Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It: How to Apply FBI Tactics in Sales - Outside Sales Talk with Chris Voss

Chris Voss is the CEO of the Black Swan Group, a firm that works with companies and individuals to take their negotiation skills to the next level. He is a 24-year veteran of the FBI, and he retired as the lead international kidnapping negotiator. Chris is also the author of the national best-seller: "Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It," which was named one of the seven best books on negotiation. In this episode, Chris explains how to apply high-stake negotiation techniques to never lose a sale.

Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:

• How to get your prospects to talk and reveal what they’re holding back
• The secret behind encouraging your prospects to show off
• The power of getting your prospect to say NO
• Triggering the right questions to get true information
• How to get your prospects to say “That’s right” instead of “You’re right”

You can listen to this episode on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you get your favorite podcast!

About the Guest:

Chris was trained in the art of negotiation not only by the FBI but also by Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. He has used his many years of experience in international crisis and high-stakes negotiations to develop a unique program and team that applies these globally proven techniques to the business world. Chris has lectured on negotiation at top business schools and universities across the US and has been seen on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and Forbes.

Website: https://blackswanltd.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophervoss/

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Transcript - Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It: How to Apply FBI Tactics in Sales with Chris Voss

Introduction to Negotiation Strategies

Steve Benson: Welcome back to Outside Sales Talk. Today we've got Chris Voss with us, and we're talking about negotiating as if your life depended on it. How to apply FBI tactics in sales. Really excited for this one. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Chris Voss: Thank you very much. A pleasure to be on with you.

Steve Benson: So by way of introduction, Chris Voss is CEO of the Black Swan Group and the author of the national bestseller, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It, which was named one of the seven best books on negotiation. Chris is a 24-year veteran of the FBI, and he retired as the lead international kidnapping negotiator. Drawing on his experience from high-stakes negotiations, his company specializes in working with companies and individuals to take their negotiating skills to the next level. Well, let's jump right into it, Chris. What's the relationship between listening and negotiation?

Chris Voss: Yeah, it's a shocking question, right? Because most people don't listen at all, and they get into negotiations, right? It's kind of crazy. I mean, you really get the upper hand if you can actually listen. And I've always been sort of surprised by it because it sounds so obvious. You're not going to find a negotiation book anywhere that doesn't list listening as an advanced skill.

And people say, "Well, I go around listening all day long. I'm already pretty good at it. I got a lot of practice in it." And I'll bet if somebody were to say that to me, I'd say, "Summarize the points that the last person made in the last conversation you were in." And I'm sure I'd get a blank look, right?

We're listening with our ears, but not necessarily remembering and empathizing and taking it to heart. And that's—it's a different skill to truly listen.

Steve Benson: Yeah, yeah. It really is.

The Art of Listening in Negotiation

Chris Voss: You know, most of us are like Charlie Brown talking to their teacher, you know, where the teacher is going, "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah," all the time. We're waiting for our time to speak. No, but if negotiation is the art of letting the other side have your way, then you gotta hear what they have to say first, you know, 'cause it's gotta be their idea. It's gotta come out of their mouth.

Most people wanna make their case in negotiation. You know, God help you if you, and I got this a lot, if you say, "Well, I was trying to make an argument," or "I'm making my argument." When I was teaching at USC and at Georgetown in negotiation in the MBA school there, I'd always get papers from students saying, "Well, I was making my argument." I, unfortunately, I'd land on them kind of hard because if you're making your argument, you are not in a negotiation. Or you're not negotiating. You may be in a negotiation, but you are not negotiating.

Encouraging Dialogue: The Power of Labeling

Steve Benson: Makes a ton of sense. How can salespeople encourage their counterparts in a negotiation to keep talking so that they can listen and get them to reveal their strategy?

Chris Voss: Yeah, you know, and it's completely counterintuitive to what most salespeople are taught. Getting information out of people—the best way to get information is not by asking a question. Everybody knows that we got to get information. We think that the best way to get information is to ask a question. Unfortunately, when you ask a question, on some level, you put the other side on their guard. "Ooh, I better be careful with my answer. They're asking me a question. I need to think it through." And that's not the way you get the best information.

I need to get you talking in very unvarnished fashion. But we have a very specific approach that's designed for this, and we call it a label. I mean, it's just a verbal observation of what the other person is saying. It actually works really good on a neuroscience basis. You know, I'm trying to bypass part of your brain, actually, to get you to start telling me what's really on your mind.

Everybody's got part of their brain—the prefrontal cortex, our neuroscientists and our brain scientists would call—well, the traffic cop of the brain slows your thoughts down, makes you think about what you're saying before you think about it. I have trouble getting the truth out of you that way. You know, I have trouble getting you to tell me what's really on your mind if you slow it down and think about it before it comes up. So I gotta get you talking, get you blurting stuff out before you even realize you're blurting stuff out.

