#9: Negotiation Secrets: 5 Simple Steps To Getting A Better Deal Every Time

Negotiation is a skill that can help you be happier and more successful in life, from parenting to relationships to businesses. Literally anywhere, where something is being traded and something is almost always being traded. I think, though, unfortunately, the idea of negotiation conjures up a lot of negativity.

People seem to think about a sleazy car salesman or one person trying to take advantage of another person. But I think that's outdated and inaccurate, and it's a bit of a mistake to think about negotiation that way. I know for me, I think of negotiation as a form of communication, and I'm always trying to find a win-win.

I think when you understand that and when you understand some skills, you can do a lot better in all areas of your life. And that's why I think it really is linked to happiness and prosperity.

For me personally, from a financial standpoint, negotiation skills are without a doubt one of the highest dollar per minute activities that I ever engage in. And I'll share some examples of this as we dive in here.

But I know that over the past few years alone, negotiation has saved me hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars and not just savings, but has actually generated hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, an extra additional income that I couldn't have got if I didn't have an idea about how negotiation worked and didn't have the ability to engage in that kind of communication.

So as someone who might be unversed in negotiation, where can you start? Where can you get some quick wins? What are some simple strategies that you can use to get better results in your life?

Well, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about here today. And I've invited negotiation expert Chris Croft to join us on the call.

Chris is someone that I've known for a few years now. If you want to find out more information about Chris, by the way, we will have links below this podcast on thegrowthbooth.com, but you can also just search for him in Google, "Chris Croft", or go to chriscroft.com.

He's got lots of really great resources, and Chris is an expert in the world of negotiation. He's a true master of this craft. We actually met Chris originally because he came and did some sales and negotiation training for one of my companies, and he's helped tens of thousands of people all over the world.

AIDAN

I'm particularly excited about this episode. I'm excited to have you here today, Chris. Thank you for joining us here. Before we dive in, perhaps you could give our listeners just a wee bit of background about where you are and why or how you sort of fell into this world of negotiation. And I know you do a lot of other things as well, but why negotiation? What is it that you love about it? A little bit of background. 

CHRIS

Yes. Thank you, Aidan. That's quite a build up to live up to, isn't it? Yeah. So I started out as an engineer, and I think I've still got a sort of engineer brain just trying to understand things and even something messy like negotiating. I want to know what's the system, what's the process, how do you do it?

But I went into management because I wasn't a great engineer.

I don't think not enough attention to detail. And I went from management into running training courses. So I'm a self employed training person now based in the south of England, but doing Zoom training for stuff all over the world, as you mentioned. I do lots of other subjects as well, like time management and project management and things, but negotiating continues to fascinate me because people are so bad at it and people know nothing about it.

My fascination begins when I first went on a training course, a negotiating training course years ago now, and it amazed me that all these things were being done to me or had been done to me over the years without me realizing. And I just thought, "Oh my God, if only I'd known." And I realized then that I had no idea what was being done to me, and most people don't.

I find it incredible that everyone doesn't get negotiating training. Everybody who buys stuff or sells stuff or is in a marriage or has kids, how can you not at least study this subject briefly and learn about it? Because there are simple things that work and they work pretty much every time.

So the fascinating thing about negotiating is the rules are quite simple. Nobody knows them, but they do take a little bit of presence of mind to do. To remember to do them at the right moment takes practice. And I was very complimented. You said, I'm a master at this. I don't think I am really, because quite often when I do a negotiation afterwards, I think I forgot one of the rules. I did maybe three out of four things correctly or nine out of ten. But it's really easy to think, "Oh no, I used a round number. I quoted somebody a thousand quid for training instead of $1140," and basic things like that are easy to get wrong. So it does take practice, but there is a science behind it.

There are rules you can learn, and we're going to look at some of those in a minute, I think. And it just amazes me that people don't study this. Why isn't every salesperson sent on a negotiating course? And yet usually they're not? I think it should be a skill that people should really learn because again, it's not a negative thing. It's about upping your game with regards to communication and trying to find that win-win, and to your point of forgetting one of the rules or something, I think even if you don't know all the rules, but actually, you just get one of the things right that can actually make a tangible difference.

AIDAN

You mentioned the whole quoting around number. I recently purchased an office space here in Buenos Aires in Argentina, and I was negotiating with the real estate agent or the vendor, and I quoted a quite unusual number. So I can't remember what the number was. Just to give you an example, instead of quoting like $250,000, I quoted $237,400, something like this. And he actually called me up on it, and he said, “What's the deal with this number?”

