Chris Voss is the world's #1 Negotiation Coach and CEO at The Black Swan Group, a negotiation consultancy serving Fortune 500 companies globally. He represented the U.S. in international conferences and served as the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative on the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. In this episode, we talked about negotiation techniques, ethical influence, systems thinking...
Chapter 1: What are the key negotiation strategies discussed?
How do you turn an opposition into a collaboration? And I think that's one of the main secrets in negotiation, because in any deal, and particularly in the circumstances you're talking about, they want to know how good a partner you're going to be, how good an ambassador you're going to be. If you can't stand up for yourself, then how can you stand up for them?
Right.
And so I think a lot of it is either intentional or even subconscious testing behaviors. You know, how do we disagree and still remain collaborative? Right. And so how do you test that without making the other side, without offending the other side? And how do you stand up for yourself?
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Chapter 2: How can you turn opposition into collaboration?
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All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Experts. Today, I got a very special guest, the number one coach of negotiation in the world, Chris Voss. How are you today? Fantastic, Tommy. Thanks for having me in. I'm excited, man. You wrote the bestseller, Never Split the Difference. You've been on some of my buddies' podcasts, obviously, Waste No Day, Brian Burden. Yep.
Part of the Black Swan Group. Why don't you just tell us, you know, most people know who you are. They've heard of your book. They've read your book. But tell us a little bit about Your history, what you're doing today, and where you're going.
I was an FBI agent, FBI hostage negotiator. I was in charge of all of our international kidnapping negotiation response. So domestically in U.S., domestic hostage negotiations usually sell side. Somebody's trapped at a bank. I'm going to call in and try to get them to come out. It's the same thing as a cold caller does. Cold caller calls somebody on the phone.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of emotional intelligence in negotiation?
Person on the other end of the phone doesn't really want to talk to them. International kidnapping is mostly by side. So by side all over the world in every country, pretty much every culture on the planet. It was kind of a wild thing to do because I'm originally from a small town in Iowa. So it was all over the world. That was cool.
After that, wrote Never Split the Difference, taught business negotiation at Georgetown and USC. And the book is done quite well based on the emotional intelligence stuff we used in Haas's negotiation. And then proved it in the business schools, and then also have a masterclass out there that's done really well too. So the book and the masterclass have done really well.
And that's been the majority of it? You're out of Vegas right now. You get back to California, but you travel a lot. What's the future look like?
Well, still do a lot of keynotes, do a lot of keynote speeches for corporations and associations, you know, sales kickoffs are bringing our whole professional association together. It doesn't really matter what industry, you know, anybody where people are dealing with other people. And then we coach and train a lot.
And then when I first started the company, I thought all we would really do would be train and train mostly corporations. And we train mostly entrepreneurs now, not corporations, some, but entrepreneurs really want to learn. They really want to get better. They like to be innovative. And then we coach a lot. I didn't think we would be coaching that much. We coach people through deals a lot.
We coach. And that's a lot of fun because it's live skills based. You know, the rubber meets the road right now.
I love that. You know, I was it's so top of mind right now because we've got two major vendors and we're with private equity. And the main guy at the private equity company goes, why don't I jump on these calls? Just tell them my thoughts. And he said, look, guys, I just want to get one thing straight. We're not here to see you race to the bottom. Our vendors got to do very good. We know that.
You need to deliver on time. We need to make sure we're doing the right stuff for you. But we want a three-year approach. You can put your escalators in there when you need to raise your price, but we need to see. And he said, this is just him. He goes, each of you guys will get 30% of our business. Who gets the other 40%? That's what's up for grabs. And he had a separate meeting with each of them.
And he was very nice, but he treated both of them a little bit differently. And he told me the mentality after that. And he's very good at what he does. He was in. really kind of a shrewd negotiator, but I said, listen, I don't feel right racing these guys to the bottom, but it's not only about price for me. It's about service. It's about getting us in and out of the distribution center.
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Chapter 4: How does slowing down improve communication?
