Author Chris Voss, the former international FBI hostage negotiator, shares his tried and tested tactics and strategies for high-stakes negotiations and being more persuasive in life. The best part about the book is that Never Split the Difference, is its actionable insights that you can follow for the average day-to-day negotiations you face.
Pinpoints: Never Split the Difference Summary
Tactical Empathy
Voss explains tactical empathy as an act of sincerely empathizing with a prospect’s emotions to crack deals.
It helps you learn where the other side is coming from, why their actions make sense to them, and what might move them to see things your way.
Mirroring
Never Split the Difference states the principle of mirroring as the process of reiterating and improvising upon the important keywords the prospect or the party in consideration said.
This concept is helpful in sales and negotiations, as it will give you the power to understand what’s going in your prospect’s mind so you can help them. This is a class A negotiating and closing tactic.
The goal of listening is to make prospects feel safe enough to express what they want and build the trust to begin a real conversation.
Voss has come up with a great tactic of listening i.e repeating the last three words that counterpart ended with. This helps to put people in a positive frame of mind where people are more likely to collaborate and push the solution ahead.
Labelling
It is a technique to validate someone’s emotions by verbally acknowledging them. With labelling, we can turn someone’s feelings into words, and then very smoothly and politely repeat their emotions back to them. This shows that we understand and respect their emotions.
The primary step to labelling is discovering the other person’s emotional state, usually by examining their words, tone, and body language. Once you have identified the emotion, the next step is to label it aloud with It seems/sounds/looks like…” Don’t use “I,” which presents you with your self-interest.
The last step in labelling is to be silent and to listen.
Get to a ‘NO’
People get defensive when someone is pushing them to say yes. The potential customer doesn’t feel safe in these kinds of situations. Saying ‘NO’ makes people feel safe, secure and in control. It’s good to get a ‘NO’ at the beginning of the conversation.
Why?, well Voss explains that No is the most powerful word because it provides us with an opportunity to clarify what they want. This helps them to get comfortable and then we can start the real negotiation.
Eventually, they might give in and say yes. So, NO might seem an end but it opens an opportunity to know your counterpart more and starts the real negotiation.
Powerful Word Starting With F to bend reality
There will be times when you are stuck in a negotiation, and all other things are failing. That time you need to use the word called ‘FAIR’. Like ‘Is it fair’?
As a negotiator, you should strive for a reputation of being fair. Your reputation precedes you. Let it precede you in a way that paves success.
Following are the 8 steps to bend the reality:-
- Make them solve
- Ask for fairness.
- Anchor their emotions with low expectations.
- Let them go first
- Establish a range
- Pivot to non-monetary terms.
- With numbers- use odd numbers
- Surprise with a gift.
With all these tactics, try to bend reality in your favour. Use these tactics to be a better negotiator.
The different rules to consider at the time of communication are-
- The 7-38-55 rule says 7 per cent of a message is based on words, 38 per cent from the tone of voice, and 55 per cent from body language and facial expressions.
- The Rule of Three is getting the other party to conform to the same thing three times.
- The Pinocchio Effect says that liars use extra words, converse in more complex sentences, and practice far more third-person pronouns.
The art of the closing deal is to remain focused till the deal is cracked.
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