How to negotiate like the FBI.

Quick note: If you are part of a business or you negotiate/ argue on a daily basis, this post (and book) will help your life in a substantial way, you need to read it.

I'm not joking, if you negotiate/ argue/ communicate with other people regularly, you've got to read this, it's required.

Hey.

Negotiating.

Read this book.

It's REALLY good.

Do you want to convince a bank robber not to kill the 27 hostages he has?

Have you ever wanted to ensure the escape of your family being held captive by one of the largest terrorism groups in the world?

Do you want to join the FBI to become a world-class negotiator and spend years of your life learning how to negotiate, likely failing many times, causing the deaths of thousands of people?

Photo by kat wilcox: https://www.pexels.com/photo/crime-scene-do-not-cross-signage-923681/

Probably NOT, but I'm pretty sure at least one time in your life you:

• Wanted a better salary.
• Wanted more money for something you're selling/ wanted less money for something you're buying.
• Wanted to improve your social skills.
• Negotiated with someone.
• Wanted to resolve a conflict.
• Disagreed with someone.
• Had a money problem.
• Worked with money with somebody else.
• Wanted to do something (that you couldn't currently do).
• Had a work problem (needing a new job, higher pay, different industry, promotion, etc.)
• Wanted to improve your relationships.
• Wanted to shift someone's perspective.
• EVER talked with someone whose perspective wasn't entirely yours.

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels: Link Here

And the list goes on and on...

If you have experienced one of these things, guess what? You probably negotiated.

You probably failed.

I don't mean to be mean, but it's most likely- if you don't have training- that you failed in your negotiation one way or another.

"But I negotiated extremely well! I made x profit when this guy sold me something! I was able to get the price from y to z."

Yeah, you still failed.

Let's say you're buying a house and the seller is selling it for 1,000,000, 1 million dollars. You may get the price down to 900,000 and that seems amazing...

Until you realize the house is actually worth 600,000 and the seller made $300,000 profit.

"Okay, but let's be real: the seller is always going to make some profit, that's just the nature of negotiation. It was a win-win, I couldn't have done better."

What if I told you that you not only could bring that house down to 600,000, you could make the seller lose money? 

You'd probably say that's not fair and you shouldn't do that to the seller and

"Anyways, it's just not possible. You can't make the seller lose money, he would be thinking irrationally and way too emotionally! There's no way he'd ever accept that."

Alright, then, you may be right. Just to check, let's make a deal: Somebody gave me this $10 note (you've probably seen this stuff on YouTube) and we have to divide portions. If you say "Yes" to the deal I give you, you keep the money the deal gave you and we move on. 

If you say "No" to the deal, the $10 note gets thrown in a fire.

Here's my deal: Out of the $10, I'd like $10. You don't get anything.

Fine, you don't like that deal? I'll keep $1, you can have $9.

Still no? You disproved your own hypothesis. You were irrational. You were emotional.

Out of your perception that the deal was "unfair" because I was getting 900% of the amount you were getting, you acted emotional. You didn't think the deal was fair so you called it off.

Let me ask you a question: Is $1 better than $0?

I was going to give you $1. Since you (I assume) said no, you got $0.

Wow. You could have gained money, but you instead chose to lose it! Why would you ever do that? That's like burning a dollar.

Even if you said no to the 10:0 deal, you were still emotional!

Why? Previously in the world, there was x dollars. Now there's x-10 dollars. You made the world lose money.

"But I didn't lose that money! It wasn't beneficial to me, so I was acting rationally by saying no."

No. On the chance that aliens exist on the world, and on the (albeit small) chance they use dollars, and on the chance they destroy our money printing machines and demand y dollars... and we find we're $10 short and everybody on Earth has donated everything... you could have saved the world. Now we've all been massacred because the aliens are extremely cruel, extremely greedy monsters.

Photo by Michaël Meyer: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ashtray-with-an-alien-toy-inside-9739196/

"Fat chance! There's no way that scenario would every happen."

You're completely right. But it is a chance and you made the likelihood that the human race in that reality was going to survive less, meaning you said no to benefit, you said "No" to a higher likelihood of survival.'

Now, that was a terrible example. But my point still stands. Humans (and you) are irrational, emotional people, especially when negotiating. There's 2 questions to ask about this:

    1. How do we make this fact that "humans are irrational" to our benefit?

    2. Why does this happen?

GET THE ANSWERS TO BOTH OF THESE QUESTIONS RIGHT NOW BY READING THE BOOK: 

Never Split the Difference

Now, I gave you a terrible scenario, but I promise Never Split the Difference won't make you question whether aliens will ask for dollars like I do, instead it'll give you the answer to both 2 questions, mainly focusing on the first one: 

How do we make the irrationality of humans to our benefit?

Essentially, "How do we negotiate?"

In my opinion the term "negotiating" is extremely interesting because it encompasses so many things. For example, talking, arguing, and deciding are often negotiating, especially arguing.

When I was young, we had a project that I weirdly vividly remember where we designed an imaginary house and got to sell it to our classmates in an auction-style game. Here's the interesting part:

In between houses, me and my friend would argue about who got to buy x's (our friend's) house. I really wanted to buy it because I had already sold my house and I was homeless so I NEEDED to buy a house, and my friend really wanted to buy it because they were x's best friend.

Both parties had a want to buy the house, but only one of us got to buy the house. So how did we decide who got to?

It may seemed like we argued,

"NO, I GET THE HOUSE!"

