with you letting go out slowly with those four steps like that before you get to that final no um is going to save the relationship with the business or whoever the person that you're working with first things first the yes momentum if you've read the book and i'm sure pretty much all of you have and probably multiple times we don't like yes if you've learned the yes momentum or mere agreement i imagine you probably got a problem with some of the things that i'm saying now and will say but what are the problems with yes the reality is we stay away from yes because there are inherent problems with yes the reality is people feel tied down when they are required to answer with a yes the other part about this the myth of getting people to say yes to a bunch of little things so that they'll say yes to the big thing is in fact a myth do you want to make more money uh do you wish you had more time do you wish you could go out because you know the pandemics get in the way do you want to give me 10 million dollars doesn't actually work that way another thing about trying to get people to say yes is it unfortunately shows a serious lack of emotional intelligence because at face value yes is going to make people nervous and if you're forcing people into a place where you know they're going to feel nervous the emotional intelligence is laughing so we stay away from this all together we look at this as basically it's a bear trap at the end of that rainbow if you're on the yes path and so what's our alternative an alternative is nowhere into questions all of you that have read the book have seen this you have some feel for it and so real quick i'm going to share a short story with you some of you may even heard this on chris's keynotes about dealing with jack welsh so jackson l.a several years ago while chris is living in the area he and i at the time are actually teaching a negotiation course at the marshall school of business at usc for the uh the graduate program he goes to a book signing to cj oh and if you don't know who jack welsh is obviously he's an author we're talking about chris donald books i like to get an author from him but he was a huge businessman he's not with us anymore but he ran ge in the 80s and 90s turned it into one of the fastest growing companies in the united states he was actually named manager of the century in 1999 which i don't know if there's a higher accolade than that and he developed this rank and yanked system at ge and was also adopted in many other places in the corporate world which essentially means you don't hit certain standards you got there is no second chance you got a standard to me you don't get there we're gonna roll you out and bring in somebody that can't get the job done so very big guy philanthropist author a lot of people look up to him and and and follow his doctrines as a businessman even still today so chris is at the signing he wants to see if jack will come teach at his class at usc now if you know anything about book signings you got about five seconds with the author security's job is to keep people moving through chris doesn't have time to have a full conversation with jack doing accusations on it to do a summary labeling mirrors responses he doesn't have time to do any of that he's got it he's got to do a quick hitter and he's got to be emotionally intelligent and he's got to do it now and so he walks up to jack and if you've heard the story you know that he says is it ridiculous for you to come speak in my class at usc as the story goes jack gets a very intense look on his face looks up into the left and just kind of freezes with this very angry look in that moment chris thinks to himself i just killed jack welsh he's an old guy and he's so angry at my question that he's actually having a stroke in front of me and he's going to drop dead the security is going to drag me out of here by my ankles and i'm going to jail and after about 10 seconds of this intense look jack looks back at chris and he says here's a twitter handle that's private that only people use internally in my company my assistant actually runs this as me i'm gonna let her know that you're gonna reach out to her through this twitter handle so that we can keep in touch and i think we're supposed to be back in la in the fall this is sometime in the spring of that year he says if we're back in l.a at that time frame i will come speak at your class at usc now the law of it is jack wasn't in fact back in the fall very busy guy couldn't make it so it didn't happen however he got the commitment in the moment why is that obviously the no oriented question but what happened what happened in jack welch's brain in that moment that made it so easy for him to answer and the crazy thing about knowing to questions and i wish we could point to a specific brain science study that lays this out maybe they will be soon right with fmri machines and this wonderful technology and being able to plug electrodes into people's brains i'm sure there'll be a study at some point that explains how this works what we've observed as negotiators as content experts as former hostage and crisis negotiators when you allow someone to say no to you and in fact when you aim at someone saying no to you it clears their thought process as a lot of you thrown into the chat some of the problems with yes because yes makes people nervous the instant reaction is how do i defend myself in this moment and that clutters up the brain it doesn't allow us to be cognitively flexible when we're worried about how we have to defend ourselves and so he confronted jack over a very specific want did it without a confrontational reaction and cleared jack's thought process to lay out the implementation of how it would work all at the same time with a very simple question and so you can take our word for it or you can do what we're going to implore you to do as a result of this class and our next two go out and start executing this stuff if you're not already if you are executing this stuff already then you should start developing your go to list if you listen to anything we've talked about before you know we talk a lot about go-to labels the reality is when the heat is on you fall to your highest level of preparation and as a result of that we like to have go-to lists of every single skill that we talk about and we keep that stuff near to us right laminate it put in your jacket pocket make a list put it on your desk we even had a a good client and now friend of ours sent us a picture of his office and he had what we would refer to as situation boards set up in different frames all over his office that had lists of skills that he executes on a daily