I won't get into all the details, but I think there's a lot to be said for even just leveraging or using some of the rules. So I think if people listening to us here today can just take away one or two ideas, then there's potentially a lot of value to be had there. 

CHRIS

Yes. You don't have to get everything right every time. Not at all. The main thing is to have the confidence to at least give it a go, because you're bound to get something. If you get $10,000 a year off your rent just by asking, I mean, that's fantastic. The worst that's going to happen is they'll just say, "No, you can't have any money off," and you're only back where you started. You've lost nothing, so you've got nothing to lose by trying.

And you're right. Even just one or two of the rules will bring in all sorts of benefits. It's just hard to be perfect. But I think don't beat yourself up about not being perfect. Just give it a go and regard every negotiation as practice.

Just going back to the round numbers. The reason why that works is if you quote a round number, it sounds as if you're just making it up. It just sounds like a game. Whereas if you quote a very specific number, that implies there's a reason behind it. It was interesting the bloke asked. I mean, you don't have to answer other people's questions, so you can just say, "Well, that's all I can afford." But I think if you say, "Well, we've got a very strict budget. We've worked it out really carefully, and that's all we can afford." If you're buying, and similarly if you're selling, if you ask for an unusual number, I like numbers with fours and sevens in, by the way, but if you ask for a price that's got a four or seven in, it implies that you've worked out your costs really carefully, and that is how much you have to charge. And quite often, if you do that, people won't negotiate with you. They'll just go, "Okay, then," because that number has a certain strength to it. It looks as if you've really calculated it. So not using round numbers is one of the many rules, and it's an important one and an easy one to do, really, isn't it? Yeah.

AIDAN

And we'll get into some more other ideas for people here shortly. But I think negotiation and business, there are lots of obvious applications. So maybe you're negotiating for some stock or maybe you're negotiating a contract and there's real tangibles in that. But in my personal life, I feel like negotiation pops up almost every single day.

I mean, I am a foreigner living in Argentina, and like it or not, people will assume this is a silly gringo kind of a thing. And if you don't have your wits about you, you can easily get taken advantage of. But I think all the time, every single day, negotiating with my kids, negotiating with my wife, that's an ongoing battle that hopefully I keep getting better at. But it pops up all the time in life. And oftentimes when you're negotiating, it doesn't have to be that you are negotiating with another person, and it's certainly not an opponent. But if you're negotiating with a big corporation, I think that's one of the best times to do it.

An example of this was I recently negotiated some mortgage terms for an investment that I was buying, and I was negotiating with the bank at that point. So I could feel completely good about going into that negotiation and sort of almost demanding or asking for certain things. And I could go into that with confidence because one of the things that I did was I found out what the other options on the market were.

So I knew that one bank offered this, another bank offered this, another bank offered this. Then I could speak with confidence and I could go to my bank and say, "Look, I can get this elsewhere," and eventually they better that deal because they were interested in keeping me happy. 

But it wasn't like a stock standard, off the shelf rate that I ended up with. It was actually significantly better with lots of other perks as well. So I think there's lots of upside to negotiation in all areas of life.

However, I'm sure you've seen this a lot, Chris, people sort of feel uncomfortable about negotiating. Why do you think that is?

CHRIS

Well, I think there is an implication that you're being greedy and trying to take stuff off the other person. And I think you're absolutely right to say that there's always a win-win negotiating attitude. So every interaction you have with somebody, why are you having that interaction? And it's because you want something or they want something, and usually you have to give something in return. That's what negotiating is. So almost every interaction is a negotiation. 

But I think we do worry. It's interesting you mentioned kids because kids are born negotiators. I mean, I remember when my daughter was about two, she would try to get me to read three rabbit stories instead of one rabbit story. And I would reluctantly agree to doing two. And you could see her thinking, "Yes, I've doubled the number of rabbit stories at bedtime." So it's built in. But then it sort of is knocked out of us as we are taught about manners. If somebody gives you a present, you don't go, "Oh, thanks. I was hoping for a bit more than that." Or "Can I have two presents?"

We're taught you must give them something back, and that's not good negotiating.

If somebody offers you a discount, you shouldn't just go, "Oh, no, let me give you something." You should just say, "Well, I'd like more than that." In a weird way, it's knocked out of us by learning manners and we're taught that it's rude, but I think that's part of the thing.

I think the other fear we have is that it's an unstructured process. We don't know what the other person is going to do. And it's probably the only interaction in life where the other person is deliberately trying to mess you up, because even sales as a salesperson, you're trying to help the customer to find the best solution and they're wanting to buy and you're wanting to sell. Everything is great. But with negotiating, I suppose something like a game of chess, they're trying to mess you up, and negotiating is like that because they're trying to work out what are your weaknesses and what do you really think and do you really value this highly and this not very much or the other way around.