That's trainable. Learnable, I mean, there's a couple of books out there that claim that everything's learned. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, I think, contends that everything is learned. Like you can't learn to be seven feet tall. You can't learn to be as big as Shaq. But there are a lot of people as big as Shaq that were never in the NBA. So he learned something.
But you can learn to slow down. You can learn to listen more. Some people are horrified at slowing down or even gaps in the conversation at all. For very different reasons. Some people are horrified because when they go silent, they're indicating anger. So if the other side goes silent, they must be angry. Well, you know, you sit down and talk to Elon Musk, ask him a question.
You're going to have to wait till he answers because he's going to think the thing through. He's not angry. He's thinking. Yeah. And then other people, if they're silent, they feel out of control. I got to keep talking. I got to stay in control. So those two types have trouble keeping their mouth shut.
But when you learn how much you can gain and how much more you can think just by slowing down or even having a pause in a conversation. And I've had to teach myself that I'm the type that the assertive that wants to talk all the time to stay in control. But when I learned how much more I could get by slowing down and listening, then I like, oh, this is a better way.
So, yeah, I do it intentionally.
I've noticed those pattern interrupts, those patterns. waiting to comprehend what they said, it actually helps. It shows that you're, it's actually respectful to the other person because if you're talking to me and you ask, and I'm just, I'm waiting to say something and people know that, or when I say, no, really, that's pretty interesting. Or you're talking to me. Oh, uh-huh.
it's just when you could do that, like if you were on a first date, and I always tell people this, if you're on a first date, are you smiling more? Are you genuinely interested? Are you asking more questions? Yes. Well, if you treat this like a first date when you need a client, especially for our industry, because it's more, it's not as relational. It's just the one time we fix your garage.
I want to create a relationship and get you on a service agreement. But, you know, when we're talking, I want to show, I want to show up smiling and ask, how's your day going? I offer coffee on the way. I'm in a happy mood. I'm smiling. And I don't even talk about the garage for the first hour. I want to get to know you more. I want to make sure we're giving you all the options.
Black, white, Cuban, or Asian, old, young, gay street. I don't care. I want to treat you the same no matter what until I learn more about you. Your landscaping might be a mess. You might live in a really poor neighborhood. That doesn't matter to me because I know you own a home. More than likely, I went to the brokest neighborhoods on the planet and people paid me 10 grand.
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Chapter 5: What are the traits of successful negotiators?
So yeah, what's the practical reason? You know, what's behind this? It's gonna be fascinating no matter what it is. And then, you know, I like trying to figure out life and life's about systems. You're a big systems guy? Yes. Could probably get better at it. I think anybody, as soon as they begin to realize, you know, your habits are your, it's your collection, it's your system.
It's your system of approaching life. What are your habits? What are your systems? How do you get things done? And I got introduced to systems thinking probably about two-thirds of the way through my bureau career and didn't realize I was learning systems. And then just started to realize that everything functions better. If you come up with a system, then you start to tweak it after that.
You know, don't get married to it. Tweak it and things get better.
Yeah, 100%. You know, this is a really interesting topic of this idea of recruiting or hiring. I have this conversation all the time. They say, what's going to grow the company the fastest? I said the ability to find A players and culture A players and the idea of recruiting.
And I've dealt with A players that have great numbers, great conversion rates, great average tickets, but they're not all A's. And sometimes A players become very difficult, depending on how you define an A player. It's not just a top performer. It's someone that buys in, someone that bleeds the company. You know, they want to grow in the company. They want to be involved.
Like, I love millennials. I love Gen X. Like, people say there's no good workers anymore. How do you find them? This generation doesn't want to work. Well, not the way that you want them to work. It used to be, you know, my parents used to just go to work 60 hours a week if they had to. They didn't like it. They didn't enjoy it. They didn't understand why they were working.
What do you think the best conversations? Let's just go into recruiting in general, because this is like the lifeblood of a company is who's on your team. Right. This is any sports team, any type of team.