basis in his negotiations so it's going to help you to have a cheat sheet cheat sheet never get beat that's what we like to say and so that should apply to the norwegian questions as well as you can see on the slide here on the left we have our classic yes questions on the right we have our classic versions of how to begin annoying to questions would it be impossible is it a bad idea am i out of line is it would it be out of the question and so what i'm going to ask from you now here's a chance to get some more coaching from sandy this slide isn't an is is a more extensive list of classic yes questions that everybody asks i'm guilty of asking them in the past people on our team are even guilty of asking these things in the past and so pick one or two of the questions off this list and please translate it to a no oriented question in the chat and the other thing about this this is actually a fairly decent prep model any yes question can easily be translated to a no question a good way to do it 10 15 minutes before you walk into a negotiation you want to work on your no oriented questions take a piece of paper draw a line down the center on the left add put the questions that you would normally want to say have them say yes to don't you agree that this is going to help your company don't you want to sign this contract don't you want to move forward so we don't waste any more time whatever draw that line and on the right just simply put the no oriented translation of what that is and that's a really good way to start getting yourself acclimated starting to develop your go-to list as it were and so last thing i want to mention about this something we highlight in the book but it's not laid out here in the slides is simply the knowing to question that's phrased are you against and this if you're in any sort of sales role maybe sales isn't necessarily a test to your title but there is a sales element to what you do and for all test purposes we're always selling ourselves right i mean we all know that inherently and so this are you a guest has actually shown to be a tremendous closer in the sales world or the closing world right however you like to look at it and simply are you against moving forward you've gotten all the way through the conversation the value has been established the rapport has been established and you still seem to be at impasse that's a great question for that moment and it's yielded tremendous results and so we want to offer that to you and allow you to start using it too so please feel free get your list started get your go-to's going and you're going to find yourself in a much better place the phases of no or what we like to refer to as you see down there in the bottom right letting no out slowly we've all seen how am i supposed to do that in the book we do not explicitly lay out what the faces of no are in the book partially because this wasn't a fully explored skill from all angles when the book was written right we had all this great content we wanted to get it out to the world and that's what we had we continued to develop and grow just like everybody should and so one of the biggest things we found from people that have read the book is there are varying degrees of outcomes to the response how am i supposed to do that for some of you maybe you're still bad in a thousand every time you say how am i supposed to do that you get exactly what you want they uh they fix it and you move forward i'm sure in some cases on the other extreme you've maybe never had the success you thought you'd have with how am i supposed to do that and you've had varying responses including they tell you how to do it how am i supposed to well that's how you do it you get these people together and you and you line them up in this way and you do these things and it should take you about a week to accomplish right they actually give you an answer on how we're supposed to do that and now you feel stuck and so or you're somewhere in the middle right you're either on the ends or you're somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you've already figured this out as we've worked the way through today why is that because in the book it doesn't talk about using an accusations order to deliver your ask how am i supposed to do that is not only an ask it's an assertive ask and so it's even more paramount that an accusations audit come before it in the book accusations of artists were used by chris before he dropped this line in at the car dealership with the dealer we just didn't call out the skills specifically but if you remember the story he would constantly say things like you've been so generous i can't believe how much work you've put into this you spent a bunch of time with me today i really appreciate all the effort and and time you've given me i can't believe you know in the car the car is worth more than what i'm asking for it's probably worth more than what you guys listed it at how am i supposed to do that that was the accusations on it generosity and time don't seem like negative why does that apply in this case because it's based on their perspective and the negative that we are attacking is if we don't recognize how generous they've been they're immediately going to start to remove themselves because you have the audacity not to even see how much time i put into this and that's when it becomes a negative their perspective how can you not see how hard i'm working to get this done i would consider myself generous to even still be entertaining this interaction with you and so calling them generous in the accusations audit is actually directly resulting in what the negative that exists is causing what friction is there and so another part of this is that you should be well aware of and another reason we've had varying degrees of success across the board this is not a sequential move game how am i supposed to do that should be delivered at least twice if not three times before you move forward in the conversation why is that well first of all since it's a question it's also a thought pattern interrupt and if they got momentum going angry or not doesn't matter but if they got mental momentum mental momentum right uh moving forward chances are the first time you throw a thought pattern interrupt at them they're not gonna be able to process it like they literally just won't penetrate the cranium because the wheels are spinning and so part of the reason to go back to it again is because they're going to hear it differently the second time after the wheels have started to slow down and then you may need to go three because when they finally do hear it and they give you an answer it might be well because