Sam interviews Chris Voss, former FBI lead hostage negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference, on the principles of elite negotiation. Chris breaks down why listening is the hardest and most powerful skill, how tactical empathy triggers oxytocin and builds trust, why compromise is mediocrity, and how the same hostage negotiation techniques apply to business deals, car buying, and even parenting.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Chris Voss (guest, former FBI hostage negotiator), Shaan Puri (host, brief appearance)
Introduction: Writing Down Today’s Date [00:00:00]
Sam: I’ll start with this, Chris. I don’t know if you could see this, but I’m writing down today’s date, because today is the day that I become a better negotiator. You are a master negotiator — former FBI negotiator for 20-plus years, and now you’ve been consulting and teaching the art of negotiation to business people and anyone who needs it.
The funny thing about negotiation is it’s this skill we all need, and I feel like I personally never got taught. It’s all self-taught, anything you learn. And one of the things I realized was that so often I was negotiating and I didn’t even realize it — whether it was with an investor, an employee, or a customer. Life is full of negotiations. So I’m excited, because I think this is going to be quite useful.
Maybe my starting point is this: if today was the day I’d get better at negotiation, where do I start?
Lesson 1: Actually Listening [00:01:00]
Chris: The first thing is to let the other side go first. And then actually listening is a challenge, because when the other person is talking, there are times you want to jump in. It’s almost impossible to resist.
There are basically five or six steps to becoming a better listener. The real challenge comes at step two. It’s a hijack point — if you’re listening at all, as opposed to completely focusing on your internal dialogue while waiting to speak. Most people get past that first stage.
But if you’re listening at all, you’re either listening to rebut, or you’re listening to steal the story. The urge to correct is irresistible. It’s insanely impossible to overcome. So you’ll jump in there to hijack the conversation to correct. The urge to correct is so irresistible that we actually use it as one of our negotiation skills. I’ll say something wrong on purpose, because you will not be able to resist the urge to correct me with the truth. It’s a great way to trigger getting hidden information out of you that you won’t regret giving me — because the old saying is, we don’t remember what was said, we remember how we felt in the moment. The desire to correct is so satisfying that you’ll never regret telling me something you shouldn’t have, because it felt so good in the moment. That’s the power of this hijack moment.
The other thing you’ll do frequently is hijack to relate. It’s called story stealing. You won’t mean to do it, but the other person will say something that triggers an incredible memory in you — a past experience, something that happened to you. It’s one of the fallacies of common ground, and you’ll completely be unable to resist the urge to jump in and tell your story. “Oh my god, the same thing happened to me.” You’ll feel incredibly good in that moment, not realizing how squashed the other person feels. It’s one of the reasons people call it story stealing — because it feels so good to you, you can’t imagine that what I feel is like, “How did you have to have a better story than me? You had to one-up me.” You can’t imagine that’s the case, because the memory that was triggered in you was so good.
So actually listening through that hijack moment is probably the single biggest challenge of becoming a better negotiator. You’ve got to listen to somebody all the way through. And here’s how powerful it is to make somebody feel heard: just because you’ve been heard doesn’t mean you feel heard. Just because I do understand doesn’t mean that you feel understood.
Sam: So I was at a wedding a couple weeks ago in Ireland, and it was my first substantive conversation with the bride the night after the wedding ceremony. As you could imagine, she was unconscious on her feet — making the rounds at the wedding reception dinner, obligated to speak to everybody, because that’s what brides have to do. And all I was doing when I was talking to her — my first real conversation with her — was telling her what she went through that day. I said, “You know, this is probably easier to run a small country in South America than it was to pull off this wedding. And you’re here to celebrate the union of two families, and your husband is here because he has to be.” I was laying all of this out to her, showing her completely that I understood everything she went through leading up to that point.
She ran into me the next night at dinner, walked up to me, gave me a big hug, and said, “I have no memory of what you said to me last night. I just remember how good it made me feel.” That’s the power of making somebody feel understood. She literally couldn’t remember the words, but she felt bonded to me because I thoroughly understood her. That’s the challenge — and the mission and the goal — of making someone feel completely heard and understood.
Shaan: You have no idea how many times I wanted to interrupt during that story. And I just knew, if I’m ever going to do it, this is the one time I need to just listen the way you’re describing.
Chris: And also — good job resisting that urge, because in the moment you had the urge, right? I mean, good job. That urge is huge. I have trouble resisting it sometimes.