Right. Yeah. And then comment on the generations. whether it be millennials, baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, whatever. I think the top performers of each group have the same attributes. Top performers are ambitious and competitive, but you need both and ethical. Their heart's in the right place. By and large, if your heart's in the wrong place, it's going to catch up with you.
If you're a complete sociopath, you want to have long-term relationships of trust because it's going to catch up to you otherwise. So even the mercenaries realize that long-term trusted relationships are more profitable eventually. But yeah, I look for, I'm hoping to find people that are coachable as opposed to being divas, you know, being a team player. Are you coachable?
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Chapter 6: How do belief systems affect success?
You know, I was reading an article by Tom Brady, and he said, when I started playing professional football, or it was college football, he goes, I was by far the slowest guy. Slow, slow, slow. Like, I was literally last place as speed. And he goes, my mom... My mom was there watching me from the silence and said, you were like flying. You were just so fast. And he goes, mom, I'm the slowest.
No, no, no, you don't understand. You were faster than everybody. And she's just, I do think it's a lot of how your parents set you up in your belief systems or whoever raised you. If you could do whatever you want and just, my mom always told me, I know for a fact, and I always say this, that if something happened bad, and this would never happen, but if I went to prison,
My mom would move anywhere on this planet to be right next to there to come visit me. And she would love me. I really feel like it's unconditional. And I feel like if I told my mom she's a piece, you know, and I cussed her out and I fist fought her, she would come back for more. I mean, to a certain extent, you could only take so much abuse. But that's just the woman she is.
She's like unconditional love. And when you feel that, and a lot of people don't have that. And I was very fortunate. My mom and dad got a divorce, whatever. But she always made me feel like I was number one. And that's why I'm like, I set these impossible goals, but I always say, if you shoot for the stars, you land on the moon, you're doing okay.
And I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I never get burned out or like too stressed out. I'm not like, oh, I'm never going to make it. I'm never going to be, but I talk to myself all the time. I always got a calculator. I got the app open on my phone, the calculator app. I'm reversing engineering my goals. People are like, dude, there's no way you could do that. And I'm like, yeah, I could.
I want to hit a billion dollars of revenue. I need 2000 texts doing 500,000. And I go to do that over the next four years. Here's who I would need to hire each month. And then it progresses up and they're like, wait, you're serious, aren't you? I'm like, yeah, it's a mathematical equation. It's a formula. It works every time. Do the math. I think a lot of people, I don't understand.
I think it's a lot about people don't know how to focus. They say, I got ADHD. They just, they literally, they don't know what to do next. They don't have manual or SOPs or systems. And they don't have a plan. And they're just like, I just want to do good. Like, you just want to do what is good. What does that even mean? I'm interested by watching people, but I've started studying success.
And I think that's the big difference. When you interview people, what kind of questions are you asking to see if they're ambitious, competitive, ethical, and coachable?
Shout out to our mutual friend, Joe Polish. Because at one of the sessions that I was at at Genius Network a while back, What I'm asking now is I'm going to ask you to name three people you admire and each person, you got to give me three reasons why you admire them.
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Chapter 7: What techniques can enhance team recruitment?
12% conversion is 60% conversion, but just changing it from yes to no questions.
Right, right, right. Guy running a service business. Yeah. Entrepreneurial guy and tracking his numbers. And he just had all his salespeople switch from yes to no questions. You know, again, do you disagree? Are you against this? Does this look like a bad idea? Have you given up on, is now a bad time? You know, have you given up on finding the man of your dreams? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's the dating advice, right? Yeah. But I think at one point in time, probably what you're referring to, getting people to say yes, the yes momentum, I think it was probably was valid at one point in time. And everybody in sales has learned it. And many of the people that have learned it went from making no sales to some sales.
You know, again, they went from being an F student to a C student. but they had no idea they were only a C student because if you're an F student and you become a C student, suddenly life looks great. Like if you're an F student in college, they throw you out. If you're a C student, you get a degree. You go from totally failing to get a degree and you measure yourself by the progress you made.
