Our guest today has had an incredibly fascinating life and career, and we’re very excited to talk to him about it. Chris Voss is the former lead international kidnapping and hostage negotiator for the FBI. His vast career has had many improbable highlights and achievements besides a 24 year career with the FBI.
Chris was a member of the New York city joint terrorism task force for 14 years. And as negotiated some of the most high profile kidnapping. Bank robberies and terrorism cases of our generation after working on more than 150 international hostage cases, he retired from the FBI in 2007 and founded the black Swan group.
Most of our listeners and subscribers would know Chris as the author of the best-selling book, never split the difference, which takes you inside the world of high stakes negotiations, revealing the skills that helped Chris and his colleagues succeed, where it mattered most saving lives. As the book also points out life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for.
Never split. The difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion or negotiation. Chris is also a regular commentator on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox news. He has also been featured in Forbes, the New York times ink magazine variety in time in 2019, he created and narrated a masterclass. The art of negotiate.
Chris. It’s an absolute honor. Welcome to the run GPG podcast. Hey, thanks a lot. I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, glad we could get you on Chris. Now there’s so much, I do want to talk to you about today. Your book, obviously your career and your experiences, particularly as they relate to entrepreneurship, you know, sales and negotiation, but first to set the stage and get the backstory to your fascinating career, as we always like to do here on the run GPG podcast, I want to start by asking.
Who is Chris Voss. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Wow. Chris, I’m a regular guy. I grew up in the Midwestern United States, small town, Iowa blue collar family center, son of Richard, Joyce Voss from Mount pleasant, Iowa. My father was an entrepreneur sole proprietorship. You know, he had his secretary at handyman and worked for him, but principally a one man operation.
So, you know, I grew up in a environment which was like, you know, figure it out, pitch in, figure it out, get to. Work hard and be decent human pain. And that’s kinda, that’s really Iowa, you know, could shed, figure it out. And that’s, that’s the basis of how I get to. Okay. Now, how did you get involved with the FBI and eventually hostage negotiation?
Yeah, well, and my mid-teens, I decided I want to be a cop. So a movie that I was really blown away by called the super cops, two cops in New York city that worked really hard were really creative, worked in really tough part of town. The community loved them and they put a lot of bad guys in jail. And I just thought that was cool.
How creative these guys were. I was very attracted to law enforcement. I ended up a cop in Kansas city, right after graduated college, can’t see Missouri KC, M O as opposed to KCK, you know, just across the river. And, you know, I went out and got a job after my father paid for college degree. I got a job that only required a high school diploma.
So by, it had been, my father had asked for my money back, but, my father reconciled himself that I was dedicated to law enforcement. And so then he encouraged me to look at federal law enforcement assumed there was a step up, not necessarily the case, but I can understand why he thought that, I encouraged me to look at the secret service, had a secret service guy that was a buddy of his, and I talked to that guy and he said, you know, I traveled all over the world with secret service.
And I remember thinking really like somebody paid you to travel around the world. I never been out of the Midwest. Chicago is the farthest I’ve ever been. So I started looking at federal law enforcement. The secret service wasn’t hiring the FBI was, you know, they say the federal alphabet, I didn’t know the FBI from the CIA, from the DEA and nothing, but you know, the FBI is serendipity.
The universe would have, it was perfect. Send me to New York. I was a SWAT guy, decided I want to get into negotiation for variety of reasons. Never looked back. It was just, it was cool. Yeah, super interesting. Okay. So that’s the backstory now, your career and your experiences, they do read like a movie, you know, as mentioned you were lead negotiator.
Well, well, just wait a minute. You know, you were leading negotiator and some very high profile terrorism kidnapping cases, the past few decades, for example, a New York city bomb plot world trade center. TWA flight 800 explosion, the Jill Carroll case in Iraq, some other cases in the mid east, Haiti, the Philippines to name a view.
And, you know, we read about these cases in books and we see them covered on the news. You’re interviewed about them. And I’m sure each case is incredibly unique, but is there one of those cases that I don’t want to say haunting, but one that, you know, you remember more vividly than others, maybe in negotiation, you were playing in your mind over and over.
Yeah. Is there one or learn from, I mean, a second case in a second major case in the Philippines, a Burnham Sobero kidnapping Garren was a barrel, Jill Martin and glacier Burnham with the American hostages that turned into a train wreck gear. Mr. Bell was executed by the hostages shortly. You know, about two weeks into that kidnapping, they just chased chapter’s head off.
Martin Burnham was killed in, in a, in a. The resolution of it, about 13 months later, botched rescue attempt by the Philippine scout Rangers, they just, you know, they just came in guns, blazing killed two out of three of the last hostages. That was a train wreck. Learned a lot from it. I mean, if some, you, the only reason you said ever led anything honcho is if you learn from it.