Steve Benson: And how do you do that? How do you get a prospective customer to tell you what their true objection is or tell you what's truly holding them back from making a decision or tell you that they—or indicate they would be able to pay more? Or, you know, how do you—do you—what are the—what do you do? How do you do that?

Chris Voss: Yeah. Well, the two millimeter shift—real simple answer. Let's say you want to ask a great opening question. "What objections do you have?" Now, that's a pretty good question if you're going to ask a question, 'cause all of your questions should start with either "what" or "how." You shouldn't start your questions with any other word other than that.

Because people love to tell you what to do. People love to tell you how to do something. So that's—you tee them up to start with like that. We call those calibrated questions, calibrating for effect. But now, instead of, you know, "What kind of objections you have?" a better thing to do is to say, "Seems like you have some objections," and say it exactly like that.

Now, what happens is that's far more encouraging to the other side. It recognizes, to some degree, they should have objections. You're saying it really matter-of-factly. Like it just goes as a matter of course. If I say to you, "What objections do you have?" your first thought is like, "Holy cow, I could be wrong. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Maybe I haven't thought this through."

I mean, unfortunately, a lot of people have had beaten into their heads, "Better to keep your mouth shut and let people wonder if you're stupid than to speak up and remove all doubt."

Steve Benson: That's a good lesson to live by, right?

Chris Voss: Well, it can be, except in a sales context. Your customer, your client, is horrified that they're going to say something that's going to make them sound stupid. When, in fact, what they feel stupid about is by being uninformed—you got to know where they're uninformed. You got to know what they're wrong about. You got to know what they weren't paying attention to. You got to pull it out of them when they're, in fact, probably wrong. And that's when their guard is going to be at their highest. And it's their most embarrassing for them to admit that they have objections.

Chris Voss: What you do is you come at their brain in a different way, and you say, "It seems like you probably got some objections here." Now, they're going to find it—they're going to—they're going to more likely to talk to you very specifically about what those objections are because your tone of voice tells them it's natural that they should.

Chris Voss: And that's why this approach is far better than asking a question. It's a powerful lesson for me. I've never done it that way. I think I say something like, if I feel like something's holding someone back, I say things like, "Well, feels like you've got some things that you need to learn more about here before you'd be able to make a decision. What are those things?" You're right. I'm asking "what," which is different than saying, "It seems like you have some objections. It seems like there's something holding you back."

Steve Benson: Right. Yeah.

Understanding Objections: The Two Millimeter Shift

Chris Voss: To borrow a phrase from Tony Robbins: the two millimeter shift. Yeah. It's subtle, but it's psychological.

Steve Benson: Yeah.

Chris Voss: Thousand percent. And we have people who adapt this. We got one client that calls it unlocking the floodgates of truth.

Steve Benson: Yeah.

Chris Voss: They have this person who said—this happens to be in real estate, but everybody's got the same challenge. Everybody's in sales. You know, Daniel Pink says we're in non-sales sales 90% of our life. Real estate open house, client walks through. And real estate agent at the end says, "You know, what did you see that you liked? What's your reaction to the house?" Which would normally be a good "what" question. And they get—they get some responses, but they get guarded responses. They're like, "Well, you know, we're thinking about starting a family. This might work for us." And then they'll leave.

That same real estate agent, instead of saying, "What'd you like about the house?" now says, "Seems like you saw some things you liked." Potential clients then instantly start gushing. They go, "Yeah, well, we're thinking about starting a family, and we saw that you had the bedrooms." And they start just kicking off one after another. Because this observational approach to communication, as she said, unlocks the floodgates of truth talk.

Steve Benson: And I guess you can—so you're saying you can use it either way. You can use it to label something positive in your sales situation, or you can use it to label something negative. So you could say, "It seems like this feature would really create a lot of value for you. It seems like you'd make more money if you had this." Or you could also—that can be positive—or it could also be, "It seems like there's—it seems like you were concerned about the way that these two pieces of technology would be able to integrate."

Chris Voss: Thousand percent. Actually, the second thing that you brought up is even more important—labeling the negatives. You know, because—and I couldn't tell you the source, but the person that repeated this stat to me, I'm satisfied it was good—said 70% of buy decisions are made in order to eliminate negatives, to deal with losses, to deal with problems. You know, people are not buying things to accomplish gain. They're buying things to solve problems, which by definition means they're more focused on the negative.

They want to be more comfortable talking about the problems, the concerns, the mismatches, the troubleshooting, because they instinctively know implementation is really the issue—not price. It's implementation. It's the risk. So, you know, how do we start to address the risk? And this is how you start as a salesperson. It's how you start to address it right away.

Steve Benson: Vitamins, not painkillers, right? Or—they want painkillers and medicine. They don't want vitamins.