Sam: So you’re saying the starting point is the skill of truly listening — not waiting for your turn to talk, not trying to hijack what you call the fallacy of common ground, where I think I’m building a bridge with you and you’re like, “Dude, you just sideswiped what I was trying to tell you, and you want to tell me about you when I was trying to tell you how I’m feeling.” Those techniques are not even — I mean, negotiation is just one small part of that. It seems like it should be the foundation of any kind of communication or relationship. So is it that negotiation fundamentally is just connecting with other people? Or is it that these skills apply to other domains? What’s the right way to think about that?
Chris: Well, it’s across the board. And first of all, if your objective is to have a long-term relationship of trust where we both prosper — even if you’re a complete sociopath, that should be your objective, because it’s low maintenance, it’s the least amount of effort, and it’s the maximum amount of money. I’ve got a number of coaching clients. One of our top-level clients said, “I have made so much more money being collaborative than I ever made being cutthroat.” Your relationships flow more smoothly. You make deals faster. That should be your goal.
If you’re the most mercenary person in the world and the only thing you care about is making money, then collaboration is the fastest, easiest way to make it. But that’s not everybody’s definition. Most people think of negotiation as win-lose — a battle of arguments. “I’m going to get the upper hand on you. I’m going to have you over a barrel. I’m going to force you to do what I want.” The power negotiation. That puts you out of business. You lose friends. You lose collaborators. You lose colleagues.
The Hostage Negotiation Mindset [00:08:30]
Sam: What’s the right way to think about negotiating? Because in my mind, my simpleton brain, if you said “think about the best negotiator,” I think of somebody who’s either very powerful, maybe slightly intimidating, or very charismatic — able to sort of manipulate, win the other side over. And I definitely default to a win-lose dynamic. I’m trying to get as much as I can, they’re trying to get as much as they can, let’s see who wins. Whether I’m buying a car or getting a Nintendo off Craigslist, that’s the default for me.
How do you think about relationships when you’re a hostage negotiator? I mean, are you trying to have a relationship with these people? It’s somebody you’ve never known, and they’re clearly off their rocker if they’re taking hostages.
Chris: Let’s not put them in the off-the-rocker category. Let’s make that simpler. These are not the first people I would think of when I say I want a long-term relationship. So can you tell me a story about your first high-stakes hostage negotiation, and what the mindset is there?
Chris: Well, I learned three things, I suppose. The first was the application of empathy — what we now refer to as tactical empathy. Just demonstrating understanding in a way that the other side feels heard, which draws them into telling you more and removes you as a threat.
The first move in a negotiation is to remove yourself as a threat. Because why would they make a great deal with you if you’re a threat? They might make a deal with you if you’re a threat, but they’re not going to make a great deal. So one of the first really counterintuitive moves is to remove yourself as a threat. A hostage negotiator does that with a non-threatening voice — calming, soothing, late-night FM DJ voice — and expressing genuine concern for the bad guy. “I’m here to get everybody out. That includes you, Mr. Bad Guy. Whether or not you let me get you out is going to be up to you, but that’s my objective first of all, and I need to find out whether you’re good with that.” Some bad guys want to die. I need to know that right away.
And here’s the counterintuitive thing about relationships: hostage negotiators have repeat customers. I may not see you again, but if I get you out alive, another negotiator is going to work with you someday. Which means if I lied to you, if I deceived you, if I didn’t take the time to understand you — that’s going to be your experience the next time, and things are probably going to go bad.
Sam: What was your first big case? Your first big situation where you had to deal with a hostage situation and came out with a successful outcome?
Chris: It was a very rare event that I was lucky enough to get involved in — a bank robbery with hostages where we had them trapped inside with the hostages.
Sam: So what happened? You got the call that this was going down? Tell me about it.
Chris: We didn’t get the call. We became aware of it and we just went — which is a philosophy I live by called “run to trouble.” It’s amazingly liberating if your philosophy is to run to trouble.
So we showed up. Since it’s a bank, FBI and NYPD are both responding. The negotiation teams on both sides knew each other really well. We had a bank robbery task force in New York at the time, so the PD and the Bureau were already aligned on criminal prosecution. The two negotiation teams blended.