It's one of the few situations where there really is a bit of conflict going on there. I think we try to make negotiations win-win, but sometimes the other person is playing win-lose. And if you're a win-win person, which you should be, if you go into a negotiation and the other person is playing win-lose, you are in a win-lose negotiation and there's nothing you can do.

I think we always have a fear that the other person's going to do things to us that we don't like and that we're not expecting. And at least if you have a rough outline process, which we'll come to in a minute, at least then you don't feel quite so worried.

I think there's a final problem we have with negotiation, which is failure to get the deal. So when you're talking to the bank, you have a worry that if you try to negotiate, you might not get the money from the bank, you might not get the deal at all. And that is a totally unfounded fear. For a start, you had alternatives you could go to, which was good preparation. But even if there's nowhere else you can go, you should still negotiate with the bank because they probably don't know that there's nowhere else you can go. So you can probably get a better deal from them. And the worst case you'll have to do is crumble and go, "All right, then I'll just pay your number." The worst thing if you're buying and you try to get money off and they just go, "No," you can always say, "All right, I'll pay your full price." It's not like they're ever going to come back and say no.

AIDAN

“Well, before you said you couldn't pay... “

CHRIS

...you're nice about it. Always be nice. By the way, in any negotiation, even if the other person is awful, always be nice because you'll get a better deal. So whether you're buying or selling, I think that empathy is definitely one of the big tips that I've picked up over the years.

AIDAN

Yeah, absolutely.

CHRIS

Being a really good listener is part of negotiating as well, because when you're talking, you're giving away information. When you're looking around a house, you might buy if you're saying, "Oh, this is great, this is the only one we found that's got such a big garden. And we love this and we love..." You're just giving away weaknesses that you've got. And they're thinking they've got nowhere else to go then.

So ideally, you'd be asking them, "Have you got somewhere to move to?" And if they're moving somewhere cheaper, you can think “Great, they can probably come down in price.”

Everything they tell you, they're giving away weaknesses. You should be asking them, "Have you had many people looking?" And if they say no, you think, "Okay, so you're probably weak."

So it's all about the questioning and the listening and thinking about the other person's weaknesses. But by the way, I don't want to say that win-win never happens. And the more you can find out about their position, the more chance you've got of finding a win-win.

Suppose you're selling, you might find out that there are several other things they're looking for as well that you can help them with. And you might be able to do a really good price for the whole lot. And if you're buying, you might find that there are other things that they sell that you might want, and you might be able to get a good deal.

So the questioning helps find a win-win, and the more win-win the deal is, the better, because you're going to get a better deal from them if they're gaining from it as well. So we do want to look for the win-win, but we have to bear in mind that quite often particularly people who haven't been trained in negotiating, often are playing win-lose, and they're just trying to get as much money or whatever off you as possible.

I do have actually one more thing as well, something you said, Aidan, just now, which is this is not always about money. My daughter, it was about rabbit stories. But quite often with people, it's about when can you have something and what will they do for you and how good will it be, and can they help you with other things?

And I think the best negotiations are not about money at all or they're about money plus a load of other things. It's when it's only money, that's when you end up with a win-lose negotiation because you've got nothing else you could put in, you just have to fight over the price, and that's not an ideal negotiation. You want to get extras in as well, if you can. 

AIDAN

I think there are always at least a few different variables or levers you can touch on, one of them being the price or the cost, another one being the timeframe and another one being the quality or the quantity of something, in your daughter's case, the quantity of bedtime stories that you might be reading. So there are normally multiple levers there. But people do tend to sort of focus on price.

And just before we get into some of the steps, another thing that came to mind while you're talking, there was oftentimes people get emotional about it, especially when they are not well-versed in negotiating and they just want to have a win.

So sometimes by letting them have that win or letting them feel like they won, even though you're probably not trying to operate in a zero sum game, you're probably trying to find that middle ground where it is win-win.

Sometimes by just letting the other party in the negotiation feel like they've won, that can be a really good way of getting to what is actually a win-win situation.

CHRIS

Just a small win. Years ago, I was selling a car, second hand, and I added 100 quids to the price because I knew they'd want 100 off.

And the guy said, “If you can give me £100 off, I'll buy it.” And I went, okay, because I'd added it on. And he was really sort of triumphant and great, which you shouldn't be, by the way. You don't want to look triumphant after a negotiation. And I was thinking, I just put that on so I could take it off. So, yeah, you're right. Sometimes you have to give them a small win.