Chris Voss: Right. They want to worry about what's going to kill them first, and then they're going to worry about how they're going to prosper. But it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You don't feel safe, you can't get to the benefits. You got to feel safe first.

Tactical Empathy and Emotional Intelligence in Sales

Steve Benson: Well, it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. How can salespeople transform a negotiation by using tactical empathy and emotional intelligence?

Chris Voss: Yeah, you don't just transform it; you accelerate it. Every salesperson's got the same couple of problems. Number one, how many fake opportunities are in front of you? You know, we started doing contenting since the book came out that there's a significant percentage of opportunities that are just false opportunities, fake opportunities. And I was telling some people we were discovering this when we're coaching people through deals, and that we're accelerating their deal-making by getting rid of the fake opportunities.

And this person said, "Yeah, there's a stat about that in The Challenger Sale," which I had heard about, but I hadn't bothered to read. And I went ahead and got it for the information. And their data says that 20% of the opportunities that salespeople encounter are actually fake opportunities, false opportunities. There are people that are doing due diligence. They have no intention of using you as a salesperson. They have no intention of using your product. They're out to prove to themselves that what they already decided on—not your product—is the correct decision, or you're the competing bid.

Now, if they're pegging that number at 20%, there's no way that number's high. Because in order to get that number, they had to get people to admit that they were lying to other businesspeople. You know, when are you telling someone that you want to use them, and you're lying to them? They're not going to exaggerate that number. They're going to fudge on it. So actually, we think the number is at least 50% of the opportunities because there's another stat out there that says that buyers—half of the buyers out there—have made up their mind before they ever talk to a salesperson. And no salesperson's got a 50% close rate. Right.

So buyers have made up their mind before they're talking to you. You got to find out whether or not they're approaching you with a closed mind, whether or not they're doing due diligence, whether or not you're the competing bid.

Steve Benson: What questions do you ask for that?

Chris Voss: Well, you don't ask questions. You start with observations. Like, first of all, if all they want from you is your price or your presentation, and they don't want to interact with you, that's a bad sign. They're looking for you for data only. And since it's true that their mind is going to be made up to some degree, there's another survey out there that says that before they encounter a salesperson at all, they've done enough research that their mind is 80% made up.

Steve Benson: That makes sense.

Labeling to Manage Customer Emotions

Chris Voss: So yeah, I mean, you start thinking about it—this is nothing but logical. You decide if you're going to buy something, you're going to go on Google. You're going to start doing web searches. You're going to start talking to people that aren't salespeople. You're going to collect a lot of data. Your mind is going to be maybe as much as 80% made up. So what does a salesperson do when they start out with—you want to say, "What kind of thought have you put into this?" Instead, you say, "Seems like you've probably done some research. Seems like you've probably given this a lot of thought."

This is congratulating them on their thinking and their research, which then encourages them to show it off. You know, people love to show off. People are at their most unguarded when they're either showing off or they're correcting. So we want to trigger that feeling of showing off or correcting because they're going to give us really unvarnished information.

So once again, it's the labeling of their experience or what they're doing that makes all the difference.

Steve Benson: Right.

Chris Voss: And you say it in a way that's congratulatory. "It seems like you've probably given this a lot of thought." And that's very encouraging. And if you're congratulating them, now they're more than likely to start gushing with you about all the research that they did. They just want to know that you want to hear it. That's all they want. People want to know that you're going to listen.

Steve Benson: Very interesting. Are there other things that you can use labeling for? How could labeling help salespeople reduce an angry interaction with a customer?

Chris Voss: Well, the really counterintuitive thing about labeling is—and there's neuroscience that backs it up—if somebody's angry with you, either they've expressed it, or you sense it, it's the elephant in the room, so to speak. Now, there are two things that don't make the elephant in the room go away.

One is ignoring it, and two is denying it's there. Nobody out there is ever going to say, "The best way to get rid of the elephant is to say there's no elephant in the room." The ridiculous way to get rid of the elephant is to simply say, "There's an elephant in the room." If your client, if your customer, is mad at you, then you’ve got to say, "Seems like you're probably angry with me." Just like that.

Well, we teach a lot of people, especially on the negatives: If your gut instinct is kicking into gear and telling you there's something you want to deny—"I don't want you to think I'm not listening to you," "I don't want you to think I haven't been getting back to you on a timely basis," "I don't want you to think I'm just another salesperson trying to get your money"—then your gut instinct is accurate that there's a negative there.

The two millimeter shift, again, is a shift from denial to observation. And this scares people. It scares them to death. And it is the biggest accelerator to deal-making that's out there. We typically have people come to us, and they've been struggling with a deal for 18 months. We coach them for a week to resolution. I mean, this is an accelerator that just blows people's socks off.

Steve Benson: It seems like a conversational and communication lubricant to me. I mean, really, I can feel why it's so powerful.