The first hostage negotiator on the phone was a PD detective. I was his coach. The PD commander was in charge of the negotiation operations center on the inside. The Bureau’s lead negotiator — our coordinator at the time — went to the outside in case any bullhorn communication was needed. We negotiated for a number of hours. The commander decided to disrupt the dynamic a little bit. It was stalemated at a very low threat level. So he pulled the PD negotiator and put me on the phone with the bad guys, and I had one of the bank robbers out about 90 minutes later.
Sam: What did you start with when you got on the phone?
Chris: We went disruptive to start, which was not the usual protocol. The commander, Hugh McGallan — great instincts — he’d listened long enough to realize that the key to gaining the upper hand in the conversation was going to be how each conversation closed. The bad guy was constantly saying, “Hey, I got to go, they’re coming,” or “I got to put you on hold,” and they’d just get off the phone.
So the commander said, “No matter what happens, you extend every call and you end every call. He tries to get off the phone, I don’t care what you have to do, you keep him on the phone five, seven, ten seconds longer than he wants. We’re going to take control of this by taking control of the end.”
And the other thing we did — normally the handoff is you hand the phone to the next negotiator with an elaborate summary of everything that’s been set up, because you anticipate the bad guy saying, “Chris? Who’s this Chris guy? Does he even know what’s going on?”
Sam: Right.
Chris: And normally, Chris is going to say, “Hey, I’ve been sitting here for a long time, I’m fully up to speed, you don’t have to—”
Sam: Why do you hand it off at all?
Chris: It could be for a variety of reasons. Normally it’s to take a harder line.
Sam: Okay.
Chris: No negotiation team — whether it’s business or hostage — hands a negotiator off to take a nicer line. Ever. Business or hostage. If there’s a change in negotiators on the other side, it is always to take a harder line. Always.
Sam: And why is it better to hand it off to somebody else who’ll take the harder line, versus you yourself escalating?
Chris: It’s going to catch the other side off guard a little. It’s destabilizing without necessarily being threatening right away. And if I’ve been a pushover up to now and suddenly I’m demanding, you have reason to believe I’ve been inauthentic. Which guy is the real you — the other guy or this guy?
Sam: Right.
Chris: There’s an authenticity issue involved.
Sam: And how did you get them out? You said 90 minutes later. What was the breakthrough point?
Chris: Well, the first bad guy was a highly manipulative negotiator. In hindsight, I now refer to him as the great corporate CEO negotiator. A great corporate CEO, if you’re in negotiations with them, will say things like, “Oh my god, my board’s going to fire me if I make a bad deal.” Blaming people who are not in the room, right?
Sam: So that guy doesn’t get cornered. He’s diminishing his influence at the table because if he does that, he never gets cornered. He’s calling all the shots but smart enough not to get trapped by them.
Chris: Exactly. He was always going to blame somebody outside the room. So the first bank robber was telling us how dangerous his colleagues were, saying, “You know, these guys are crazy. I’m scared of them,” when he was actually calling all the shots.
So I took a harder line with him. I was taking away his comfort level and being more confrontational without being aggressive. He gets rattled, and while he’s trying to figure out what to do, he hands the phone off to the other bank robber on the inside — who does not like how this is going down. Getting stuck in a bank surrounded by snipers with 50-caliber guns was not part of his plan. He was scared to death about getting out.
So I start in with him, and I’ve still got the late-night FM DJ voice, which is calming and soothing to him. Then the real critical thing happened — somebody else on the team heard what was really bothering him, and they handed me a note. I listened, I adjusted my stance in a moment, and he felt so heard and understood that in very short order I was meeting him out in front of the bank.
Sam: Wow. What was on the note?
Chris: We were pressuring him to let a hostage go. They had three hostages on the inside. And the note to me said, “Ask him if he wants to come out.”
In a blink of an eye, I switched from asking him about releasing a hostage to saying, “Do you want to come out?” And his response was, “I don’t know how to do it.” Which is a great big giant yes. Just tell me how. Get me out of here. I want out.
When we had him on that thread, I completely focused on the consequences and how he was going to get out of there. He was most concerned about what was going to happen to him in the instant he stepped out the door. And as soon as I got enough reassurance — I almost had this guy out — I got another note from the same negotiator. It said, “Tell him you’ll meet him outside.”
I said, “You want to just meet me out front?” And he said, “Yeah, I’m ready to end this shit.” So we scrambled. I went around, got on the bullhorn, and met him out in front of the bank.
Sam: That’s a great story. I like that.
