Never Split the Difference – a fresh look at negotiating

Whether it’s negotiating a big deal or just being a better communicator, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss will change your communication mind set. If you have not read this book, read it now.

Chris takes his skills learnt in negotiating high stake kidnapping cases and applies them to the business world in this insightful book. Right off the bat he tables the concept that meeting in the middle is just plain wrong, he gives a great example: you want to wear brown shoes, your partner says black – meeting in the middle would be one brown shoe one black. Forget “fair” give yourself a new rule set.

My top 10 takeaways from the book:

1. Become a power listener – don’t over prepare for a negotiation, go in with a hypothesis and then ask open questions to validate and adapt your understanding of the client – active listening on steroids.
2. Use empathetic language – re-frame using “labels” that describe your perception of their reality or emotions.
3. Slow down, aim on taking at least 3 visits to close a big deal – build true empathy and understanding of your counterpart, uncover what you don’t know, you don’t know before attempting to close. Play with chasing NO’s, rather than the YES’s we have all been traditionally taught to seek.
4. Negotiate face to face – no matter if it’s on the other side of the world remember words only account for 5% of a message, body language and tone convey the rest.
5. Defuse your counterpart with positive affirmation of your worst flaws at the beginning of negotiation – Chris calls this an “accusation audit”.
6. Bend reality in price – be prepared for extreme offers, experienced negotiators will often begin with a ridiculous offer and use it as an extreme anchor. “Lets put price aside for a moment and talk about what would make this a good deal”. Likewise find out what would make your offer work for them with other non-price variables. He gives a great example of a ransom demand of $150,000 being paid off with $5,000 because in reality the kidnappers wanted to have a party.  Like wise, when you are purchasing don’t shy away from making the extreme offer and even say “this is an extreme offer, but didn’t want you to miss out on working with us”. Suppliers will bite for fear of letting a competitor get in.
7. A bad deal is worse than no deal – know when to walk away. Don’t make closing a deal your goal.
8. Deadlines rarely are hard deadlines don’t get sucked in.
9. Build a list of non-cash offers to help counter price discussions.
10. Build a repertoire of power questions, statements (see below)…

Power statements and questions:

Below are some of Chris’s key questions, statements that create great rapport and help you discovery the real negotiating gems…. Noting the language never implies you “know”. The book is fill of many more of these these great tips.

• It’s sounds like you think that…
• It seems like …. is valuable to you
• Its seems like you value…
• Its seems like ….makes it easier
• It seems like you’re reluctant to …
• It looks like…

How or What Questions will help you reveal the value to you and your counterpart, as well as identifying and overcoming deal killers:

• What are we trying to accomplish?
• How is that worthwhile?
• What’s the core issue here?
• What’s the biggest challenge you face?
• How does this fit inti what the objective is?
• What Are we up against here?
• How does making a deal with us affect things
• What happens if you do nothing?
• What does doing nothing cost you?
• Does making this deal resonate with what your company prides itself on?
• What about this doesn’t work for you?
• What would you need to make this work?
• It seems there’s something here that bothers you?

Identify deal killers:

• How does this effect the rest of your team?
• How on board are the people not on the call?
• What do your colleagues see as the main challenges in this area?

In preparing this blog post I have realised this book is worth reading at least twice, it has so much to give.  

Chris Voss has a wealth of information and free downloads on his website https://www.blackswanltd.com/

Summer holidays are looming up quick, so get your own copy of this book to read on the beach twice. I will be reading it again over the break, it was so good I couldn’t wait to  share the power of this book.

PS:  Apologies for the massive gap in my blog posts, I have been full on, aiding a bunch businesses transition some growth hurdles. I am now in some clear air, in fact I am  currently (Nov 2019) looking for my next challenge / assignment(s) in either the Bay of Plenty and Auckland regions, so if you would like a hand helping transform your business drop me an email.

 

 

 

 

7 Tips – Maximise Your Linkedin Profile

Whether you want new customers, a new job, a promotion or just to be found; here are 7 tips to help you build a better profile for yourself using your linkedin profile.

In this digital age, if you cannot be found on the web I personally begin to wonder what you are hiding or do you not want to grow your business?  If you are still holding allegiance to the tribe of anonymity and you have a front line position in a company (sales, marketing or owner) then I would suggest seeking a new profession or shutting your business down. If  you have more customers, opportunities and wealth than you can handle – then by all means operate in stealth and ignore the tips below.