And then you start to measure yourself by the people around you. And most people are handed in C level performance. So you're like, I'm doing okay. You know, I'm following best practices. But there are those that are exploiters, and there's a number of things. Derek Gaunt on my team starts talking about common ground is weaponized against us. The word yes is weaponized against us.
There are a lot of things that people that don't care about us, they found it to be successful. The throat cutters, people are just trying to take the money out of our pockets and not care about the long-term relationship. And so then you start getting stung by it. And I don't know anybody that hasn't been stung by the yes momentum. Talked into something, yeah, I'd like to make more money.
Yeah, you know, yeah, I would like to stay in a five-star resort whenever I wanted to, anywhere in the world. Yeah, I'd love that. And the next thing you know, they're saddled with something that's killing them. And they didn't really realize it was, consciously it was the yes momentum that got them, but their gut instinct processed it. Gut instinct is an extremely accurate supercomputer.
And listening to your gut versus listening to your amygdala fear centers is kind of the struggle that we all go through. But you get stung a couple of times with the yes momentum, then you're going to be suspicious of everybody that tries to get you to say yes. The same way a battered child is suspicious of every adult the minute their hands raise. Some adults are trying to give them a genuine hug.
And a hug is actually good for you. And if you're that adult who's trying to give a battered child a hug, it doesn't matter what your intention is. The battered child is still going to react to their bad experiences. And that's why I think this yes momentum stuff is so harmful. Like across the board, I'm seeing it.
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Chapter 8: How does one's background influence negotiation ability?
They look at my eyeballs, my ears, my nose, you know, everywhere. Check my heartbeat. And then they say, they write a prescription. You know what they do? They say, what's closer to you, CVS or Walgreens? They give me the prescription. I go, I've never asked the doctor that looks me in the eyes and asked me all these questions and diagnosed me that I need to get a second opinion.
Because they're the authority. They know what's going on. They never talk or hesitate or say, hmm, I'm not really sure. I want to make some recommendations, but we don't really know. I don't get that from the doctor. So we're the doctor. They called us out to be the doctor. And that confidence level, I was with my buddy, this buddy, I haven't been with him, like got out with him in a while.
He lives on the East Coast. But I go, this guy picks up the most hottest chick everywhere we go. And he always walks away and comes back and introduces me to whatever girl. But he just met that night. And one night I'm like, I'm going to go with this asshole, find out what he's doing. So he walks up to these girls and he looks them in the eyes, relentless. And he's talking to them.
But what I watch is they weren't no eye contact, not digging it. He literally looked at me. He goes, went over the next group of girls. He did not care. He did not care. When I go to Mexico and the little kid's asking to sell blankets, if I say no thanks, he's not insulted. He doesn't ruin his life and call his parents up and say, didn't get a sale.
Why is it that us as Americans, sometimes we just feel like this fear of rejection. Right. I don't know what it is, but so many people are afraid of no, they're afraid to get rejected.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, Ed Kottemel's book, the guy who founded Pixar, his book Creativity, Inc., he drills into that, the fear of failure, a lot. One of the reasons that he lays out, which I think, like when you're in grade school, if you fail, like your teachers, like there's so many penalties for failing, right?
then I think it's drilled into us early on that this failure is this horrible thing. And so we get out in the real world, we realize just on percentages, if you discard the failures, you move on to the successes if you don't let them hold your back. But we got all this conditioning, however long we were in school, that every failure was horrible.
And if we didn't have a certain amount of fear of it to begin with, in our DNA, what we're wired with, then much of the educational system reinforces it. So by the time we're adults, we have a hard time with it.
Yeah. Let's ask a couple of final questions. I just want to hear from your perspective. What was one of the real life scenarios? This always gets, I love watching like FBI. This is, that's my jam of like hostage negotiations. Like this is the coolest thing. What was one of the stories that maybe you haven't shared in a long time? that you were against some really difficult odds?
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