What CEOs Need to Understand About Negotiation [00:19:00]
Sam: When you talk to CEOs and business people — obviously very different situations than hostage negotiation — what’s the first message you try to get through to them? Let’s say you have a room of a hundred Fortune 100 CEOs. You’re up on stage. What’s the first thing you want to get through to them?
Chris: To make them aware that there’s information they need that they could only get at the table.
I remember a long time ago somebody wrote a book. I don’t know if they called it the Ten Commandments of Negotiation. I don’t remember what it was called, but one of the commandments was “It is what it is” — which I completely disagree with, by the way. Your experience. You are not new. It’s not your first rodeo. You’ve dealt with these people before. It is what it is.
So I’ll ask these CEOs: when are you ever in a negotiation where you don’t have closely held information you don’t want to reveal to the other side? Whether it’s your budget, your pressures, deadlines on other deals, quarterly profits, demands from your board. When is there ever a negotiation where you don’t have proprietary information that, if the other side had it, would change everything?
Sam: Right. You always have that.
Chris: Yeah, all the time. And I say, “Okay, so that means the other side has that too. Which means it isn’t what it is. And the other side will tell you, if they could trust you not to hurt them with it.”
So your first negotiation is trust, because they’ve got information that, if they could tell you, would change everything. And that gets people out of the perspective of “What’s my leverage? What are my must-haves and my giveaways?” Well, if they’ve got proprietary information that would change everything, then your must-haves and giveaways could be completely wrong. You’ve got imperfect information. What you want to do is gather information and trust, then rethink what the best deal looks like. And it’s really hard to get experienced executives to do that, because “I know the landscape, this isn’t my first rodeo, I’ve seen this before.”
Sam: Right. Okay, so that’s great. I’m an executive in that room and I hear you. I say, “Okay, even though I’ve been through a lot of negotiations, there’s more to learn. I’m open-minded. And I buy what you’re saying — if I had more perfect information, we could make a better, mutually beneficial deal if we were willing to trust each other.” What are the simple ways to build that trust when you first meet with the other side, who is naturally not going to be super willing to trust you?
Labels, Not Questions [00:22:30]
Chris: The simplest way to build trust and gather information simultaneously is something nobody’s ever learned.
So basically what you’re saying is number one, build trust. Number two, get the information. Common wisdom says: build trust by finding common ground. “Did you play little league baseball? Are you married? How many times have you been married?” This common ground thing — because they felt so good when they shared it, they didn’t realize they were squashing the other side. That’s actually one of the worst ways to build trust.
Then for gathering information, you’re taught to ask good questions. Well, questioning somebody makes them feel cornered, which diminishes trust, because nobody trusts you if you’ve cornered them or interrogated them.
So the counterintuitive answer is the hostage negotiator’s tried-and-true tool — in hostage negotiation it was called an emotion label. In business negotiation, it’s just a label. And I can start triggering information out of you right away.
I said this to a colleague recently whom I hadn’t seen in months. Instead of saying, “Hi, how are you? How can I help you?” — any of those nonsensical “how” questions — I looked at this guy, kind of soaked him in for about three seconds. It sounds short, but it always feels like an eternity. And I said, “You seem centered.” And he sat there for a second. He said, “You know, I just came off the mountain. The mountain is where I go to meditate and work out.” He’s into Asian philosophies and martial arts. He said, “The last time you saw me, I hadn’t been on the mountain in months and I was just wound tight. I’ve been up there for about a month.”
Now, if I’m listening, he just told me a lot about himself. And he told me exactly where he’s at right now. If I had sat down and said, “Hey, Nick, how are you?” he’d have looked at me and said, “Fine, you?”
Sam: Right. And you did it with an observation — a label — but it was almost a compliment, too. It wasn’t like you said, “Oh, you seem stressed,” where he’d get defensive. You said, “You seem centered.” Is it important whether it’s a positive or negative label?
Chris: It’s got to be what it is.
Sam: Okay.
Chris: If he just seems stressed, I just say, “You seem stressed.” And if somebody seems stressed, I’ll often say, “Tough day?” You can watch them get their balance back when you say that. The observation has to be what it is — because if they look stressed and I say, “You seem centered,” I’m an idiot.
Sam: Okay. So you put the label, they give some information. What happens next? What’s the next move to continue to build the trust?