"NO! I'M HOMELESS, I NEED IT!"

"BUT SHE'S MY BEST FRIEND! SHE'S ONLY YOUR FRIEND!"

Etc.

But we actually negotiated. From a young age (this was before middle school), in a project about selling houses, we negotiated in the form of an argument.

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"And why would that ever be important?"

Because if arguing is negotiating,

If talking is negotiating,

If deciding is negotiating,

Then how much do you negotiate? You probably negotiate on a daily basis! Which is why learning how to negotiate is so important. Let's make an analogy:

Have you ever talked with another person?

If so, you probably know you're not all that great at it- most people aren't. Isn't it weird that, although you talk DAILY with other people, you never take the time to get better at it?

Just imagine the changes you could receive to your life if you took 10 minutes every day to improve your "talking" skills. You'd get so many benefits- increased happiness, probably a higher salary because you're doing more because you can communicate really well, more connection with other people, etc.- from just 10 minutes every day. Even if you did 10 minutes every other day and skipped a bunch of days, you'd still receive unimaginable benefits!

Why?

Because you talk with other people- you communicate- every. Single. Day.

So ANY benefit at all, ANY upgrades to the skill of communication, and it gets multiplied through thousands of conversations- 1% better for 1,000 conversations is 1,000% better.

Guess what?

It's the same deal with negotiation.

You might not negotiate every single day, but you probably negotiate on a regular basis.

If you make 10,000-dollar deals every week (you probably don't, but this is just an analogy) and this time you get the deal for $9900, you just saved 520 dollars every year. Being 1% better at negotiation gets you 520 dollars a year.

If you make 5,000 dollars a month at the moment and you bump that up to $5,050, that's 600 extra dollars over a year. 

The book is pretty much giving you money.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/cash-dollars-hands-money-271168/

"$600 isn't that much though."

First off, read just a couple paragraphs more- you're not just getting $600.

Second, that's $600 for... what? The 5 hours it takes to read a book? That's $120/ hour. I don't know about you, but that's some pretty good money.

And this upgrade in the skill of negotiation doesn't just come in the form of more money, it also comes in the form of better friendships, more work satisfaction (higher pay, less work), better life.

Essentially, getting better at negotiation makes you better at all areas of life.

And you want to know the even crazier part?

You don't get 1% better at negotiation when you read this book. If you take notes and directly implement into your life, you get:

%10, %50, maybe even 100 percent better because you read one book and took a few notes! The modern world is unbelievable: you can double your salary with one book and a few notes. IF you take the time to read some other social books like How to Win Friends & Influence People or books like The Magic of Thinking Big, I can't begin to tell you the amount of benefit you're going to get to your life.

As I said before, though, this isn't just about money. Imagine getting 2x the quality of friendship you have now. Imagine getting 2x the vacation you get now (and let's be real, you're probably going to get a lot more. Imagine being 2x as happy, 2x as fulfilled, as you are now.

All because of one book.

All because of 5 hours of your time.

All because you made the decision to spend a tiny fraction of time that changed your life.

It's possible. It's probable. You can do it. 

If you don't read this book, you're essentially losing your salary. You're essentially losing thousands of dollars and your mental clarity, your friends, and your happiness.

So don't lose it. Gain instead.

Never Split the Difference

So I've been hyping up the skill of negotiation all this time, I've been hyping the ONE BOOK THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE! JUST READ FOR 5 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

… But what is that book that can change your life in 5 hours?

Never Split the Difference.

First and foremost, you probably think I'm trying to "market" this book to you.

You probably think I'm just a blog post writer trying to sap your time.

You probably think- maybe even subconsciously- that it's Me vs. You. That I NEED to convince you to read this book and you NEED to resist and it's a war between us.

And I fully understand that thought.

But it's not. I completely recognize your emotions, but I'm here to help you. I'm on your side. Getting better at negotiating is an amazing skill and it's really easy to learn with one book:

Never Split the Difference.

It seems like you're a bit more eager to read this book now that you understand just how big of an impact negotiation can have on you. I won't waste any more of your time- in case you're already hooked to read this, here's the Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/0062407805

If you're not already hooked onto this amazing book (which must be pretty hard), here's the official summary and my summary:

Official Summary:

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles―counterintuitive tactics and strategies―you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.

Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.

My Summary:

Chris Voss is an ex-FBI negotiator. He teaches you how to negotiate. He does not lie.

Done! That should be all you need. I hope you're having an amazing day, see you in the next blog post!

Just kidding! But seriously, this is an ex-FBI hostage negotiator, a guy who had to deal with mentally deranged people who were holding people's lives on the line... and get them to release all hostages without harming anybody and without giving anything.

That's why the book's title is called Never Split the Difference! Can hostage negotiators give $1,000 for each hostage's safe release? No! Can hostage negotiators say "You know what? Let's split the difference. You give me 1 hostage, you can keep the other guy and do whatever you want with him. Oh, and that money you stole from the bank? Let's split the difference. Just hand over half of it and we're good to go! You won't get into any problems with the law and we'll be well on our way.

No. They can't.

If you want to be able to COMPLETELY win negotiations from one of the best negotiators in the WORLD, read the book: Never Split the Difference.

Negotiating is an important skill in all of life.'

You can master it and turn everything around for the same price as a cup of coffee and 5 hours of work.

5 hours to change your life.

You're losing so much if you say no.

Never Split the Difference.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, I'm a real advocator for this amazing book. Thank you so much for reading, and goodbye!