And one of the things I learned from that case, which, you know, became sort of how our recruited hostage negotiators, after that, like you ain’t gonna win every game. You’re not gonna win every negotiation. Domestically in the us, we negotiate out 93% of the people. Kidnapping success is probably about the same, which means 7% of the time.
You know, people get killed. People are gonna die. If you get up to bat enough times and you know, you get a little over. Can hostage negotiations. Cause chances are nine out of 10. I’m going to work out. And so like add his stuff is great. You know, I show up people’s lives are saved and then you hit the iceberg and the ship goes down and you decide like any failure, are you going to quit?
Are you going to get better? And, you know, we did the after-action on the Sobero Burnham case and we reviewed everything. And our conclusion was we did everything. We knew how to do to the best of our ability. And, and my takeaway from that was, well, we’re not smart enough. Hmm, we got to get smarter. We got to go outside hostage negotiation and learn.
And that’s when I started collaborating with the guys at Harvard. And that’s when I really discovered that what we know now is emotional intelligence. It applies in hostage negotiation. It applies in business negotiation. I got up to the Harvard guys. We started working together and I said, you know, you’re doing the same thing.
We are. The stakes are different, but the dynamics are the same. And you know, all of that really grew out of the Burnham Sobero case, I guess, is a long answer to your question. Yeah, no, that’s very interesting. Thanks for breaking that down for us. You know, you’ve had this incredible career, you know, the experienced success you’ve had speaks for itself.
You retire from the FBI and then. A book and not just any book, it’s the book, right? You know, in the world of entrepreneurship and sales, it’s an iconic book. We can say never split the difference. You know, if you were to ask people who negotiate for a living, what the most recommended book or top three books in their arsenal are, they always mentioned, never split.
The difference in many of our guests have mentioned it as well. And when I say the books become iconic, that’s almost an understatement. This book has become bigger and bigger. Over the years now, did you expect the book to be as popular as it is or did it surprise you how iconic it’s become? No. Or you hope for that stuff, but I mean, you think again, like I’m a Midwestern guy from the Iowa, you know, you’re like now you don’t expect to anything that you touch to become iconic or to be as pervasive as the book has gotten.
And, or even to be picked up by pupil, you didn’t expect it to be picked up. Like, I didn’t expect a negotiation book would get this much traction with people in sales. It’s been massive with people in sales. We want to make business executives better. We want to make people better and words where it’s gotten picked up has been tremendously gratifying to see it, have the impact that it has.
And years later, what’s the most common remark you hear about the book. So when someone recognizes you and they come up and they mentioned the book, what’s the most common remark you hear about. Well, I you know, the coolest remarks, let me go for the coolest remark. This changed my life. You know, we hear, and we hear that all the time.
We, you know, I got a team you want to go fast, go alone. You want to go far go as a team, which is actually in my view, the first lesson for entrepreneurs to learn how to build that a team. But we regularly hear people say, this changed my life. This deal, the deal I’m able to change my life. Now the critical issue there is, what’s not.
’cause before the book became big and somebody found out I was teaching negotiation. People say, let me tell you about this deal. I did. I had them over a barrel man. I took them to the cleaners where there was a clear loser and a clear enemy created in the law. Now, when somebody says this is going to change my life, they don’t brag about somebody that they beat up.
They didn’t, they don’t brag about an enemy. They created, they actually created an ally that wants to do business with them. I’m not at Liberty to cite all the specifics. We, one of our negotiators, a woman that we trained did a first ever deal product placement with a major studio. And, everybody’s better.
Everybody. Like, nobody feels like they lost on that deal. She did something that changed people’s lives on so many ways. And that’s the cool thing about deals like that. Like nobody, people we coach make the best deals they ever made and they don’t create enemies. And that’s, what’s really cool about that.
That is cool. It sounds like the book has been really rewarding from a personal standpoint to you, you know? Is there anything you learned about negotiations since releasing never split the difference or I guess another way to ask that, is there, is there anything, you know, now that you wish you knew before writing.
Yeah. I mean, I think the main thing that we learned is, you know, I was, I was vaguely aware of, the procurement negotiators and I hid this, missed it. There were, there are two issues, there’s one thing procurement. And the other thing is a proof of life. The idea that, you know, the procurement, the sharks, the people looking at us that your throat, I mean, people look in, and that is the exact profile of the international kidnappers negotiator, so that the, the entire black Swan method, it was originally designed, built around.
You know how to not make anger, a dangerous adversary on the other side of really trying to do your home, how to make a deal and have them actually be happy. They made the deal international kidnap procurement negotiate is the same. And I can re, and then once we became aware of it, you know, I remember Jim camp’s book, Jim camp was a friend start with no, he talks about way back when it’s a 2002 book.