Chris: I’ll probably feed it back to them. I’m going to let the other person talk, see if they’ve got a next step, and then we’re going to have a little bit of a dance. We may need to take a circuitous route to where we both need to be. But if you pick the route, we’ll get there faster. If I pick the route, I don’t know where the friction points are for you. I don’t know what’s going to make you leery. I’m going to let you pick the route because it’s going to be faster. I’m going to sit back and wait to see if you pick a next step.
I might say something like, “Is it ridiculous to talk about what we’re here for?” You caught that question, didn’t you?
Sam: Yeah.
Chris: That was a no-oriented question. Instead of “Do you want to talk about what we’re here for?” — which drives for yes, because going for yes creates friction — going for no creates protection and safety.
Sam: “No. It wouldn’t be ridiculous for us to do that.”
Chris: There you go. Exactly. So when I want to go someplace, I’ll trigger the decision via no versus yes.
Why Compromise Is Mediocrity [00:27:30]
Sam: You know, there are all these words when it comes to negotiation. The classic word: compromise. Tell me your thoughts on compromise.
Chris: Do you think the United States Congress deserves an A+ rating?
Sam: No.
Chris: But they compromise all the time, don’t they? So if you think politicians are awesome, then you think compromise is good.
How do you feel about compromising your principles?
Sam: Not good.
Chris: Yeah. That gives you an instantaneous uneasy feeling inside, right? Compromise is, by definition, a lose-lose. That is not compatible with a long-term relationship of trust and prosperity. It correlates very strongly with mediocrity. And you’ve got to decide whether you’re good with mediocrity.
Sam: And so what’s the replacement for compromise? Because I don’t think anybody goes in saying, “I can’t wait to compromise.” They sort of feel like it’s a necessary evil — “I guess we’ll have to compromise in order to agree.” That’s where people land. That’s the mediocrity part. So what’s the more effective, more powerful way of thinking?
Chris: Let me make you feel heard first. If I can make you feel completely heard on your position, my guess is more than 30% of deals will be made in my favor on the spot. About half of deals are made on the spot once the other side feels completely heard.
Sam: But let’s say it’s only 25%.
Chris: It’s well more than that. But okay — you’ve just accomplished something huge. You have to negotiate 25% less because you just made the deal by making the other person feel heard. You’ve knocked 20% of your work off the table.
Now what happens to the remaining 75%? Their position is going to move closer to yours, and they’re going to be more honest about what exactly that position is. They’re going to tell you what they perceive their must-haves to be. They’re going to move away from their throwaways right away. So I’m either going to make the deal on the spot, or I’m going to find out what we really have to negotiate about immediately — which is also going to save me a massive amount of time.
Now there’s a difference between compromise and high-value trades. Steel is 2% carbon and 98% iron. Let’s imagine that carbon and iron were two negotiating parties and they said, “We have to compromise, go 50/50, we need 50% representation here.” In point of fact, 2% of one person’s idea and 98% of the other person’s idea made the strongest alloy mankind had ever seen. So your real challenge is: what’s the blend, not the compromise?
Sam: “What’s the blend?”
Chris: There was a guy who came on this podcast and said something great. He said most people when they go into a negotiation see themselves on one side of the table and the other person on the other side — it’s me versus you, I’m pulling this way, you’re pulling that way. He said, “The best thing we did was realize that’s the wrong mental model.” He buys companies. He said, “The right mental model is: me and you are sitting on the same side of the table, and across the table is the problem.” Maybe the problem is you think the price is X and I think it’s Y. There’s some problem preventing us from just doing this deal instantly, but it’s not me versus you. It’s us jointly looking at this problem on the other side of the table. That was a very effective visual metaphor for me. Would you agree?
Chris: I agree completely. For the longest time on my side, we’ve always said, “The adversary is the situation.” What you just did was explain what that model looks like through that example. And it becomes very real when you describe it that way.
Leverage vs. Trust [00:33:00]
Sam: Where does leverage come in? Because when I’ve negotiated, I always think about leverage. Deals I’m not 100% happy with are typically because I felt like the other side had a lot more leverage and this was my best option. And in situations where I have leverage, I tend to feel like I do better. Is that too simplistic? How do you think about the word leverage?
Chris: It’s not simplistic. It’s a step up from floundering entirely. But — and I know this is going to sound harsh — it gets you to B-level. You’ll never get yourself to A+ on leverage, because leverage is the ability to inflict harm. If you’re making deals based on the ability to inflict harm, those don’t go toward stable long-term relationships. They don’t go toward the other side sharing information that’ll change everything. Because if you’ve got leverage, you’re a threat. And why would they give you important information if you’re a threat?