Chris Voss: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. You know, what it really does is it eliminates friction. A lubricant either overcomes friction or—what's another way to overcome friction? Just eliminate it. And it really eliminates friction. That's why it accelerates things so much.

The Importance of “No” in Negotiation

Steve Benson: Very powerful. In your book, you say, "Beware yes, master no." Why is "no" the start of any negotiation and not the end of it?

Chris Voss: I tell you, it's on so many levels. First of all, this momentum selling, or the "yes momentum," where you get micro-agreements—that is the worst thing any salesperson could possibly do. Now, there's some people out there that say, "You know what, I make deals all the time with that." All right, fine. Your batting average is lower than it should be. You're in the major leagues, and you're barely getting by.

If I ask you a yes question—I never ask a yes question unless I'm going someplace. "Do you want to make more money?" I'm not just taking a poll. I want to take you someplace like that. Is your software solution giving you whatever the yes question would be? Because I don't even ask yes questions. I mean, I can’t even—it’s hard to construct one.

For a CRM system: "Is your CRM system helping you track all your customer interactions?"

Steve Benson: Right, now see that—that's a no-oriented question, but it's still a trap question.

Chris Voss: Yeah, actually, I guess for a lot of people the answer would be no. I mean, well, it depends.

Steve Benson: I feel a lot of people would say, "Yeah, it's tracking all our interactions with our customers. We're getting that out of it." Yeah, for sure. So I guess that—but they could say no, right? Like, does a yes question always have to be yes? Or can it sometimes—the answer be no? Or I guess, is the point that when you ask a question, you should ask a question that you believe the answer will be no?

Chris Voss: All right, simple shift. How often do you call people on the phone and say, "Have you got a few minutes to talk?"

Steve Benson: Pretty frequently.

Chris Voss: Right. How often is that a few minutes?

Steve Benson: Probably pretty rarely.

Chris Voss: Exactly right. We mean that question in a respectful fashion. But first of all, you never ask anybody if they have a few minutes to talk because your question is really, "Have you got a few minutes to listen?"—not to talk. I didn’t call you on the phone because I was curious about what was on your mind. I called you on the phone because there's something on my mind that I want you to hear.

So that question is a lie to begin with. And by definition, a few is somewhere between three and five. And most people who ask for a few minutes want 45. Let’s say you call me and you say, "Have you got a few minutes to talk?" I’ve got 15, but I’m worried you want 45. What am I going to say? I’m going to want to say no.

Steve Benson: Right.

Chris Voss: But I'm going to be scared to say no because I know you're trying to get me to say a short answer. We call people up and say, "Is now a bad time?" Every time. Nobody that works for me says, "Have you got a few minutes to talk?" It’s always, "Is now a bad time to talk?" You get one or two answers. They’ll hesitate for a second. Having said no—because saying no makes people feel safe and protected—they’ll say, "No, no, no, it’s not a bad time. I’ve got a meeting in 15 minutes, but if you can let me go inside of 15 minutes, we can talk." You start getting immediate answers that guide you for the next few seconds.

I never say to anybody, "Do you agree with this?" I say, "Do you disagree?" I never say to anybody, "Does this look like something that would work for you?" I say, "Does this look like a bad idea?" What every salesperson is trying to get after is what comes after yes or no. That’s what you really need to hear. But if you say to me, "Does this look like something that would work for you?" If I have objections, I can’t say yes and give you my objections because I feel like there’s a hook there.

I feel like there’s a commitment. If I say yes to this at all, I feel trapped and obligated. But if you say to me, "Does this look like a bad idea?" I’ll say, "No, it doesn’t look like a bad idea. But here are the problems. I need this, this, and this." Having said no—and feeling that my no commits me in no way, shape, or form—I will now feel free to tell you what the problem is. Because I don’t feel that outlining those problems commits me to the deal.

Now I can be honest. Now I can correct you. Now I can answer safely. And the first shift entirely is to get away from yes at all. Like if anything’s important, I just ask no.

Chris Voss: I was in a conversation about 10 months ago with Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank. He's a genuine, genuine, and generous guy—a generous dude.

We had a training session, offering him a free ticket to the training. I don’t think he’s coming. I want him to send his top guy to give you an idea of how generous he is. He immediately fires back at me, "How many can we buy?" Like, awesome. You know, because most people, when they want a free ticket, they’re like, "How many free ones can I get?" He says, "How many can we buy?" But we go back and forth on the number of tickets for the training session that we're doing in New York. And we're selling out because we always sell out.

The team is mad at me because I’m giving away a ticket to anybody. They don’t care if it’s a guy from Shark Tank. They want the money for the tickets. They call me on the phone and they say, "You say he’s going to buy tickets. How many is he going to buy? And if he doesn’t buy them tonight, we’re going to run out by tomorrow morning."