He called them the Pecos negotiator, which is supply chain optimization. And I remember reading that and thinking like, yeah, you know how big a deal is it? And then we get out here in the business world and we find out is huge. And they’re probably maybe 25%, no more than 25% people on the other side of the table, but they are so brutal that salespeople tend to be, tend to be scared to death of procurement.
I mean, scared to death or it’s some CEOs. I mean, everybody’s scared of procurement and I’m like, wow. Our whole system is built to deal with these people. And then the other thing that I’m fake deals, they use an adjective that Donald Trump likes to use all the time. Fake news, fake deals, every bit of 20% of the opportunity.
Did anybody faces are fake opportunities. The person is looking to you to be the competing bid or to stay where they are and it just, or due diligence, you know, and the business sector has occasionally uses the phrase, the rep you’re there to run everybody into exhaustion, but you ain’t never going to get the deal.
That’s why they’re called. You’re going to run a price down on somebody else, easily 20% of the opportunity. So we’ve got solid data to back that up and solid reasons. And so the idea that you should run a proof of life communication strategy at the beginning, which means is there a deal is a deal to be had with you in kidnapping?
Do they have the hostage, which is, is there a deal? Number two, are they going to let the hostage. Which means are they going to, even if they got the hostage, they may not be willing to deal with you. You got to satisfy both of those issues and to realize how significant that is in a business world and how much more profitable you can be.
Nearly instantly. Let’s say the number 20% is that. And a point of fact, I could rule out why it’s an underestimate, but what would happen if you got 20% of your time back, you, you instantly nearly 20% more profitable across the board without getting any better. That’s huge. That’s a big, I think a 20% raise.
So getting into the details of actual negotiation, I do want to unpack what you said here. Subsequent questions here, but just to kind of lay the framework here, you say that everyone is in up to seven negotiations a day. Can you explain that for a listener who hasn’t read your book hard to believe, but can you explain the overview?
Look, if, if the words I want or I need, or in your mind, if you’re communicating with any sort of objective in mind, communicating to influence an outcome, you’re in a negotiation and you may be communicating with the person whose behavior you want to influence, or you want them to influence somebody’s course.
And I throw it out all the time. Is, are you in a negotiation when you’re in a Starbucks? Are you in a negotiation when you order coffee at the end of an evening meal, Starbucks, I pose this. I know that there are Starbucks employees to give decaf to people. They don’t like you think you’re developing a tolerance for caffeine.
When in fact the way you handled that transaction influenced the outcome in a negative way. You never know. I started telling a story about Starbucks to people and enough salespeople have been waiters or waitresses in restaurants, and they kind of look both ways. And I go, you know, we had a customer that was a real jerk and they ordered a decaf.
We give them coffee with caffeine in it. So how many interactions are you influencing on a regular basis? Just with your approach, just with your tone of voice, you know, never be mean to somebody who could hurt you by doing nothing, which is everybody. And a flip side is. If everybody you talked to could hurt you by doing nothing.
How much more could they do for you? If they felt like pretty much everybody, the Starbucks guy gave you something for free. Is he, does he bring up the price lower? You know, do they give you a, do they do something nice for you? Do they move you to the front of the. Cause it, cause they liked it. Do they jump you over?
But he else or because they didn’t like, you know, they keep putting you to the back of the line. I mean, there’s so much where just our tone of voice influences the outcome on a daily basis that, you know, you’re in seven to 10 negotiations every day. Yeah. That, that relates to, what I’ve heard you talk about, which is that the most dangerous negotiation is the one that you don’t know.
You’re in the one you don’t know you’re at. Which is the dynamic, because also, even when you think you’re in a negotiation you’ve been in that negotiation sooner than you realized, like there was a line from a song a long time ago where this band was trying to get a deal with an agent and they’re getting ready to leave.
And I go, Hey, do you have our number? And the agent says, yeah, I got your number. When you walked in the door, you know, that negotiation started a long time. If you think it engaged when you started talking about money you’re in the last quarter of that negotiation, you’ve been negotiating. The first person I started as a first author, I went with to try to write the book.
It doesn’t matter that it was a female because you know, males did not have the market cornered on any incompetency and women do not have the market cornered on comp. All right. So she was a pain in the neck, just even getting to what a deal might look like. And she threw an offer at me on what she was looking for.
And I just like no goodbye. And the email back was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, are we negotiating? And I thought we’d been negotiate for two months. You’ve been a pain in the neck for two months. You haven’t been, you know, how you do anything is how you do everything. You haven’t been returning. My phone calls my emails in a timely fashion.
You haven’t treated me as if you cared about this project at all, nor have you given me a reason for not doing so. You’ve kept me in the dark this entire time. How you do anything is how you do it. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to, you know, write a book, some marriage, I don’t want to get married to you if this is the way the rest of our relationship is going to be.
