There are three kinds of yeses. There's commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. People are most used to giving the counterfeit yes because they've been trapped by the confirmation yes so many times. So the way you master no is understanding what really happens when somebody says 'no.' When yes is commitment, no is protection.
Body language and tone of voice - not words - are our most powerful assessment tools.
Successful negotiation is not about getting to 'yes'; it's about mastering 'no' and understanding what the path to an agreement is.
Emotions are one of the main things that derail communication. Once people get upset at one another, rational thinking goes out of the window.
The most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in.
The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.
Emotions aren't the obstacles to a successful negotiation; they are the means.
In reality, every single negotiation involves another commodity that's far more important to us, which is time - minutes, hours, our investment in time. So even if you're talking about dollars, the commodity of time is always there because there has to be a discussion about how the commodity of dollars is moved.
Price doesn't make deals, and salary doesn't control your career.
Negotiation is often described as the art of letting the other side have your way. You have to give the other side a chance to put stuff on the table voluntarily.
If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that's the only way you can quiet the voice in the other guy's mind. But most people don't do that.
In a job negotiation, the implementation of that deal is your success that also causes the company to succeed.
The sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually, 'That's right.' Before you convince them to see what you're trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, 'That's right.'
How you use your voice is really important, and it's really driven by context more than anything else, and your tone of voice will immediately begin to impact somebody's mood and immediately how their brain functions.
Salary negotiations are particularly important because people are testing you as both a co-worker and an ambassador. They really don't want you to be a pushover, and they don't want you to be a jerk.
When it comes to salary negotiation, don't forget that salary is only one term of employment. What else is on the table - vacation time, benefits, bonuses, flex days? Before determining that these terms are 'must-haves' or 'giveaways' to get a bigger salary, find out what the counterpart has to offer.
You're supposed to have a passionate purpose as a CEO.
Remember Robin Williams's great work as the voice of the genie in Disney's 'Aladdin'? Because he wanted to leave something wonderful behind for his kids, he said, he did the voice for a cut-rate fee of $75,000, far below his usual $8 million payday. But then something happened: The movie became a huge hit, raking in $504 million.
The No. 1 rule in any negotiation is don't take yourself hostage. People do this to themselves all the time by being desperate for 'yes' or afraid of 'no,' so they don't ask for what they really want. Instead, they ask for what they can realistically get. I've heard many people say, 'Well, that's a non-starter, so we won't even bring it up.'
What you want to do is put people in a position where they feel connected enough to you that they're willing to collaborate with you; they're willing to show you the things that they were scared to tell you about before.