And I’m in LA, and my team’s in New York, which means we’re three hours behind the curve. And by the time I get up in the morning, the event’s going to be closed. And I’m going to be embarrassed because Robert Herjavec can’t get any. So I sent him an email at five o’clock on a Tuesday, and the email says, "Are you against committing to three tickets now? Are you against paying for them before the business day starts on the East Coast tomorrow?"

I get a response, email response from him less than 15 minutes later. He said, "No, we’ll commit to three tickets right now. No, my assistant will get ahold of you within the hour. Send us a link, and we’ll pay for them now." Bang, bang, bang. After five o’clock on a Tuesday on the West Coast. Because the word is no. I do not close on a word yes; we close everything on the word no.

Steve Benson: So ironic because there’s a very popular negotiating book called Getting to Yes, and you’re saying get to no. The irony—I love it.

Chris Voss: That’s a thousand percent. Getting to Yes is killing you. You’re killing yourself by trying to get to yes.

Steve Benson: It’s fantastic. I love how you’re able to work how the human mind works into what you’re doing here. This is so cool.

Chris Voss: Well.

Transforming Conversations with “That’s Right”

Steve Benson: What are the two words that instantly transform any negotiation, and how do you trigger them?

Chris Voss: Yeah, all right, so great question. And there’s a real cautious shift here. The two words that you want to get out of somebody, if you really want to establish a great long-term working relationship and get them to give you your deal, is when they say, "That’s right."

Now, most people are used to hearing, "You’re right." And people say to you, "You’re right," when you’re making your case and they want you to shut up.

Steve Benson: Makes sense.

Chris Voss: And this is so crazy because everybody falls for this, and everybody does this too. There isn’t a person that I’ve trained that I say, "Sometime this past week, you wanted somebody to shut up, and to get them to shut up and stop bothering you, you looked at them and you said, ‘You’re right.’"

And one of the greatest practitioners of "You’re right" on the planet—because "You’re right" is to get somebody to stop talking and maintain a relationship—you know who the best practitioners of "You’re right" are?

Steve Benson: Husbands.

Chris Voss: Mm-hmm.

Steve Benson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can hear my dad saying that, actually.

Chris Voss: So "You’re right" is when you’re making your case and the other side is tired of it, and they want you to stop talking. But "That’s right" is when you summarize the point that they agree is completely true. And it’s not your truth. It’s not their truth. It’s the truth.

Steve Benson: You can’t handle the truth.

Chris Voss: It’s not true, right, right. And it triggers two things simultaneously. And it’s the old Stephen Covey guidance: "Seek first to understand, then be understood." It’s really "Seek first to demonstrate understanding so you can make your point." They will never be more open to your perspective than they are after they’ve said, "That’s right."

You’re trying to put them in a position where they listen to what you have to say. Covey said, "Seek first to understand, then be understood." He was talking about a sequence. Let’s pretend that all he wanted to do was make his point—which is not the case. He was giving us guidance from great human interaction. But let’s just say that he was only a salesperson, and he only wanted to make the sale, and he only wanted to make his case.

The sequence is: clear the other side’s head, let them feel they’ve been heard. When people have been heard, that’s when their ears open back up. They’re never more open to influence and persuasion than after they’ve said, "That’s right." So that’s how you get to where you want to go in the fastest way possible. Summarize what their perspective is—not just the part that you like, but especially the part that you want to disagree with.

If you can lay out their problems with you without going, "But that’s wrong." Lay out their problems with you and then shut up. Don’t say another word until you’ve gotten a "That’s right" out of them. You’d be shocked at how many deals will make themselves through that sequence.

Calibrated Questions and Forced Empathy

Steve Benson: I love it. What are the calibrated questions, and how do they help your counterpart empathize with you?

Chris Voss: Yes, you know, it's the what and how questions, but we don't use what and how questions to gather information. We use what and how questions to shape thought. And the first one is—you know, our number one how question is a version of saying no, which is looking at the other side when they want you to make a demand that either you can't or shouldn't comply with, and saying, "How am I supposed to do that?"

So, how questions—and inflection, tonality—is critical. You know, your inner voice betrays your outer voice. If you think they're stupid, you say, "How am I supposed to do that?" and your tone of voice is saying, "I think you're an idiot." But if you say, "How am I supposed to do that?" you force them to empathize with you.

I mean, the purpose of empathy is for it to be a two-way street. You want to see their perspective so they will, in turn, see yours. And we refer to this as forced empathy. When you say, "How am I supposed to do that?" it stops them dead in their tracks and makes them think, "Wow, yeah, let me at least think about it." Now, they may come back at you and say, "If you want the deal, you're going to have to do it." Which is actually a great answer because, having forced them to take a look at your position, if they don’t move off theirs, they’re not going to.

One of your jobs as a negotiator is to find out how movable their position is. This is a way to thoroughly test their position, to find out if there's any movability in it, any flexibility at all, in a way that they don’t even know that's what they just told you. They have no idea how much they've told you in their response.