And so I was like, no, and I didn’t even, I didn’t even respond because I thought this negotiation over a long time, you think we’re starting now, now, so the most dangerous negotiation. So one. Yeah. Wise advice, intuition, intuition. Now you say there’s three types of negotiators or three styles. Can you break those down for us briefly?
I’d fly to make friends. We are the inheritors of caveman wiring, whether we like it or not, the only three cave men that survived when they saw a thread on the jungle jungle path, fought, it ran from it, made friends with the black Swan group has no shortage of data that indicates that regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, diet, the world splits up evenly into thirds, five flight, make friends we’ve actually.
I have a test. We give people to see which category they fall into. We have tested people globally and the world’s breaks evenly into thirds, five flight, or make friends. If there’s a disconnect in your negotiation, we find it is almost always traceable to a difference in type mismatch and people are completely misunderstanding the other because of the golden rule.
Golden rule says, treat people the way you want to be treated. Well, they got to be your type for that to work. And two out of three people are not your type. Like I S I mean, what I say, you’ll find the analysts, which are the flight guys, highly analytical, the fight guys. Assertives we say what we mean? And we mean, when we say commentators make friends their view of the white lie.
Massively huge because there’s so sensitive to people misunderstanding what they say, you know? So there’s nothing wrong with a white lie. Right? Everybody’s got, everybody’s got a version of a white lie, but the accomodators and in reference to the relationship that white lies really, really wide. And they’ll say, you know, yeah, you know, this is going to be great.
Everything’s going to be wonderful when they perceive problems, but they’re scared to tell you. So I’m like, Hey, wait a minute. What, what, you know, where w w let’s get detailed oriented. This is not what you said it was going to be well they’re like, why are you giving me a hard time or trying to preserve the relationship?
And so it’s a tight mismatch. Well, the other biggest one, or type mismatch, especially with the relationship oriented people, the relationship, positive interaction, oriented person, the meanest thing they can do, because the thing that they value. Is a pleasant interaction. So when they go dead silent, they are signaling fury because the withhold, the interaction to withhold the, the relationship is the thing that’s most harmful to them.
So golden rule, that’s how they get me, or the analyst loves silent. They love to think stuff through. So, you know, the relationship boy and a person who’s got dead silent because they’re angry. Any analyst is going like, oh, thank God they stopped talking. Now I can think you can see a clear problem as a result of the silence.
So type mismatch. Mismatch is frequently the issue when negotiations. Yeah, you’re, you’re actually touching on something that we train and coaching our company. Would we use the disc profiling, the dis or C is a quick classification in, like you said, you know, more often than not it’s the mismatch, right?
So some are highly analytical. You need to kill them with data and metrics and everything else, others, you know, a D personality type. Doesn’t want to hear the details, right. You know, it’s like white noise, right? And I think a lot of sales professionals, they go into a negotiation thinking I’m going to sell to this person the way I think they should be sold to, which is a mistake.
Right. Whereas you have to go in slow and read your opponent. Right. And that’s something that you would have been very adept at, you know, in a negotiation process, right? Like how, how would you read the person you’re negotiating with quickly? I’m not sure if you’d read it quickly or did you take some time to read who your counterpart was on the other end of the phone or somebody you were conversing with?
Well, you really want to read the interaction because there’s some people that, you know, based on a read, it’d be real easy to get the wrong read at the beginning. For example, my daughter-in-law is also my chief. She’s a superstar. Everybody thinks she’s an accommodator cause she is so. Happy go lucky laughs and giggles.
I mean probably the most pleasant person to interact with that. I know. And she is a stone cold analyst. She is, you know, the analysts analysts are Sassons, you know, and, and, and, and they don’t mind being called assassins. You know, analysts, they’ll snipe you from a mile away from the top of the tree, make you wonder what.
She’s a killer in negotiation. She cut phenomenal deals, but you’ll read her as, you know, this happy go lucky person, because she’s so smart. She seen how much more positive that impact has on people and how much better the deals are. So you gotta, you gotta read the, you know, what am I talking about?
Reading? You know, read the feedback that you’re getting in the moment my boss gave Nelson, he used to talk about clusters of behavior. You know, the type is your first question. If you feel the communication breaking down, and if you reading the interaction. You’re going to be aware of it, breaking down.
And you’re going to realize you got to adapt in the moment, just like any sports game plan. You know, you come to the game with a plan and you gotta be ready to adapt. And among two things are critical. Planning is critical adaptation in the moment is critical. Those are two very different skills. So, you know, I’m good at reading in the moment and reacting to my, the feedback I’m getting into.