AIDAN

Normally after a negotiation, you sort of want to look like, "Oh, well, you really made me work for this absolute limit here, and I'm happy with the outcome." 

Now, getting into the steps. In the past, when we've had you do training for some of our audience, we've spoken about five different steps, and I believe the first one was sort of deciding to negotiate in the first place. Hopefully we've given people a few clues about that. 

CHRIS

That is the biggest reason. That is the biggest reason why people don't get a good deal. They don't even try, right? Yeah, that's an important one.

AIDAN

It's often the case you don't try and obviously you just don't get anything. But then I think the next one was preparation. So what would you share with people? A few easy wins they can have by preparation. If I could have the top two.

CHRIS

I think my number one tip of everything is set your limit, know at what point you're going to walk away.

So if you're selling, how low will you go before you just think, "This is not worth it, and you might really want that customer. You might be prepared to do it for a loss or the customer might be a bit of a pain and you might be busy. And you might think, "I'm only going to do this if I get a really good price."

But what is your walk away point? And if you're buying, what's the most you'll pay? At what point will you actually say, "No, forget it, I'm not going to buy this," even if it means you can't do a whole big other thing without this one thing you're trying to buy.

At what point will you say get stuff done, not paying that. And that requires a little bit of careful thinking beforehand, but it will mean you won't do a deal that's a bad one, but it will also make you stronger because when you're in there, you know the point at which you will walk.

So you're not in there thinking, I don't know, should I agree to a bit more or not? There's no worrying.  There's no thinking, because you know your walk away point before you start. You're not going to get caught out on the fly by sort of being unprepared, because that's when the emotional side of it really comes in and might be messy and you can make mistakes. You're under pressure and the person's there, so have that absolutely ready before you go in. 

I sometimes even write it on a piece of paper and put it in my pocket before I go in. 

AIDAN

Last time I bought a car, I actually knew what the car was being sold for.

And before I went into the car dealership, I had a price, which was my absolute maximum price that I was going to pay. I think without having that, it's easy to get sucked up into the emotion or into the negotiation tactics of the other party. Obviously some people are negotiating every single day like car salesmen. So it's a good sort of safety net, I think, to have that. 

CHRIS

Absolutely.

That's rule number one. I think the other thing you can prepare is just think about their weaknesses. This comes back to how we were saying earlier on that people feel weak when they go into a negotiation.

To just stick with that car example You may think they've got all the cards, they've got the car, they know the game, but they've got weaknesses. That car sales person is probably either on a bonus and they're desperate to sell it because they want the money, or maybe they have not had a good month and maybe they're even going to get fired if they don't sell a car by the end of today and you're the only customer they've had. Maybe that car has been on their books for weeks and they just can't get rid of it, and you happen to be the only person who likes that car.

AIDAN

You never know what the other person is thinking or going through, and that's why you might think you're giving a low ball offer, whereas for them, it's absolutely amazing.

CHRIS

Yes. For almost nothing. And that's another weakness they may have.

So by thinking about their weaknesses, it makes you feel stronger and it takes the attention of your weaknesses. So you go in just thinking, "I bet he's desperate to sell this car," or "I bet she has sold nothing this week and is desperate to make a sale." And that just makes you feel stronger when you go in  and it gives you things to look for as well.

So then when you say to them "How's it been recently?" they may well say, "Oh, it's been terrible, I haven't sold anything for ages." And you could think, AHA, so preparing their weaknesses is really time well spent.

Another thing, you have to do it once. I mean, that's the other thing.

For example, if you're selling cars, you've only got to think about the buyers weaknesses once and then you've got that for your whole life. Every buyer that comes in, you can think, "I bet they're rich, I bet they fallen in love with this car. I bet they're under time pressure because their other car is broken down," or whatever it might be. So do that work once, you've got it forever. 

AIDAN

Yeah.  Another way I think people can prepare is to get themselves in a little bit more of a position of strength. So for example, when I was negotiating with the bank, I knew what the other banks were offering and I didn't have all my hopes resting on this one bank. If they had said no, then I had other options. 

And in the online space, we do this with suppliers all the time. So one of our businesses, we've got our own brand of products, we import them into the United States, we sell them online, but offline and tens of thousands of different stores and we've got multiple suppliers for each product. So when we are negotiating terms, if one supplier isn't willing to play ball or isn't willing to try to find that win-win, then we're not desperate. We can move on to the next person. I feel like with our ecommerce business, that was one of the biggest sort of breakthroughs we had, was moving away from just having one supplier to having multiple suppliers. I think it's putting you more in a position of strength. So that sort of preparation as well.

Anything else you want to mention about preparation? Otherwise we could go on to the next. 