you got to do this because i said so and you throw it at them a third time to really and emphatically put your foot down on the implication of that is not going to work with work for me you got to come up with a different better solution if we're going to continue forward and that's the intention behind everything that comes on the third delivery without having to actually verbalize it and then you move through the list after you've done it three times then your fourth move is i'm sorry i just don't know how you can do that fifth is that's not going to work for me and finally your sixth is the flat out no i will tell you up to this point you don't actually know anyone that got all the weight to know doesn't mean it can't happen over the past 12 years it hasn't yet but you know it's obviously a possibility and so that's how you sequence it out again tone is going to be important every time you deliver emphasis on the i and how am i supposed to do that is one way to deliver it late night fm dj use an accusations on it before every single delivery if you put any one of these skills out there completely naked the chances that it's gonna backfire on you in the moment is that much higher we get so hung up because at the end of the day what was chris telling you each of the role players what was he telling you no right he was telling you no he was in a different form car in 60 seconds or she dies but he was telling you no anytime somebody tells you no they're telling you what what's behind the no when somebody gives you pushback when somebody says do this or else cut your price i'm going to a competitor take this clause out of the contract and we're not going to sign change your delivery date give me a raise or i'm going to another company what are they really telling you now we got a hand back here yes but they're pushing back why are they pushing back what are they telling you with the pushback no they don't trust you or they're afraid of something we get so wrapped around the axle on the demand i want a car in 60 seconds what's behind that what is he telling you as brandon says go deeper hey isaac's the one that gives you crap over that not me i'm hearing a lot of things say it again i think he doesn't have a plan i think i think you're back here he wants who said raise your head that's it that's exactly it there's a motivation behind every push back every no and it usually has to do with trust usually have to has to do with fear there's another motive when when the when chechen terrorists marched into that school in 2004 in bezel and russia one of the first two demands on their list was you want putin to resign and we want russian boots off of chechen soil show of hands how many think that would ever happen and so the powers that be said it's never going to happen this is non-negotiable we can't negotiate this what are they saying behind that russian boots off of chechen soil and putin has to resign what are they saying behind it they're willing to die for it if you carry to its logical extension based on their history probably but what is the message behind freedom yeah their sovereignty and freedom has been encroached upon that's what we're going to talk about the fact that they said take it out of the contract we're not going to sign i don't care about that i want to know what makes them say that why are they afraid to sign what is their environment looks like that's clouding their vision and so don't get hung up on the fact that they've issued a threat where they issued a demand you take it you process it and then you start to attack what's propping that up what's supporting it and at the primal level it's fear or it's mistrust do you want to add brandon all right very good and yeah just kind of add to more that how do you get to the why without asking the why short answer is labels and then to go even further than that labeling the underlying dynamic you need a car in 60 seconds or she dies sounds like you want to live circum situation the circumstance and the situation drive your strategy when people are barricaded suspects are they always looking to make it out alive no so the fact that they're asking for a car and a way of escape at the beginning is a really good sign part of the why that that tells you right away is they want to live then how do we get to more of the y sounds like you got a reason for doing this sounds like you got a good reason a good justified reason for why you got up this morning decided to take all these people hostage what he said was and this would be on your go to labels list especially as a lash stitch effort it sounds like there's nothing i can say to change your mind and again the master's in tonality but also to his point as business people part of our job is qualifying our clients and so if you know that you're with somebody that is taking that line with you the other question you should be asking yourself is do i want to do business with this schmuck for the next five years or is it actually easier for me to cut my losses and focus my time on something else it's one of the great things that's one of the great things about having autonomy as a business person you get to make that decision and so if you know you're dealing with someone who is stuck on that one track mind you can take the route of i will come to an agreement i don't mind playing the game as long as i know what the rules are or you can say this is a [ __ ] waste of my time been working with this guy he's he clearly seems to recognize some sort of loss but he's stuck his pride and ego is too stuck to this number and he just doesn't have the ability to think this through right now which happens because that sounds like you're dealing with an assertive and the centers are one track mind people sometimes they get tunnel vision because they're so focused on a goal and there ain't nothing that's going to penetrate that thought process until they got a couple of nights to sleep on it and so how are you man again emotional moments right how are you managing and then do you want to do business with that person

Channel: NegotiationMastery

Views: 67,098

Keywords: Black swan, Emotional intelligence, Sales, Sales techniques, Negotiation skills, Active listening, black swan group, business negotiation tactics, conflict management in the workplace, effective communication techniques, emotional intelligence tips, getting to yes, how to negotiate, negotiation strategies, negotiation strategies and tactics, never split the difference, tactical empathy, salesforce crm, hubspot crm, Chris Voss, hostage negotiator

Id: bIYzB9BddxI

Length: 80min 33sec (4833 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 15 2022