You’re are you a DC personality type? According to the disc, you know, we haven’t looked at this. We only looked at the disc one time to compare behaviors or to compare the types, to see how closely they align. And they very closely aligned, you know, I’m a natural born assertive. The other thing that we teach people is.
All three types, whether you looking at, you know, the Thomas Kilmann conflict mode instrument, which is where we derive our three types from TKI, what this is all types, bring strengths to the table. So when we’re coaching people and we get them to focus down on their type, we, you know, somebody says who’s better an analyst or an assertive.
And the answer is you need elements of both. You, you need to be analytical. You need to. You just don’t assert like a jerk. You need a good relationship. So take your core strengths and look to see what the other types have that are complimentary than enhance your core strengths, which is, and this is one, I can’t think of the management girl from way back, but a Drucker, I think Drucker said, you know, capitalize on your strengths.
And it’s not that we contradict that, but you got to, what’s complimentary to your strengths. How do you capitalize on your strengths? You know, not by doubling down on your strengths, it’s by doubling down on the stuff that compliment your strengths. That makes sense. You also talk about accelerating a negotiation.
What does that mean? And I got to tell you something. That’s why, you know, we call it tactical simple. And we have the advantage of having neuroscience to add into what we learned in negotiation. And we accelerated through what we know about neuroscience. Now what’s the difference between neuroscience and psychology?
No science is hard science. I mean, there are neurochemicals that get released in your system, in your brain because you’re human because you’re white. Not because you’re male, not because you’re Western cause your. And those neurochemicals have all the same reactions regardless of gender ethnicity, religion diet even works on vegans.
It’s craziest vegans are vegan TSM, teasing, you and psychology was trying to figure out what was going on in somebody’s head. When we couldn’t see inside, we can see inside with, with neuroscience. So what do we see inside? What am I rambling about the amygdala, which is the command post. Of your thought patterns, psychologists and scientists don’t know whether a thought started and you make the law whether or not they all go through there, but the amygdala is involved through neuroscience.
We know that 75% of the amygdala is negative 75% of that organ in your brain. Your brain’s command post is dedicated to negative thoughts. So how do you accelerate communication deal with the negative? Is a long answer. And the neuroscience backs up that the hostage negotiators approach to negativity is just to call it out.
Not deny it, not explain it not yes, but. That contradict people and tell them why they’re wrong. Just call it out. I’ll say to a terrorist, you seem angry and that’s the most effective way bar. None to deactivate the terrorist’s negativity. Now that doesn’t. Guarantee, but it’s the most effective do you go for your highest batting average?
I’m in a business negotiation with someone who’s displaying anger, and I say, you seem angry and that’s the most effective way bar, none to deactivate anger in a business negotiation. Now there’s some tweaks that you can throw into it. And the crazy thing too is, especially with negativity, you can get proactive.
Like if I’m getting ready to say something that you’re going to react negatively to, but you’re not angry yet. I’m going to say, you’re going to hate me for saying this. You’re going to think I’m a Jew. This is going to sound harsh. And then I’m going to go dead silent and it is going to sink in and you’re going to think he’s gonna assault my family.
He’s going to insult my children, my ethnicity, my hair. And I’ll say we can’t do the deal. And then you’ll sit back and you’ll go like, oh, Well, maybe there’s something I’m missing here and you’ll get collaborative. Because because the amygdala is 75% negative. I know if I throw out that you’re going to be negative, you go to some crazy places, which Stan, when I bring up the thing that you were anticipating, it’s actually going to be.
I had a, I had a woman in a company who needed some time off and her boss had fired some people and it was shorthanded. They were overwhelmed. And she knew that if she went in and asked for time off the guy’s guy, we can’t spare anybody, you know, with Diane hair, you know, he’d given her all the reasons.
So she goes in and she just says, I got bad news. And he goes, you’re quitting. She goes, no, I just, I just need a day off next week. He goes, oh, thank God. He says, yeah, don’t worry about it. You can take man. That, that, that is a bomb, you know, that’s genius. When you break it down that way. So you talked about that part of the brain being 75% negative.
When we talk about positivity though, People are 31% smarter with the positive frame of mind. How does that relate to the negotiation process? Yeah. So no chemically, how do you get them to a positive frame of mind? You know, this there’s some real quick hacks call up the negatives. We refer to the negatives as the elephant in the room.
You never got rid of the elephant in the room, but denying it was there. You never actually got rid of it by ignoring. It just didn’t get worse, but it didn’t go away. And actually it’s kind of, you know, negatives in the room were kind of like tumors. They get worse if left alone. So first of all, called the negatives app.
Secondly, there’s a hard wire override, you know, there’s, if I smile at you and you smile back, you smile back at me because you’re a nice guy. You got. Or if you heard a smile on my voice and it brought a smile to your face, it’s actually a no chemical reaction. I hit your mirror neurons. If you could see me, if you could hear me, I can hate your mirror neurons.