CHRIS

No, not really. Only to say if you don't have another supplier, you can still tell yourself, "I don't need this one. I will find one if I have to."

If I'm negotiating with a customer, it's not like I've got an alternative customer because I'd like them both. But I still am prepared to walk away because I still think to myself if I don't get this job, somebody else will phone me this afternoon or tomorrow I'll get another one.

So I always believe there's an alternative because that gives me that walk away power, even if I don't actually have one. Of course, as you say, it's best if you've got one or several lined up, but often you've got a favorite one, but you have to still believe… 

AIDAN

You don't want to sort of psychologically be in a position where you're feeling desperate, because that really will sort of set you up to be in a weak position.

So anything you can do to make yourself feel stronger, coming into a negotiation, I think...

CHRIS

When you fall in love with a house, and you think "I've got to have this one," but you have to say to yourself,  "If I don't buy this one, I'll find one next week, they'll probably be better," and you have to believe that. And it's probably true, actually, you will find one. And we've probably all had situations where that's happened, even it's fallen through. A month later we bought one and it was better.

So you have to tell yourself that and really believe that and then you're stronger.

So, yeah, I would say because we don't have a lot of time, that's all we should say about preparing for now.

AIDAN

So what would be the next thing that we would do? We've spoken about deciding to negotiate in the first place. We've spoken about a little bit of preparation.

What would we do next, Chris?

CHRIS

Well, there's a very small bit before we get to opening offers, which is the preamble where you're just chatting to the person before anybody makes an opening offer. And I think there's one bit of advice on that that he's really interesting, which is try not to open first. Now you may have to open first.

If you're selling, they may just say, "Well, what's the price?" But even then you can sometimes say, "Well, it depends what you want. Do you have a budget in mind?" And if you give me a rough idea of what you're looking for, and that's what they do in kitchen and carpet showrooms, they ask you for your budget, don't they?

So ideally you wouldn't say how quickly you want something. You'd say, "When can I have it?" And ideally, you would always get the other person to open first. And the reason for this is because it might be good news. Sometimes you ask them for a price and it's really low, and you think this is fantastic.

AIDAN

Funny story about that, Chris. I had a friend who was offering some services to casinos in Las Vegas, and the casino sort of said to them, "What are your charges?" And my friend didn't really know what he should be charging. He was new in this game. So he just said $100,000. And the casino said, "Okay, that's fine, $100,000."

Then they sent through the contract and my friend found out that instead of getting a one-time payment of $100,000, he was now getting $100,000 per month because the casino was expecting one thing, he was expecting another thing. He had the good fortune of being on the end of something that turned into $100,000 a month. He would have been absolutely over the moon with just sealing a $100,000 one-time sort of offer there.

So it goes to show, you never know. 

CHRIS

Weirdly, I was going to give an example to do with Las Vegas as well, actually, by an incredible coincidence, because I was asked to speak at a conference in Las Vegas.

It was like an HR conference. They wanted to talk on difficult people, I think it was. And do I open first or do they open first? Because I have no idea what they pay for a 45 minutes talk to 300 people in a conference. It could be anything from $1,000 to $20,000. So if I say I want $9,000 to do that talk, they might well think, "Well, it's cheap. We'd have paid $15,000." So I've got to say to them, "I might be able to do it, but I'm pretty busy. What do you pay for this?" And they might say, "Well, we can only afford 18,000," in which case I'm going to bite their hand off. So you can see if you can manage to get them to open first.

It could be good news. If it's bad news, if they say, "Well, it's only $50," then I can always say, "Oh, no, I want $15,000," and then it's just game on, isn't it? Maybe they can't afford me. Maybe they can. Maybe we end up halfway on $7,000. I'd be delighted, by the way, to do it for that.

So always ask them to open first. If it's good news, it's great. If it's bad news, you can just ignore it. There are some people who say “No, open first to stick a stake in the ground.” But I don't agree with that at all, because what if you stick the stake in the wrong place? It's such an unknown game.

AIDAN

Sometimes you are really sort of forced to open first, and a strategy that I've used in that scenario is, and I'm sure you've heard about this one, it's called the Ackerman bargaining method. It's where you've got this price in your mind, like you might be thinking, "Okay, well, the most I could absolutely pay for this, my absolute maximum price is $1,000." And then if that's the maximum you're willing to pay, then you start your original price at 65% of that.

So you'd say, "Okay, well, I can pay $650," and this is going to devalue the items perceived worth, at least at the start of the negotiator. And then maybe they'll come back and say, "I can't do that." And then your second offer, you'll offer 85% of the reservation price, and then they'll come back and do something else, and then you'll come back with an offer of 95% of whatever the asking price is, and you might end up at 100% of what you are willing to pay. And if you end up getting it for that, whatever it is, then you'll probably be happy because it fell into your line of rules anyway.