When what you're really after is to use the question to shape their thinking.

Understanding the Black Swan

Steve Benson: What is the black swan?

Chris Voss: The black swan is not a ballerina. Yeah, the black swan is the impact of the highly improbable. What are the tiny little things that you couldn’t even guess, but if you got them out of the other side, they would change everything? Everybody knows there’s hidden information in every deal, and nobody acts like they can get it out of the other side. Like, you’re always hiding stuff.

If you are, they are. The thing that’s hard to wrap your mind around is: where do the unknowns overlap? If I know you’re holding stuff back, then by definition, I can’t know what it is. If I can’t get you to tell me, I can’t imagine how it’s going to change the deal. And if you’re holding it back, you’re holding it back because it matters—just like me.

I’m holding stuff back because it matters. If I let it out, it would change the entire dynamic. The black swans are not just what we’re holding back but what happens when what we’re holding back overlaps. There’s no way of knowing until we start pulling that out of each other.

Steve Benson: And how do you do that? How do you pull it out of the other person?

Chris Voss: Well, there are two things. You know, what do they know that’s important, that matters? And actually, what do they know that they have no idea is important?

Businesspeople everywhere want to learn how to detect deception at the table because the other side is going to deceive you about what matters. So, you know, people say, "Let me read body language so I know if they look up and to the right, are they lying or are they telling the truth? If they look down, you know, what are the tells?" Well, they’ve got to know it’s important for them to hide it. But if they don’t know it’s important, you just got to get them talking inadvertently, in an unguarded fashion.

"It seems like you put a lot of thought into this." When you say that label, they’re also going to start telling you why they put thought into it—not just what the thought was, but they’re going to start revealing the dynamics that caused that thought. And that’s where the black swans are.

Steve Benson: Seems like you’re in a hurry here.

Chris Voss: Yeah, you know, I mean, we just finished—we just got past our quarter, and everybody’s kind of chilling out. Everybody’s going on vacation. Or, "Yeah, you know..." That observation gets them to give you information in a very relaxed fashion. It’s going to impact your timeline, the urgency of the deal. Do they have any urgency?

If they say, "Look, I need you to cut your price now. I need you to cut your price now," the worst thing a salesperson could say is, "How much?" All of it.

Now, if somebody says to you, "I need you to cut your price now. I need you to cut your price now," what are they telling you? What they’re really telling you is they are under pressure. They’re telling you that their boss is telling them that what they’re delivering doesn’t have value. So if they’re telling you they’re under pressure, you say, "Wow, seems like you’re under a lot of pressure."

That’s when they’re most likely to say, "You have no idea what’s going on on my side of the table. My boss just quit, my boss just got fired, my boss just got promoted." I mean, you didn’t ask the question—you made the observation. That’s how you start to pull out the pieces of information, because no matter how much market research you do, you don’t know when was the last time the boss yelled at them, and about what.

You don’t know when was the last time their spouse yelled at them, and about what. What’s really causing the pressure on them on the other side—it’s not in their LinkedIn profile. It’s not on their Facebook page. The best source of information is that you’ve got to get them talking about stuff that they don’t realize has an impact on the negotiation, but you know does, because you know what your hidden information is.

Steve Benson: And, well, I guess in turn, if you do have information that is important, should you keep hiding it, or should you expose it? What's the gray area on that?

Chris Voss: Yeah, all right. So, it depends upon two things. It depends upon whether or not you're going to take yourself hostage and it depends upon your ability as a negotiator. I can say to myself, "All right, look, I got to close this deal by Friday, and I can't tell them that because they're going to know I'm under pressure." Or I could get you on the phone and say, "Look, I got to close this deal by Friday. And if you don't start laying out right now how we're going to close it by Friday, then there's no point in us talking anymore. And I got to get on the phone with somebody else."

See, every one of my problems can be my leverage, depending upon how I pitch it—kind of how I react to it. And most of the great negotiators, they turn their weaknesses into strengths. Instead of saying, "I can't let them know this or they'll have power over me," I could say, "I can let them know this and tell them if they don't fix it, then I got to move on."

It's all in how I perceive what these pieces of information are and whether or not I'm going to take myself hostage.

Life Lessons from Hostage Negotiation

Steve Benson: But what do you mean by that—take yourself hostage?

Chris Voss: Well, if I say, "Look, I can't tell you this—you'll have power over me," I gave you the power. I took myself hostage.

I was talking to some salespeople the other day, and they said to me, "What do we do when a guy from procurement calls us with a week left in a quarter and gives us a take-it-or-leave-it offer?" And I say, "Leave it." That procurement guy has been waiting for two and a half months to make that phone call. That procurement guy feels like you're going to take yourself hostage because there's a week left in the quarter—or even 48 hours left in the quarter.