It starts a chemical reaction in your brain. You cannot stop the chemical reaction from getting started. You can fight it. But if I keep it up, you know, like I, it, a guy in a storage unit that I used to rent and when I was living in DC, dude was naked. And I, you know, one of those guys that he had the attitude to people were jerks and I’m going to be a jerk to you first, what you bring it out in yet.
That’ll prove my hypothesis. You know, I’d go and talk to that guy and I’d have a big smile on my face and I’d say, Hey, you know, how’s it going today? It’d be like, fine. And I’d be like, you know, I just, you know, and I, by the time I’d get hit him with a third smile. He was always smiling too. And I’m like, all right, you know, I’m going to keep hitting this guy with smiles, tell it’s contagious.
And it is, and that’s why because of mirror neurons. And then I’m going to go along my way. And then it got to the point where he had, since he expected the smile. As soon as I walked in the door, he’d seen me come and he’d break into this. That’s awesome. Good way to break that down. Moving towards, you know, the industry that most of our subscribers are in our listeners, that’s real estate, you know, and sales, sales professionals, entrepreneurs.
I’ve heard, you mentioned value propositions in a negotiation or why it’s important for sales professionals to articulate. Their value proposition, or as we say, your unique selling proposition, when dealing with deals and leads and clients, how does that relate to dealing with clients? It’s a sequence issue and that, and that gets into our proof of life to start out with, like, you got 10 reasons why they should deal with you just don’t know which ones matter.
You know, which ones matter to you, you’re proud of them. You worked on them. 10 reasons you rehearsed giving them an order. You proud of that presentation. Problem is chances are, will you start with is not what they’re thinking, which is why people get in. Or, you know, people don’t pay that good of attention anyway, people aren’t that great are listeners.
Anyway, you start out on the wrong point and the chances are you will, then you start losing them right away because that on first impression you got seven to 10 seconds. Look it up. Don’t take my word for it. Do a Google search on how long to make a first impression, seven to 10 seconds. What are the chances are that you get to the.
Point in seven to 10 seconds. You’re playing that game at Vegas to chances are not good. That’s a losing table. So you got to tease out from the other side, why they want to do business with you. You could be a real, simple thing to do. Like you had a reason for this meeting. Not what’s your reason for them.
It seems like you had a reason, the batting average on seems like you had a reason of getting an unvarnished, honest answer is much higher than what your reasons, a bunch of reasons why that works to hostage, negotiators skill being dropped right in to a business interaction. But you got to dial in on the aspects of your value proposition to begin.
Or you are spinning your wheels and you don’t gain traction by spinning your wheels faster. That’s a really profound thought. It’s important that sales professionals think about this. I really believe that, you know, you have to be able to articulate your unique selling proposition, your value proposition, whatever that might be.
Otherwise people will question your costs. You know, we believe that. W, you know, we talk about that. I’ve heard you talk about this before, and I’d like your breakdown on this, the one, and you did touch on this or hint at it, previously in our discussion here, but the one hack that will give you 20% of your day back right away, and how that applies to a real estate agent.
So you talked about fake opportunities, right? So that’s the hack that gives you 20% of your day back crack. Yeah, we’ll let you know. Let’s go back to the seemed like he had a reason for the meeting. Seemed like a reason for the call. It seemed like he had a reason for you’re going to get one of three responses.
They’re going to immediately tell you why they’re talking. Awesome. You now removed all doubt as to what your value proposition is. Now it’s a fake, if it’s a fake opportunity, they’re going to respond to one or two weeks. Silence vision drives decision that label, if you will, is designed to get the vision out of their head as to what their plan is.
If they go dead silent, they had no plan walking into this conversation to use you after this conversation. So if they go dead silent, there ain’t no vision, no vision drives decision. They’ve got no vision of using you. They’ve already decided to not use you. Or many of them will immediately put it back on.
Well, yeah, that’s up to you, you know, that’s why I’m here. So you tell me they don’t realize that they’ve also just, again, given you, they have no vision of you in your, in their future vision drives, decision, decision drives, action. There’s no vision of you in their future. You ain’t going to be in their future.
Now, what do you do if you get dead silence or, well, that’s up to you. You live by the Oprah rule. The last impression is the lasting impression. You terminate the conversation as quickly and as politely as. You want to terminate politely? Cause the last impression is a lasting impression, but you do want to terminate because there are some people, this was a victimization.
On their part, whether they meant it or not, they are in fact victimizing you, they will try to keep you in the conversation with anger. Well, everybody else shares that information with me. Why won’t you they’ll get mad at you. They’ll be angry with you over it. They may even try to punish you after the fact.
