First, by revealing your cutoff you reduce the risk of impasse. And second, when an opponent knows your deadline, he’ll get to the real deal – and concession-making more quickly. –Never split the difference, p.120 Continue reading Tell your counterpart about your deadline, you’ll get a better deal.
When people issue threats, they consciously or subconsciously create ambiguities and loopholes they fully intend to exploit. The more precise the answer to the four questions, the closer you’re getting to the counterparty’s deadline. –Never split the difference, p.118 Continue reading To gauge the level of a particular threat, we’d pay attention to how many of the four questions – What? Who? When? And how? – were addressed.
No deal is better than a bad deal. When deadline approaches, we say and do impulsive things that are against our best interests. “The deal is off!” our mind screams at us in some imaginery future scenario. Deadlines are often arbitrary, almost always flexible, and hardly ever trigger the consequences we think – or are told- they will. –Never split the difference, p.117 Continue reading Deadlines are mostly imaginery and never finals.
No. Just, simply, no. Let me paint you an example: A woman wants her husband to wear black shoes with his suit. But her husband doesn’t want to; he prefers brown shoes. So what do they do? They compromise, they meet halfway. And, you guessed it, he wears one black and one brown shoe. Is this the best outcome? No! In fact, that’s the worst possible outcome. –Never split the difference, p.115 Continue reading Don’t compromise
When your adversary say “That’s right,” they feel they have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as correct of their own free will. They embrace it. Why is “You’re right” a disaster? Consider this: Whenever someone is bothering you, and they just won’t let up, and they won’t listen to anything you have to say, what do you tell them to get them to shut up and go away? “You’re right”. It works every time. Tell people “you’re right” and they get a happy smile on their face and leave you alone for at least twenty-four hours. But you … Continue reading Get your counterpart to say “That’s right” ✅ But make sure it’s not “You’re right” ❌
Send this one-sentence email. “Have you given up on this project?” The point is that this one-sentence email encapsulates the best of “No”-oriented questions and plays on your counterpart’s natural human aversion to loss. It offers the other party the feeling of safety and the illusion of control while encouraging them to define their position and explain it to you. Just as important, it makes the implicit threat that you will walk away on your own terms. –Never split the difference, p.92 Continue reading Someone ignores your emails?
To get to them, a great way is to mislabel one of the other party’s emotions or desires. You say something that you know is totally wrong, like “So it seems that you really are eager to leave your job” when they clearly want to stay. That forces them to listen and makes them comfortable correcting you by saying, “No, that’s not it. This is it.” –Never split the difference, p.91 Continue reading If you’re talking to someone who is just not listening.
But while we can’t control others’ decisions, we can influence them by inhabiting their world and seeing and hearing exactly what they want. –Never split the difference, p.84 Continue reading If we believe that we can control or manage others’ decisions with compromise and logic, we’re leaving millions on the table.
I am not yet ready to agree; You are making me feel uncomfortable; I do not understand; I don’t think I can afford it; I want something else; I need more information; or I want to talk it over with someone else. Then, after pausing, ask solution-based questions or simply label their effect: “What about this doesn’t work for you?” “What would you need to make it work?” “It seems like there’s something here that bothers you.” –Never split the difference, p.79 Continue reading When someone tells you “No”, you need to rethink the word in one of its alternative – and much more real – meanings:
The emotions calm, the effectiveness of the decisions go up, and the other party can really look at your proposal. –Never split the difference, p.78 Continue reading Preserve a person’s autonomy by clearly giving them permission to say “No” to your ideas.
Roadmap to Billions 