147 Quotes by Chris Voss

What’s the biggest challenge you faced? What are we up against here? What do you see as being the most difficult thing to get around?

Effective negotiation is applied people smarts, a psychological edge in every domain of life: how to size someone up, how to influence their sizing up of you, and how to use that knowledge to get what you want.

Still, I wanted to bring this opportunity to you before I took it to someone else,” I said.

If you approach a negotiation thinking the other guy thinks like you, you are wrong. That’s not empathy, that’s a projection.

Even something as harsh as “Why did you do it?” can be calibrated to “What caused you to do it?” which takes away the emotion and makes the question less accusatory.

Kevin Dutton says in his book Split-Second Persuasion.

And every time we got the worst possible answer – “You’re right.” He agreed, in theory, but he didn’t own the conclusion.

Effective negotiators look for pieces of information, often obliquely revealed, that show what is important to their counterpart: Who is their audience? What signifies status and reputation to them? What most worries them? To find this information, one method is to go outside the negotiating table and speak to a third party that knows your counterpart. The most effective method is to gather it from interactions with your counterpart.

Saying “No” makes the speaker feel safe, secure, and in control, so trigger it. By saying what they don’t want, your counterpart defines their space and gains the confidence and comfort to listen to you.