But if you don't, at least you know that you tried and at least you sort of started by anchoring the conversation with significantly less than what you're willing to pay. So whenever I'm in doubt, that's a little formula that I've gone back to, and people that find out if they just search for the Ackerman bargaining method, you'll find it and there's lots of things written.

CHRIS

I'd like to add a couple of things to that because I like it, and in principle, I think it's right.

The only thing I would say is that your formula said you should start on was it 75% of what, 65%. I think that range depends on the situation a little bit. Could be situational.

So I tend to say if you're buying, ask for lower. Obviously, if you're selling, you ask for higher, but ask for lower than the best you might get.

So if you've looked at the market and it's very wide and you never know, you might get it for half price, you got to ask for less than half.

So my example of speaking in Las Vegas, it's a very wide market. If I'd be happy to do it for, say, $2,000, I could ask for $3000 or $4000. But if I think there's a chance they might pay $10,000, I should ask for $11,000. So I think my rule for the Croft rule for opening offers is go beyond the best you might get. You can sometimes find that out by just market research, by looking at what all the different prices are out there. 

AIDAN

Because you also don't want to sort of offend someone out of the gate by just making ridiculous...

CHRIS

You must be very nice about it, and you must offer and you need to justify your opening offer. 

So if I'm going to ask for ten grand to go and talk for 45 minutes in Vegas, I've got to go to justify that. I can either say it's going to take me several days of travel to get there and back with jet lag, which is true, or I can say that I've got lots of other people asking me to do talks and they're all offering me ten grand, and that's why it seems like a lot. But that's the going rate, so I've got to be able to justify my extreme opening offer.

AIDAN 

I think sometimes it's easier to use the Ackerman method that I mentioned when you're negotiating for something which isn't readily available, like you're buying a property and there are 100 other houses on the market, but perhaps you are buying a piece of a business or something, or something where there is no sure-fire formula for figuring out exactly what something might be worth. It's more subjective. That's when I've used that.

CHRIS

The only thing I wanted to add with that is suppose you're selling and somebody says, "That's too expensive, can you come down a bit?" You could use a formula to work out what you should come down to, but my first line of defense is to not come down at all.

So if somebody says that's a bit expensive for a training course, my first thing is to say, "Well, I just can't come down, I'm afraid, because I've got costs and I've got other people asking me to do it for that rate," or however I justify. I said I just can't come down. And I've found that probably three quarters of the time they just go, “Oh, well, okay then. I just thought I'd ask."

So say no the first time and only if they come back a second time and say, "Well, in that case we can't afford it, and in that case we'll just have to call it a day. Goodbye." You can then say, "Well, look, hang on a minute. Maybe there's a way I could come down a little bit. If you book me twice or if you give me some nice food when I come to see you, then I could maybe come down a small amount." Yeah. People are going to know this now when they do…

AIDAN

How to negotiate with Chris Croft? Head over to thegrowthbooth.com and you'll find out.

I think the other thing that we always need to keep coming back to is there are really multiple different levers here. So it's not just about the cost, it's about time. It's about quality and molding or sort of bending different things to find what could work.

So if we move on now, and I'm really conscious of your time here, Chris, but if we move on to the next step in the process, we've spoken a little bit about opening. Is there anything else that you wanted to add to opening? 

CHRIS

No. I think my two top rules of opening are open just beyond the best you could hope for, because otherwise you'll never get the best you could hope for because otherwise you don’t get it, and don't open with a round number so that you don't sound as if you're playing a game, you sound as if you've got a really definite and if you've got a reason why to be able to defend that number as well, that’s great

So let's say you've opened and they've opened. The next bit of the process is how do we get to some agreement in the middle, and this is the bargaining or the trading.

"Well, I might be able to do it if you do this, I could do this sort of part of it..." and people think this is what negotiating is. But actually, by the time you get to this stage, it's more or less over, because if I'm at one end, you're at the other end, we're going to end up roughly in the middle. I might be able to pull you to sort of two thirds.

So the difference between a half and two thirds is the 6th, I think, isn't it? There's not a lot to be got, but nevertheless, it's worth trying to get that fixed. But the opening offer is absolutely crucial. So how do we bargain?

The two rules of bargaining I want to share with you, one of them is very simple, which is moving small steps, and that's just obvious because if you move in big steps, you're giving away more. But when we do role plays on training courses, this is the mistake that people always make. They always say, "I can only afford $4000," and then they go, "All right, how about $8000?" And you think, what, you should have gone from $4000 to $4100. So moving small steps, because not only are you giving away less, but it sends a signal.  If you go to $4100, you're going to say “You're going to be lucky to get to four and a half, mate.”