 7 Linkedin Profile Tips  

1. Add your photo
   Many people are poor at remembering names. Your face is the best form of recognition we still have. Make it visible to everyone. Don’t use logo’s or diagrams. Better still if you can clear cut it (edit the background out).
2. Load your contact details – Phone, email and website
   If you want to be contacted then put your phone, skype an email address in and make them visible. Linkedin is better than the white or yellow page directories for getting up to date contact details. People who want to connect with other busy people (read successful or great potential clients) publish cell phone no’s.To access someones contact information, click the contact info envelope  at the top of their profile (highlighted below) and it will expand out to show their full contact information.
   
   The other day my wife and I found a wallet full of credit cards, office access keys and other personal stuff on the street. We then set off in a major social media stalking exercise to find and contact the owner – her hours of anxiety could have been reduced to minutes if she had put her cell phone no or email address in her linkedin profile.
3. When sending a connection invite – add a relevant comment
   Don’t just send connection requests without at least a simple “this is why I want to connect with you” or “this is how I know you” line. This way you turn your cold call to a warm call.I meet lots of people in my business life, many from speaking gigs – when someone from the audience attempts to connect with me with a little note I generally connect. People with big networks will more than likely accept your request.
4. Get some recommendations
   Linked in is a great way to build personal credibility – get personal recommendations from people you respect to build your credibility.  Because its in the public its more likely to be authentic.
5. Put some history
   Make sure you list more than your current role on Linked in. As a general rule cover the last 10 years of your business history.
6. Use your linked in network for marketing
   You can very easily export your linked in database to a csv file that you can use outside linked in eg starting an email newsletter list. Go to connections page – click settings – its in the panel listed as advance settings.
7. Delete Duplicate profiles
   If you have duplicate profiles – delete all but one. If you have lost both password and the email account it is linked to contact linked in support. Linked in now have a service that will merge multiple accounts into one.

Personas & Zero-Based Strategic Thinking

Incremental change is dangerous, particularly come planning time for your business. Left unchallenged you can suffer a slow death, or be taken out by a gorilla in your market. Here are two ways to break your normal incremental thinking.

Personas at the Boardroom Table:

What would Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, or John Key be saying in your strategy day if they were on the board of your company? This is the power of personas.

Edward de Bono first popularised this method with his “Six Thinking Hats”. User experience design people adopt a similar approach to ensuring real users can utilise modern software applications. There is a great article on “The Power of Personas” for user design in the MSDN Magazine.

Create some imaginary board members to your company, they come cheap, and give them a seat at your boardroom table. Then listen to what they would be saying if they were in the room.  To balance the big thinking of a Jobs or Branson, you may want someone else at your board table to balance out their big budget thinking.

If you are known to dream big, perhaps you need the conservative ‘black hat’ thinker at your table to question the reality of your plans.  This is a great way to break with conservative limited thinking, beliefs that exist in many boardrooms, whether your problem is not dreaming big enough or you need a hand break. Do not invite too many imaginary friends too frequently or your friends and family may think you are going nuts!

Zero-Based Thinking:

Accountants often refer to zero-based budgeting. This is the method of creating your budget from a clean sheet of paper, rather than simply modifying last year’s budget by X%.

The same goes for business planning: take the stance if you were starting your business over again, but with the resources and capabilities that you have now – what would you do? Invite your new board members (personas) to the table as well to help you with this exercise.

Morgo Diary Note: Price – higher or lower but not the same…

#MORGO 2011 kicked off with an opera signer – Darryl Lovegrove founder of threewaiters , sharing his inspiring and entertaining story of taking corporate entertainment global.  His shared winning formula:

• Price leadership:  lead with an aggressive price strategy either: price well above your competition or well below not the same.
• Quality
• Mass Appeal: adapt known concepts to a broad set of people
• Focus: on what you can control. Do not get distracted with too many product variants do something and do it well.  Stick with your winning formula and make it better.

The pricing strategy makes sense – why be just the same as every one else. Either you have been able to package your offering with lower costs and can hit the market with a new price point, or what you have is so good it demands a special place above every one else.

Lovegrove also explained how speaking in a Kermit frog voice – was great training to become an opera singer.