I had a head of sales say, "Tell my people what to do when procurement calls us with 48 hours left in a quarter." You don't realize that the guy on the other side of the table has waited for that moment. And if you shine him on, he's sunk for another quarter. Not only is this guy on the other side of the table sunk, but he's got a customer waiting for him internally, tapping their foot, going, "Where's my product? You've got 48 hours to make this deal or I'm screwed because I’ve got my own deadlines. If you don’t deliver, I’m screwed. And you're going to screw this up over 48 hours left in a quarter? I can't wait for you for another three months. You cut this deal now."

So all of this is about who's taking who hostage. A salesperson who's scared to death of those phone calls that are coming in 48 hours left in a quarter. The procurement guy on the other side is scared to death that you're not going to take the deal and he's going to have to wait another three months. And he might get fired while he’s waiting.

Steve Benson: Sure. It’s a game, right? How has your experience in life-or-death situations helped you develop this radical negotiation strategy?

Chris Voss: Yeah, you know, your biggest problem is your biggest problem. No matter where you are in life, you're going to feel like this deal is the end of the world. That your life is going to be over if you don't get this deal. In a hostage negotiation, we just assume everybody felt that way. And we came up with emotional intelligence solutions to calm them down and get our way.

Like, as a hostage negotiator, I'm not going to split the difference. I'm not going to compromise. I got a bad guy in a bank that's got four hostages. I'm not going to say, "Hey, tell you what, we'll take two and call it a day." That's just absurd.

Now, what most people think is, "Right, so yeah, well, as a hostage negotiator, number one, it was a one-off. Number two, if you didn’t do what you said, you’d kill them." Well, no. We can’t kill them. It’s not a one-off because we have repeat customers. They’re going to kill people if they don’t think they’re going to get their way. And so, if we get them out, they’re going to take hostages again. We have repeat customers all the time. Eventually, they’re going to get out of jail, and they’re going to do it again.

So we can’t lie to them. We’ve got to live with everything that we’ve ever said. We have repeat customers. So how do we get our way, get everything under a lot of pressure, and have the other side be happy with us?

We’ve got to figure out what’s driving human behavior and circumvent what’s on the table and get into who they are as human beings. And that’s why it works everywhere. Because no matter what the negotiation is, there’s a human being on the other side, and they’ve got an emotional wiring system in there called the limbic system. And it’s how every person makes decisions under every circumstance.

Sales in 60 Seconds - Quickfire Sales Tips

Steve Benson: Fantastic. Well, I'd like to move into the section of the show called Sales in 60 Seconds—quick questions and up to 60-second answers. So, first question: What's the best way for a salesperson to establish rapport quickly?

Chris Voss: Hear them out. And if you can't do that, you are like every other salesperson, which means nobody you talk to is used to being heard out, which means you're refreshing the first time you do it. You instantly transform yourself from whatever the stereotype of a salesperson is. Hear them out and be shy.

Steve Benson: Do you use any tool to prepare for a negotiation?

Chris Voss: Yeah, you know, we basically ask, "What’s our gut instinct telling us here?" And based on what our gut instinct is telling us, we prepare labels to reinforce positives and diffuse negatives. Our overriding goal is to get the other side to say, "That’s right." I mean, if I get them to say, "That’s right," what do I have to summarize in advance? What’s my read of this? I’m driving for "That’s right" instead of a yes right away. That’s how we prepare.

Steve Benson: Getting to "That’s right." I feel like that’s the title of a book. What’s your number one tip to keep your emotions in check during a negotiation?

Chris Voss: You know, just be genuinely curious about what’s driving the other side. There’s a compartmentalization that takes place if you get into a genuinely curious mode. And you hear more, you see more, you recognize more. By definition, it’s a positive and very resilient mindset to be in. Genuine curiosity keeps you from getting up in your own head in an angry way, a negative way, or worrying about the future. It’s a tremendous mindset to be in to really make things happen.

Steve Benson: What’s a common mistake you see salespeople make in their negotiations?

Chris Voss: Trying to get people to say yes all the time. I mean, being in love with yes, being addicted to yes, and only willing to hear yes. I mean, a lot of salespeople say, "Yeah, yes, you said yes," and then they leave. It’s nuts.

We worked with a major telecommunications company a while back, and 50% of their signed deals were never implemented. Fifty percent. Signed deals. What’s this? People taking yes and stopping talking. People thinking they got a deal when they heard the word yes. Paying no attention to how whatsoever—and consequently, the yes doesn’t stay. Hearing yes is your biggest problem as a salesperson.

Steve Benson: What’s the first thing about traditional negotiation methods that salespeople should get rid of, other than the focus on yes?

Chris Voss: Being beaten to death with their name. Like, somebody calls me on the phone and says, "Can I speak to Chris Voss?" because they read in Dale Carnegie that the sweetest sound in the world is my own name. And they want to use my name on me over and over and over again.