Sam: “How much leverage do they have on me? Holy — I can’t tell them that. They’ll have more leverage.”
Chris: So leverage can be useful in some situations, but it’ll never get you to the best outcome. And because in many cases you can think of deals you made better because of leverage, it becomes really addicting, really satisfying — and you lose track of the deals you should have made but didn’t. It’s a very limiting factor. It gets you a passing grade. It just doesn’t get you to the top of the class.
Sam: Gotcha. So what does get me to the top of the class? We’ve talked about truly listening, using labels to collect information, making the other side feel heard and understood. What else is key?
Chris: What people really don’t understand is how important trust is — and trust is based on how predictable you are. Take out the word “trust” and put in “predictability.” You automatically become more trustworthy because you’re predictable.
And then there’s the ability to collaborate as we deal with issues, because there are always going to be issues. Making the deal is just the beginning. You’ve got to get into implementation. If we don’t trust each other, then problems are going to crop up and we’re not going to tell the other side. If we’ve compromised, I’m going to resent that compromise. When problems crop up, I’m going to keep my mouth shut because it’s going to hurt you — because I didn’t like the leverage you used on me, I didn’t like the way you forced me into this deal.
I was at a training a long time ago, before my book came out. The CEO said, “I want you to teach my CFO how to put clauses in contracts that’ll penalize the other side for non-performance.” And my thought was: if penalizing the other side for non-performance is your biggest problem, it started a lot sooner. You’re telling me you can’t get your deals implemented. You need to back way up and find out what the problem was well before that, because implementation is where it’s at.
Great Deal Makers: The Oprah Example [00:38:30]
Sam: What are some examples of great deal-makers or great deals you’ve seen?
Chris: I think Oprah is a great deal-maker, and there are visible examples of that. She gets Lance Armstrong to come on TV and answer yes-or-no questions about whether he doped and what he did. Now, I’m not acquainted with Oprah, but I am acquainted with Lance and I like Lance a lot. When you look at the totality of the circumstances, you get quite a different picture from a narrow view. But the Lance Armstrong interview — he wasn’t caught off guard by those questions. That was the negotiation between him and her in advance about whether he was going to get on camera and what she was going to ask him. You don’t see anything in the media about Lance Armstrong being upset with Oprah Winfrey, which means they negotiated a great deal up front that they were both good with, executed it, and there was no bad blood after the fact. That to me is a great deal.
And if you look at the totality of Oprah — think about the fact that she’s dealt with some of the most difficult-to-handle people on earth: celebrities who are used to getting their way at all times. And she doesn’t have any dust-ups or arguments with any of them. How is that possible when in today’s world, celebrities love to have feuds with each other as a way to gather attention? That’s not her method of operation. And her success is extraordinary, especially thinking about where she started.
Sam: Do you have a sense of how she accomplishes that?
Chris: It’s very similar to what we did at the Chase Manhattan Bank, because I was talking about this with a woman in Los Angeles who works for Oprah. I said, “The last impression is the lasting impression.” We did it at the Chase Bank by instinct. I found out later, at a Gallup poll conference on human nature — they’re sitting on decades of human performance data — a speaker stood up and said, “People don’t remember things how they happened. They don’t remember how they started. They remember the most intense moment and how it ended. The last impression is the lasting impression.”
So I’m laying this on my colleague who worked for Oprah, and she says, “Oh yeah, Oprah has lived by that her whole life.” She said, “In the entertainment business, the joke is: in a limo, out of a taxi. As soon as they get what they want from you, you’re hitching your own way out.” But at Oprah it was: in a limo, out in a limo. And the philosophy was that no matter what happened on any interaction, no matter what, you had to make sure they felt respected, heard, appreciated, and loved at the very end.
I’ve had several conversations relayed to me when Oprah didn’t see eye to eye with somebody. And her last words are always, “Well, no matter what, I will always love you and I will always be supportive of you.”
Sam: The last impression is the lasting impression, and she’s a master of it.
How to Prepare for a Negotiation [00:43:00]
Sam: How do you prep for a negotiation? Some people have this idea of a BATNA — best alternative to a negotiated agreement — they think about their desired outcome and the worst case they’ll accept. Other people do lots of research and try to find as much as they can about the other party to be fully armed when they walk in. Some people do power moves. How do you prepare for something that’s a negotiation in the business context?