MORGO is  a entrepreneurs conference / networking event hosted each year by Jenny Morel. Now in its 9^th year, this event has become a “must attend event” for both inspiration in the technology business space and building networks.  In this post I share a few notes that I scribbled down on day one.

Speaker 2: Scott Yara CO founder  Greenplum, his lessons for success:

• Timing: Being ahead of time is a bad idea.
• Have Passion: “Earn the right”  – to be heard by customers and  staff alike.
• Solve Real World Problems

Jades’s Craig Richardson  gave us all an update on  JADE’s reinvention.  I remember JADE in the 80’s with their unique and superior software platform. Unfortunately it became another example of a great product that failed to break into the mass market despite its superior performance.

Great Companies defined:

• Good products
• Know the audience
• Talk to heart and head
• Reinvent themselves
• Stay close
• Preoccupied with growth
• Culture and capability to manage complexity

Rules for Development:

• Only go where the category is well defined
• Look for growing markets (20%+ growth)
• Go where 2 or 3 trends clash
• Concept to market in less than 12 months

Building on Yara’s comments of being ahead of time is a bad thing, the concept of attempting to create a category is bold move. Hence Jades new approach of only going where the category is defined.

Too often I see businesses attempting to educate customers of a problem they are not aware off. Typically all this means is very long sales cycles,  slow growth resulting in a slow death.

Altitude’s Michael Pervan gave us a fascinating insight into airline interiors and luxury jet fit-outs.  Some customers spending $60M for a jet then spending another $60M to fit it out. Altitudes strategy was to hit a small niche on a mega market that was to small for the big guys to bother with.

Like wise they have applied the IT outsourcing model to a market that has traditionally focused on in-house manufacture. Instead Altitude have taken the high ground of owning IP, Brand and process.

Michael Pervan gave a great endorsement to the NZTE better by design process, with their key change being around improved team collaboration.

Chris Mardon Energy Mad – gave us some hope for affordable LED like lighting. They are introducing a new technology LES “Light Emitting Snakes” which will be available next year at a great price point.  Ye ha..perhaps Hils and I can ditch those pesky halogen down lights in our living area that keep going on the blink.

Next we jumped into the world of AI and robots with an David Hanson from Hanson Robotics. It was a little freaky, but in the same way fascinating. There is a cool geek like toy coming out soon “RoboKind” that uses some of this great new technology. The prediction I took away – was simulating brain power of humans by 2050. All the same amazing use of computing power and robotics.

 

Quid.com’s Sean Gourley gave us an update on his mission to solve world war & peace with his mathematical genius. Although his keyword analysis tool looking at web activity on search gave a great insight into tools that will be of great use for predicting market interest.

Unfortunately I had to miss Day Two due to a speaking engagement in Wellington.

But I will be back for year ten in 2012 to catch up with many friends old and ones I haven’t meet yet.

For more on MORGO check out twitter hash tag #MORGO or the Morgo website

Thanks all a great event as always…

5 Actions to implement in your biz from #IceIdeas

The IceIdeas forum gathered a sellout crowd of 600 entrepreneurs.
Below are my pick as the top 5 messages that owner managers should take away from the day and action.

            Sales – the No.1 source of capital

1. “Spend as much on sales and Marketing as product development” – what is your sales and marketing budget vs development budget?  In my experience the cost of sales and marketing of successful companies is more than the R&D budget.
2. “Sales is more about the customer and customers procurement process than the product “  –  This is particularly true about selling into large companies. Who are the influencers in the decision, is budget approved and planned ?   “People will do what they want when they want “ – this was a great quote on the day  – I still see companies expecting businesses just to buy because it exists.
3. “Be the newspaper not the ads”– in your communications spend 25% on sales 75% on value for your client. Too often I see people in the social media space bombarding us with messages of buy – buy – buyPeople
4. “Why should the 20^th person join your team?” – This is a great concept, often in growing companies we get so focused on the hype of getting started yet  we  do not put enough effort into talent management. For many businesses that have great sales pipelines the marketing effort needs to go into attracting and retaining great staff.
5. “Every one should know – what every one else does on the team” So true, it’s important that across disciplines everyone has empathy for each others role in the company. To often the techies and science people absolve responsibility to the sales effort and vice a versa