Look, I’m a battered child with that name stuff. The more times you say my name, the less I trust you because the snake oil salesman, when I was 18 years old, conned me into snake oil or a coupon book. I mean, I’ve been conned with my name. And the other thing that’s happening while you’re hitting me with my name all the time—I’m forgetting who you are. I’ve got no idea who you are.

As much as you’re injecting my name into the conversation, you should be gently reminding me of your name. And all I need to know is your first name. We want to be on a first-name basis, but you don’t want to give me yours—you want to take mine. I mean, that’s a one-way approach.

Steve Benson: Interesting. I like it. As a final takeaway, what should the field salespeople listening today do as a first step to master negotiations?

Chris Voss: It’s going to be very self-interested: Buy my book.

Steve Benson: Hey, that’s fair. Everybody can afford a book.

Chris Voss: Yeah, I got to tell you something—that’s the cheapest $20 you’ll ever spend. It’s the best $20 you’re ever going to spend. The book is a readable book. Tal Raz, our co-author, we brought him in because he writes a readable, digestible book. And I’m in the negotiation business.

And it’s been spectacularly supported by the sales community. I didn’t think I was writing a sales book—we wrote a sales book. It’s easy to digest.

Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts

Steve Benson: Excellent. I’ll check it out. Well, I’m going to attempt to summarize what we’ve talked about here today and do it in a minute or two. So:

For starters, negotiation is the art of letting the other side have their way. Or—it's the art of letting the other side have your way. It’s a unique way of looking at it. I almost can’t say it right—it’s the art of letting the other side have your way. You immediately get the upper hand if you really listen.

Negotiation is not about making an argument. The best way to get information out of someone is not by asking a question. Asking a question gets people on their guard. Instead, get the prospect talking and get them talking enough so that they aren’t thinking about what they’re saying. Avoid asking questions to draw out your prospect's objections. Instead, use your tone of voice to tell them it’s natural that they should have objections and say something like, "Seems like you have some objections here."

This can also be applied to a positive. You could say something like, "It seems like this solution could really work for you." Salespeople deal with a lot of false opportunities—some staggering statistics on that. Prospects who aren’t actually going to purchase act like they’re going to but are really just doing research, etc. It’s a really bad sign that this is happening if prospects only want information out of you—your pricing, your presentation—but don’t want to engage with you. A strategy to use in this case is to say something along the lines of, "Seems like you’ve really done some research here," or, "Seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought." It congratulates them, lets them show off what they know, and shows them that you want to listen.

Never focus on asking yes questions. Go for no to get more information. Examples of this are things like, "Is now a bad time to talk?" "Do you disagree with this?" "Is this a bad idea?" or "Are you against?" Frame the question to get them to say no, where they’re comfortable. They’re comfortable saying no, whereas yes has all these things attached to it. If they have to say yes, then they’re agreeing tacitly to all these things. Asking questions in this way will get you the true information you need to make a sale.

Go for getting your prospects to say, "That’s right." People say, "You’re right," when they want you to shut up. Whereas they say, "That’s right," when you have said something that is true that they agree with. Shoot for "That’s right," and once they’ve said it, they’re extremely open to persuasion.

The black swan is what your prospect—and even you—are holding back in the negotiation. And you hold things back because they matter. You can uncover the black swan by using these labeling questions. If it feels like there’s a sense of urgency, you might say something like, "Seems like you’re in a hurry here," and that can pull the truth out of them.

Steve Benson: Chris, this has been a fantastic way to think about sales negotiation. And you mentioned your book. Where can listeners read more about your work and reach out to you? I obviously know about your newsletter—it’s very popular. What would you recommend people do?

Chris Voss: Yeah, the newsletter is a gateway to everything. It’s a gateway to the website, which happens to be blackswanltd.com. But the newsletter is complimentary, comes out on Tuesday mornings, and it’s short, sweet, concise, actionable advice. It doesn’t take you long to get through it. We give you stuff you can implement that day. And also, we have a lot of training announcements in there. We’re training across the country this year. So, updates on training and other free products—we give away a lot of stuff that’s free.

The best way to sign up for the newsletter is via text-to-sign-up function. The number you’re texting to is 22828. And again, that number is 22828. You send a message: FBI empathy—all one word. Don’t let your spell check put a space between FBI and empathy. FBI empathy, all one word—lowercase is fine. Text that to 22828, and you’ll get a text back asking for your email address. You’re signed up. It’s a gateway to everything.

Steve Benson: Cool. And they can figure out how to do this on your website too, and we’ll link all this in the show notes so people don’t have to do the legwork. Chris, this has been a great episode of Outside Sales Talk. If any of our listeners can think of other sales reps that would benefit from learning this skill, share this episode with them. Take care until next time, guys.