Chris: It’s going to be a combination of two things. First, I’m going to think about what negatives you’re going to harbor about me in advance. And interestingly enough, everybody can do this right away, even on a first interaction. What are the things you want to deny? I don’t want you to think I’m going to be greedy. I don’t want you to think I’m another slimy salesperson. I don’t want you to think I’m wasting your time.
I always tell people: what would you want to deny walking in? That’s your gut instinct telling you a negative is there. Then you make the shift from a denial to a straight observation. “Look, I’m probably going to seem greedy. I’m probably going to seem like another slimy salesperson. I’m probably going to seem like somebody that’s wasting your time.” That instantly makes me the straight shooter, the honest person. It deactivates the negatives and makes me look like a straight shooter, which increases your trust in me. And the brain is 75% negative — so that’s the fastest way to build a relationship.
Then there’s going to be stuff that you’re going to be offended if I don’t appreciate. You’re going to be offended if I don’t appreciate how hard you work — the fact that I’m talking to you at all means you have value. You have legitimate reasons in your own right to be respected and admired. And it’s taking what a lot of people would call flattery, but articulating that it’s not vacuous — it’s genuine appreciation for where you’re coming from. I might say something like, “You’ve worked very hard to get to where you are today. You’ve been in this business for a very long time, and you know what you’re doing. Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here in front of me at all. You have things that are valuable and worthy of my attention and my respect.” You put those two things together, and you’ve got empathy.
Sam: That’s what you were calling tactical empathy earlier.
Chris: Right. There’s brain science that backs up that approach — particularly starting with the negatives before the positives.
Why Being Heard Matters: The Neuroscience [00:47:00]
Sam: And why is it so important for somebody to feel understood and heard? I mean, this is going to sound like a dumb question, but it just seems like it’s the most important thing. What we default to is “I can’t wait to make my case so that you understand me and I feel heard.” And it seems like the biggest swing I could make as a negotiator is to let go of my initial need for that and really hone in on your need for that. If I just did that one switch, I’m a much better trust builder and therefore a much better negotiator. Is that the right summary?
Chris: Yeah, it really is. And it’s fascinating to think about the fact that people come to the table with such a desire to be heard and to make their case that they can’t imagine that’s what’s driving the other side, too. It’s blinding.
And neuroscience-wise — what difference does it make to make somebody feel heard? I will trigger the release in you of your neurochemicals, oxytocin and serotonin. If you get a hit of oxytocin in interacting with me, you’re going to bond with me and you’re going to be far more honest with me. Oxytocin is bonding and truth. Serotonin is a drug of satisfaction, which means you’re going to be less demanding. So if I can make you feel heard, you bond with me, you’re more honest with me, and you’re less demanding. That’s a pretty good start for a negotiation.
How Chris Voss Buys a Car [00:49:30]
Sam: How does Chris Voss buy a car? How do you handle day-to-day everyday situations? Any implementation of your techniques on the low-stakes stuff?
Chris: I tell the other side why what they’re selling is worth what they’re asking. I make their case for them — because that’s what they were going to say to me anyway. So I’ve just left them with nothing to say.
And I can pound you down on price if I choose to. But I better never need to come back to you for anything. And there are few deals that are complete one-offs.
If I’m buying a car — I’ll be honest, I have no great regard for car dealerships across the board. I no longer get any vehicle I own serviced at a car dealership, I don’t care what the warranty says, because I don’t trust them. So I don’t mind pounding down a car dealer. I have no problem with that. I will make their case, and then I will become very passive-aggressive. My favorite is: “How am I supposed to pay that?” You would have said all those things I just said if I hadn’t said them first. But now I’ve taken all the wind out of your sails, taken all the bullets out of your gun — when I give you the opportunity to point the gun at me, you’ve got empty chambers. You’ve got nothing to say.
And I know you’re dealing on a margin. In very short order, I’m going to get you down to your bottom line. If I like it, we’ll make a deal. If I don’t, I’m walking out. But once I’ve killed you on price, you are not going to forget that and you are not going to lift a finger to help me ever again.
Negotiating with Kids [00:52:30]
Sam: What about other day-to-day negotiations? I have little kids — a five-year-old, a four-year-old, and a one-year-old. My most frequent negotiation is with them. Any parenting negotiation tips? Maybe it’s just “don’t negotiate at all” — I don’t know. I find myself in that pickle a lot.
