Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

The script we came up with hit all the best practices of negotiation we’ve talked about so far. Here it is by steps: A “No”-oriented email question to reinitiate contact: “Have you given up on settling this amicably?” A statement that leaves only the answer of “That’s right” to form a dynamic of agreement: “It seems that you feel my bill is not jus

Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

All negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the surface. Once you know that the Haitian kidnappers just want party money, you will be miles better prepared. Splitting the difference is wearing one black and one brown shoe, so don’t compromise. Meeting halfway often leads to bad deals

“What else is there you feel is important to add to this?”

sharing with the world deep, dark secrets that they had held hostage in their own minds for a lifetime.

To get real leverage, you have to persuade them that they have something concrete to lose if the deal falls through.

But when someone displays a passion for what we’ve always wanted and conveys a purposeful plan of how to get there, we allow our perceptions of what’s possible to change. We’re all hungry for a map to joy, and when someone is courageous enough to draw it for us, we naturally follow. So when you ascertain your counterpart’s unattained goals, invoke

As you can see, “No” has a lot of skills. “No” allows the real issues to be brought forth; “No” protects people from making—and lets them correct—ineffective decisions; “No” slows things down so that people can freely embrace their decisions and the agreements they enter into; “No” helps people feel safe, secure, emotionally comfortable, and in con

Not long ago I did some training for the Memphis Bar Association. Normally, for the training they were looking for, I’d charge $25,000 a day. They came in with a much lower offer that I balked at. They then offered to do a cover story about me in their association magazine. For me to be on the cover of a magazine that went out to who knows how many