Okay. You won’t let me exit politely. How do I exit politely? Look, it seems like we’re not a great fit right now. I’d love to help you in the future when I am a good fit for you. But as of right now, No, please get back to me. But right now I don’t think I’m a great fit. You know, if you don’t have a reason for working with me, I’m, I’m not your guy or gal and get out of it in real estate.
In particular, I’m doing a lot of coaching real estate agents with a colleague of mine. Scott got performance coaching. One of the agents said has embraces full on, is gone out on 80%, fewer listing appointments and made the same amount of money he’s working. That’s why the number is higher than. She’s working 80% less making the same amount of money.
And because of it after having been in real estate for 20 years, she’s the happiest she’s ever been. The job is fun. Again, it’s, stress-free, she’s not taking calls at all hours of the night and on the weekends, she got her life back. She loves life just by embracing this whole proof of life con. Man that is fascinating.
Moving on to negotiating over email, any best practices there that you can suggest none of your emails should be longer than five lines. Treat email as if you’re playing chess, you throw your next seven chess moves in the same email you’re done. The counterpart is not going to go along. The big problem is, and it’s a crazy.
Nobody likes writing. Nobody likes reading long emails. Everybody writes them, you know? And, and you, you write the email like, oh, this is brilliant. Oh, it flows from point to point to point and you send it and you don’t know why either they never read it. Or on the second point of your seven, they went off on a tangent and didn’t pay any attention to any of the brains.
After that, you try to make too many moves in the same. Sure. Shorten them down. Last impression is the lasting impression finish on a positive note. How do you make sure you finish on a positive note? Probably what you wanted to open up the email was, should be less. You’d still determined to open positively, and this is not the sandwich model.
There’s so much wrong with the sandwich model. I can’t even, you know, positive, negative, positive. I can’t, I don’t even go. Last impression is a lasting impression, whatever you put the open positively, better repeated at the end, it needs to be authentic. Most people put cheap chats at the end, which is why nobody returns their emails.
That’s really interesting. You know, we train and coach, you know, sales professionals as well to, you know, keep it short and sweet, especially texting, right? Like you have to be adept at texting these days. And we always say that, you know, reading your life story and in, in a text message, nobody’s going to respond to that.
Keep it simple questions is this so-and-so, that’s it, you know, is that, you know, and follow up that way. You’re going to be a lot more effective. And I think what you just said speaks to that. So that’s really cool. Moving along to a post COVID world, you know, we’ve we talked about this briefly before we started here.
What valuable negotiation tactics do sales professionals need to adopt through the COVID pandemic? Like, is there anything like a sales agent should be thinking of. Yeah. There’s, there’s two things really. I mean, you know, first of all, adopt the Oprah rule, the last impression is lasting impression, shortening communications down, but here’s, here’s something really tricky, which works in not pandemic, but it’s even more critical now.
Never leave people wondering when they’re going to hear from. Now most people, you only reach out for somebody when you got good news or bad news. When are you going to have good news or bad news? I don’t know which unfortunately then leaves the other person wondering when they’re going to hear about you.
Take out trust couldn’t award predictability. Never let anybody be unable to predict the next time they’re going to talk to you. Now, what happens if you got nothing to say to anybody, call them and say, look, just touching base wants you to know there’s nothing, no touch and base. Want to know if there’s anything you want me to.
That great, no content conversation actually takes a lot of uncertainty out of the world in the world’s most uncertain times. Makes you become a lifeline of certainty that may not exist anywhere else in the world. Plus if it’s a short sweet conversation that only lasts a minute, you’ve conditioned them, that you have effective conversations and you don’t waste their time.
And short, sweet conversations are highly valued, whether consciously or subconsciously, because most people want to have 45 minute conversations, which means if I don’t have 15 minutes, I ain’t talking. Whatever you got to say, when I see it, you you’re going to voicemail. And I don’t like my calls going to voicemail.
I like to touch base with people directly. So we don’t waste people’s time. We have lots of short conversations and people tend to not let our phone calls go to voicemail. Interesting. Okay. And we were talking about this before. I need your answer to this. How would you negotiate with Mr. Donald Trump president Donald.
All right. So who’s most successful person in world of dealing with them. His son-in-law Jared what’s Jared’s type. Jared is a quiet dude. He’s highly analytical. He doesn’t raise his voice. Don’t you know, the assertive style hits you, mirror neurons, and a guy yells at you. Screams at you, calls your names, you get your fight response triggered, and you want to yell back the people that work with him effectively do not yell back at him.
Secretary of state. I got a blank on his name right now, who don’t yell back at the people that don’t argue with him who are highly analytical, whoever soothing, calming, demeanor, tend to have highly productive relationships. And as soon as you know, I don’t know that he’s consciously or subconsciously testing you for the fight response, but Jared don’t fight with him.