Chris: With your kids, you’re really trying to help them think. I heard a long time ago: up to age five, treat a kid like a king. Five to fifteen, work him like an indentured servant. At fifteen, let him go. There’s a lot of brain science that overlaps closely with that in terms of brain development. But all along the way, you want your kids to feel slightly challenged. You want to get them to think.
A lot of parents want to just order kids around — “Go to bed because I’m — why? Because I said so. Because I’m the father.” Well, that’s not really helping them think. It’s demonstrating to them that the only way to get stuff done is through the use of force.
That doesn’t mean you put up with bad behavior either. One of my favorite videos is some mom trying to talk her five-year-old son into getting into the backseat of the SUV. She’s saying, “Come on,” and he’s crying and making noise. And his nine-year-old sister walks up, grabs him, throws him in the SUV, and they leave. You know, at some point in time you’ve got to toss a kid in the car.
But in the meantime, your job as a parent is to help them think — not to shield them, but to challenge them and make them better people.
The Most Important Skill: Making People Feel Heard [00:55:00]
Sam: After all these years of helping people be better negotiators, what do you think is the easiest thing to implement? The easiest way to get points on the board and start improving?
Chris: There are different ways to repeat back to somebody what they just said. Labels focus on their emotions or affect. Mirrors and paraphrases focus specifically on what they said. It seems like it’s a waste of time, and it ends up being a relationship accelerator — which then is a deal accelerator. However you do it, the more you can make somebody feel heard, the less you appear as a threat.
And sometimes charm is involved. Charm and empathy are very close. But here’s the thing: if I make you think I’m the most interesting person at the table, okay, cool. We had a great conversation. But are we ever going to make great deals? Now, if I make you think you’re the most interesting person — our likelihood for collaboration is very high.
Sam: How do you find the balance? My business partner Ben — he goes into a lunch and asks so many questions because he’s genuinely curious. He tends to know a lot about the other person and what they’re interested in, because he pays attention, he observes, he remembers what they said, where they went. He feeds them things he knows they’re interested in. Not to manipulate them — that’s just who he is.
He leaves the lunch, and they’ve talked 98% of the time. He’s talked 2%. He’s asked a couple questions and knows everything about them. They know nothing about him. And they go, “This was amazing. We have to do this again.”
But I’m curious if there’s a downside to going too far in that direction — where you haven’t demonstrated value or provided the other side with an understanding of what your needs are and how they might be able to help you. Is there a danger in going too far down the “let the other side talk” route?
Chris: First of all — curiosity is a superpower. Like, it is a ridiculous superpower in terms of your survival, long-term relationships, your resilience, your ability to discover new things.
So what’s the danger? At some point, you have to keep in mind that we have a finite amount of time. If we have an hour together and get nothing accomplished, you’re going to enjoy the conversation but feel like it was a waste of your time.
My team always sets finite periods of time for meetings, period. And we never go over. It doesn’t matter where we are — we’ll set another meeting before we’ll go over, because time is such a limited commodity. If I don’t help you manage your time and your interactions with me, pretty soon you’re going to start avoiding them.
Closing: The Black Swan Group [00:59:00]
Sam: Speaking of time — you seem like a guy who is very conscious of his time. I want to make sure we wrap up. It looks like we’re eleven minutes over.
Chris: I didn’t mind. I enjoyed the conversation. I do want to tell people about something.
Sam: Please.
Chris: We’ve started this new thing called the Black Swan Negotiation Community. You can go to our website and find it. It really is an across-the-board, one-stop shop for wherever you are in your negotiation journey. If you can’t afford anything, come into the community because membership is free. Get started. Get a return on the investment of your time in terms of dollars. Incremental change can be monumental very quickly.
Sam: Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for all the content you’ve put out over the years. I’ve always picked and chewed on different little bits of it, especially whenever I was in the process of either raising money or selling my company. Those were very brief periods of time — maybe three weeks, four weeks, six weeks — where the value of my years of effort would swing by 50% depending on how good I was at negotiating. Understanding the other side and finding a mutually beneficial deal — it can make a really big difference in a very small amount of time. The difference between being bad at it versus good at it versus great at it is enormous. So I appreciate you coming on and helping us be a little better at it today.
Chris: It was a pleasure. I enjoyed the conversation.