So small steps, that's obvious, and yet people don't do it.

The other bargaining rule is a lot more tricky and maybe we need to spend a little bit of time talking about it. I know we haven't got much more time on this, but it's to always trade. So if I say to somebody, "I want ten grand to do a job for you," and then you say, "Well, we can only afford $2000." And I go, "All right, I'll do it for $5000." You're thinking, "Well, hang on, what was that ten you mentioned just now? You tried to rip me off at ten because you've now told me you're prepared to do it for five."

And even if I come from ten, I got 9,8,7,6,5. By the time I get to $5000, you're thinking, "This guy started at ten and I don't like that." Quite right.

So how do I get from my opening offer, which has to be a little bit extreme, trying my luck, I might get it to some sort of finishing point without looking dishonest. And the key is to trade.

"If you book more days, I'll do it cheaper. If you give me curry for lunch, I'll do it for cheaper. If you mentioned me on your website, I'll do it for cheaper," and I need to have things that I can trade kind of as an excuse to come down, but not just an excuse, because if I come down from ten to five and I get on your website and all these other things, then I've actually got perhaps a really good deal for me. I would probably rather do it for less, but be on your website. Trading leads to a win-win because you get a cheaper job and it's easy for you to put me on your website.

AIDAN

I've got one example.

CHRIS

Yeah, give us your example.

AIDAN

I've got one example where this happened to me, real life negotiating.

So I was buying a condo in Manhattan in New York, and we got down to maybe we're sort of haggling over the final $30,000. There was a bit of a gap there and the vendor said, "Okay, well, next the offer is going to be.." and I can't remember what it was, but just as an example, let's say it was $650,000 and maybe I was stuck on $620,000 or something. And what we did using this trading was I said, "Okay, well, look, I can up my offer a little bit, but you're going to include the subzero fridge," and the subzero fridge is something that was worth $15,000.

Turns out that the vendor didn't care about the subzero fridge. It was one less thing he was going to have to shift out of the property as well as a whole bunch of other furniture that he had. And it meant that I could sort of save face. I wasn't just willing to sort of like jump in price when I'd already said that I was sort of at my limit, but I could justify doing that if I was getting something else.

So it's another one of those examples where just by sort of asking the question or being aware of the tradables, the things that are up for negotiation here, you can sort of work those into the contract. I think that's another thing that you can do in your preparation, at least for this part of the negotiation, is make a list. What are the tradables? 

CHRIS

It's a vital part of preparation is to think about your tradables, because if you've done that, you feel stronger when you go in. 

We talked earlier about how people have a fear of negotiating because you're going to the unknown. But if you know your walk away point and you know your trade-offs and you got your opening offer planned, you're going in feeling much better about the whole thing.

Your tradables are like a little pack of cards and you just play one, play another one, play a big one, play a small one, you feel great because you've got all these tradables and you know where you are. And as I mentioned before, you've only got to prepare them once. So you probably don't buy condos in Manhattan very often, but particularly when you're selling, you can have the same tradables every time. 

AIDAN

And you can use this also, in just an online business, I keep coming back to ecommerce because it's an easy one to make examples out of. For example, I can't pay one dollar per unit if I'm buying. Maybe I'm buying 1000 different products and the manufacturer is saying, "Look, these are going to cost you one dollar per unit." And I'm sort of saying, "Well, my maximum I can pay is $0.80 per unit." Then another thing that I can trade and say, "Okay, well, I can pay one dollar per unit, if you sell them to me in smaller batches."

So instead of having me on the hook for buying 1000 units up front, I'll buy 500 of them and I'm willing to pay a little bit more of a higher price if I'm getting a smaller batch. Or maybe I can say, "Yeah, well, I'll pay a little bit more if you get them to me faster." So there's always something that you can kind of add in there.

Just think it through. 

CHRIS

Absolutely. Ideally, you'd go in with about ten tradables. Right. And just sit down with some people, brainstorm a list. You'd be amazed how many tradables. There are some great examples there and there's when you pay and whether you can cancel a week beforehand type of payment as well.

AIDAN

Another little example here, Chris.

I mentioned earlier that I've recently purchased an office space here in Argentina. And one of the things that I ended up trading was I was able to pay the seller outside of Argentina. So for him, that was a benefit. He wanted to get properties in Argentina sold mainly in US dollars. But anyway, I was able to say, "Look, I'll pay you for this and I'm going to be able to pay you for it into a bank account that you've got in the United States. So you're not going to end up with a big lump of money here in Argentina." That was really appealing for him because it meant that he was able to have this money sort of outside Argentina, which is something that he wanted. It was easier for me. There was a genuine win-win that came out of the negotiation.