And Jared does final things as a result. And clearly is in my view, has to be his most trusted advisor. Jared. Is the guy that cut all this stuff that happened all the middle east deals. I’m not Donald Trump. Didn’t do that. He trusts charity since Jed out. Jared brings these great deals to the table.
That’s how you deal with an assertive negotiator. You don’t fight back. You’re calm, you’re soothing. You’re highly analytical. You deliver. It’s kind of. Yeah. Great advice. Okay. Now, Chris, what projects are you working on now? And can we expect a new book? Yeah. You know, w we’ve got a, a follow on book coming out.
It’ll probably be out in may collaborative process. A subtitle of the book is the missing manual for never split the difference. It, a collaboration between myself, my son, Brandon, and a very close, trusted colleague of ours, Jonathan Smith. And we’re really happy with the way it’s coming together and it’ll be out.
It will be out in may. Jonathan Smith is the author of this book over here, optimize for growth. He’s B he helped us put our business on a right track with the us entrepreneurial operating system. And we are so close to him in a us, which originally my understanding was designed for real estate that, that we trust him so much.
We’re working on a booklet and that’ll be, yeah. Awesome. I’m sure all the listeners will be looking forward to that. And, you know, to wrap this up, just a couple of personal questions, do you have a daily routine? If so, what does that look like? Principally the thing I want to make sure that I do some sort of gratitude, gratitude exercise, first thing in the morning, you know, I think of it as mental hygiene, you know, it’s, it’s like oral hygiene, you know, because I brushed my teeth yesterday.
Does it still mean I got to brush my teeth first thing this morning? Yes, it does. So I got to do my, my psychological, my mental hygiene, which is a gratitude exercise. I do a lot of other stuff. I’m very conscious of not only what I eat, but when I eat the intermit intermittent fasting, Greatest invention since, it to anything.
So I’m cautious about diet, exercise, you know, the boring stuff, which makes you a happier human bank. Right. And, if you could have this as a question, you know, I talked about this before and this really makes you go deep here. If you could have dinner with any three people in history, past or present, who would they be and why?
Yeah, it’d be two, maybe three people. It’d be, it’d be my fault. No. What do you think now that you’re on? What would you have done differently? What’d you take seriously that you realize now it just wasn’t worth taking serious. There’s another guy. Arthur Kelly, Andrew close friend of mine, as it turns out a mutual Crow close friend between me and Donald Trump.
Arthur has since passed on, was a minister of a church. I was very involved in. Where my, the hotline I volunteered on was supported by Arthur was a great guy. I kind of asked Garth the same stuff. Like, you know, now they, on the other side, you know, how do I adjust? And then the last person would be Jesus.
I can sit down with Jesus and I’d be like, you know, what do you make it as Muhammad guy now, now to hear now that you guys are over on the same side together, what about Buddha? What do you think about these guys? You know, I I’d want to. I’d want to have a scotch with Jesus and have a candid conversation.
Yeah. I feel like he could perform that miracle. Right. Make the greatest scotch ever, ever made. He, that’s our number one answer actually is Jesus. Number one, answer. And final question, Chris. You’re opening a bottle of champagne in year from now celebrating something you become. What would that be?
Yeah. You know, we added to the team, we’ve got the book out and it got traction. It hit hard. And, you know, those, those would be the, those would be the main two ones. I mean, we were trying, we were very slowly, carefully trying to bring on additional coaches. We got, we got more requests for coaching and we can handle, which means there’s more people out there for us to help.
As soon as we, we bring on coaches. Interesting stuff. I think there’s no doubt the next book’s going to be a hit, you know, people are eagerly, eagerly anticipating it. I would say that’s an understatement for sure. You know, Chris, thank you very much. Amazing. Great to get to know you talk about your incredible career, the lessons you learned and how we can apply that in our businesses sales process everyday life.
You know, thank you again, Chris. Really appreciate that. Yeah. And I was just going to ask you, where can people find you or where do you want to do. Maurice move subscribed to the newsletter. You do that by coming to our website, black Swan, ltd.com, B L a C K S w a N. ltd.com. Upper right hand corner. The menu bar is a tab for the, the blog, the edge sign up, actionable, concise compliment.
Yeah, it comes out on Tuesday morning. The biggest value is that it’s concise and actionable. Like I get some newsletters that have so much in them. I don’t even bother reading, but you get one article short and sweet usable comes on Tuesday morning comes into your inbox Tuesdays a day when you’re ready to rock on the week.
And it gives you advice on what you can use today. And all of our training announcements, all the announcements come through that. The newsletter is the gateway to everything that we have, and we’ve got a lot of free stuff. Really interesting. And then a social media wise, where do you want the people to go Instagram at the FBI negotiator.
Thank you very much, Chris. Really appreciate it all the best. Thank you. My pleasure. Have a good YouTube.