CHRIS

The good thing about tradables, it’s almost always they have different values to the two parties. So I can give you something that's cheap for me to give and valuable to you, and then you can do something that's really valuable for me that you can easily give, something like payment in a different country or being mentioned on somebody's website or something like that.

For example, I'll mention this podcast on my LinkedIn feed, which goes out to 100,000 people. So to you, that's great. It's great to me as well because I've got to think of something good to put on my LinkedIn feed.

Win-wins are everywhere. When you start looking at tradables, money is the problem because money is very difficult. Money is never a win-win because every pound I get off you, I win, but you lose. So tradables are absolutely the key to a win-win.

Anyway, should we go to the last step?

AIDAN

Yes, go to the last one. Yeah.

CHRIS

And so eventually, after all this trading and things, we end up at some sort of deal, hopefully. And what would I say would be my top tip for when you get to the close, I think look out for the nibble. I would say the nibble is a real killer.

The nibble is when you agree it, you shake hands verbally or physically, and then they go, "Oh, by the way, you don't mind delivering on a Sunday do you?"

I have one of these recently. I agreed to do a Zoom session for an American customer and I'm in England and it was all done and it was all fine.

And they said, "Oh, yeah. So by the way, we're going to have it at 02:00 PM. I hope that's all right with you." And that was 02:00 PM, LA time. So it was something like midnight for me, but we'd already agreed everything, the price, everything else. And I'm thinking, what? I got to do this thing at midnight. If they'd said at the beginning, “Can you do a training session on Zoom at midnight?” I'd have gone, “Yes, but it will cost you.”

I actually don't mind too much doing stuff at midnight, but I would have made them pay extra for it. Sometimes they nibble and they say, "We agree everything," and then I discover they've got 500 people on the Zoom call.  And again, if I'd known that earlier, I would have said, "Well, it's going to cost X per person." I would have charged them a lot more because I had more people.

And so the nibble is when something comes up to the surface after you've done the deal. So what can you do to prevent the Nibble?

Obviously, do your pre work. Just think right: time zone, number of people. And after a while, I mean, you've been caught once on all these things. You don't want to be caught twice. So you have a little list of things to check.

But the other way to get round and nibble is to say, "Are there any extras I need to know about?" Because sometimes let's say they want special packaging or something like that. If you say halfway through, "Is there anything else I need to know about?" And they say, no, at the end when they say, "Oh, by the way, can we have special packaging?" You can say, "Well, you didn't mention that earlier, so that's going to cost extra."

I think the key thing is to not let people get away with the nibble because once you've done the deal, you're feeling good and in the bag and it's very tempting at that point, to just agree to extra things like, let's say you've bought a house and the people selling it, you shake hands and then ask them to say, "Oh, by the way, you don't mind if we take the Magnolia tree from the front garden, do you?" And you're so delighted to have got the house, you say to them, "No, that's fine."

But hang on a minute.

You've just lost $100 there. And what you should say is, "No, I'm not happy with you taking the tree. That's part of the reason I wanted the house. So if you want to take it because it's got sentimental value, you're given it as a wedding present or something, I'll have to replace it with another one. That's probably going to cost me $150. So you could take it, but you'll have to knock $150 off the price of the house. It's only $150, isn't it?"

And you're almost sort of like nibbling back. "It's only $150. You can take that off the price, can't you?" Don't let them get away with it, because if you lost $150 out of your pocket in the car park, you'd be gutted. So why should you let that happen just because you bought a really expensive house? Don't let them steal a few percent off you after you've done the deal. 

AIDAN

I think also keeping at the forefront of your mind why you are in a position of strength and what your walk away point is. If something doesn't work out or you don't quite get there, even if you're very close to getting a deal and you just can't quite get there, it's not the end of the world if you have to sort of walk away there.

So this has been amazing, Chris, and having worked with you in the past, I know that you could speak for days on end about negotiation, and it's such a deep topic. But I think we've given people a good starting point here, deciding to negotiate in the first place, doing a little bit of preparation to put you in a good position, the opening trading and the things that you can sort of bargain or barter on and then closing as well.

So people can find out more about your different trainings by just doing a search for Chris Croft and Google or going to chriscroft.com. We will have the links to your website below this on thegrowthbooth.com.

So, Chris, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day here to share more of your tips with our audience. People in our audience absolutely love this stuff, so I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you.