[MUSIC PLAYING]
So join me in a little experiment.
Your phone rings.
You pick it up and the voice on the other end of the line
says, have you got a few minutes to talk?
What's your instant gut reaction.
Is it yes?
Thank god.
I said yes.
I feel so good to say yes.
No, as a matter of fact, your gut reaction is [GROANS]..
The first thing that goes through your mind
is, who is this?
You find out who it is.
The next thing that goes through your mind
is, how long is a few minutes?
And then after that, the next thing
that goes through your mind is, how do I get off the phone?
All of that is triggered from the simple,
have you got a few minutes to talk?
It's amazing that any time anybody
asks us to say yes, we ask ourselves, what am I
letting myself in for?
This happens to us so much and all the time
that we're always yes battered.
So in this chapter, I'm going to teach you
about the beauty of the word "no."
Not only is "no" not failure, but you're
going to find out how valuable it is to get people to say no
and how much farther you can get and how much more information
you can get and how much it will actually
enhance your relationship when you make people feel
like not only is it OK to say no,
but no is a really good answer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Yeah, yes is horrible.
I mean, first of all, there's three kinds of yes's--
commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit.
My confirmation yes is if you've asked
me a simple question where you're trying to simply confirm
that something is true.
My confirmation yes is going to be pretty concise.
Like, I might say, yeah, and sometimes I might even say, OK.
The more concise and the more curt my tone of voice is,
the more likely it is that it's a legitimate confirmation yes.
But a commitment yes is an agreement.
It's I agree.
I'll go along with it.
I will do this.
I have agreed that I will do this,
that I'm good with what we're talking about
and that I am in agreement with it.
And commitment yes is going to be fairly curt and concise
as well.
But it's really going to be driven by the context
and what I've said leading up to that
and how our conversation has gone.
The counterfeit yes is the yes I'm
going to give you when I'm starting to feel trapped
by your questioning, I don't trust you,
I want to find out how soon this is going to be over.
Maybe I want to know more.
So I'm going to give you the counterfeit
yes because I've already decided that I don't trust you,
and it's OK because I feel like you're trying to trap me.
So you might say to me, does this is deal
look like something that could work for you?
The counterfeit yes it's typically not
terribly succinct.
It's not short.
I'll say, yeah or sure or, if my real objective
is to get you to go away, I might say yes
to get you to go away.
But typically a counterfeit yes is not simply yes.
Yes, most of the time, is maybe or a no
in waiting or rejection in waiting.
So at any point in time that in my previous life
I might have sought a yes, I'll simply
change that yes question to a no question
to drive at the same thing, and I'm
going to get the same kind of information.
A no is so much more valuable than a yes.
A no to a properly phrased no-oriented question is worth
at least five yes's.
People feel safe and protected when they say no.
This is another one of these human nature laws of gravity.
There is no way around that when you say no that you
don't feel safe and protected.
You don't like hearing it, but, again, it's
different between when you hear it and when you say it.
And when you begin to understand how valuable it is and how
solid no is, I actually love hearing it because I will say
something-- instead of saying, do you agree with this,
I'll say, do you disagree?
Instead of saying, is this a good idea, I'll say,
is it a ridiculous idea?
When you say no, you feel safe and protected.
You feel like you've made no commitment at all.
So you're going to give me a lot more information.
And the additional information after the no, or even the yes
if I'm silly enough to try to get it,
the additional information is what's most important.
How is this going to be implemented?
What's this going to look like?
What haven't we thought of?
Since you feel safe and protected when you say no,
you feel no fear about telling me about problems.
If I said to you, does this look like something
that would work for you, if you say yes to that
but you want to give me additional information,
you're going to feel like every additional piece of information
commits you before you're ready to commit.
You're going to be reluctant to share problems with me.
You're going to be reluctant to collaborate with me
because you feel like everything that comes out of your mouth
reduces your autonomy.
And that's all bad for me.
But if you say no, having said no,
you feel there's no commitment afterwards.
You can share a lot of information with me.
You won't have second thoughts.
You won't have commitment fears.
And the information you share with me
is going to be very accurate and give me a really clear picture
of what's going on.
If I say to you, does this look like something
that might work for you, you're going
to say no, but here are my issues.
And you're much more likely to lay out what the issues really
are because you're going to feel like you can share them
with no commitment whatsoever.
About two years ago, I get introduced to Robert Herjavec,
"Shark Tank" Robert Herjavec--
great guy, very generous guy.
And via the introduction, he invites me to lunch.
And it was my favorite kind of lunch.
He paid at a steakhouse.
But a generous guy--
I mean, and I get 90 minutes with him, which,
again, on the basis of an email introduction
is a fantastic thing.
Now, he's building out a sales team,
and he's wondering if the Black Swan Group's negotiation
approach, the negotiation that I teach,
is good for his salespeople.
My company happens to have a negotiation training
session coming up in New York, and I offer him a free ticket.
And to show what a decent, generous guy
he is, his response is, how many can I buy?
A lot of people, if you offer them one thing that's free,
they want more free things.
Again, he's saying, how many can we buy?
So my company and his company, we're
going back and forth on how many tickets they're going to buy,
and we're not getting a clear commitment out of him
as to how many people he's going to send.
My people call me on a phone, and they'll say,
we're getting ready to sell out.
And if Herjavec and his people don't buy now,
they're not getting any.
They're not even getting their free ticket
because the tickets to our events are expensive,
and my team is mad at me for giving way anything for free.
They don't care who it is, even if it's a famous guy from TV.
So at 5:03 in the afternoon--
because I've just gotten a call from my director of operations
saying, if the Herjavec Group doesn't buy tickets now,
then they're not getting any because we're going to sell out
by tomorrow morning.
And I'm in Los Angeles, and I'm getting a call
from the East Coast.
So we're three hours behind the time frame anyway.
So 5:03 in the afternoon, I send Robert Herjavec
a two-line email, 5:03 on a Monday.
Are you against committing to three tickets now?
Is it a ridiculous idea for you to pay for the tickets
before the business day starts in New York tomorrow?
At 5:04, I get an email back from him
that says, no, we'll make the commitment for three tickets
now.
No, we got no problem paying for them right now.
My assistant will be in touch with you within the hour.
Send her a link and we'll pay.
I sent the link, and they made the payment by 5:23.
How often do you get that kind of decision making from someone
at any time of the day, let alone after 5 o'clock?
What you're really trying to get is an authentic commitment.
And even with that, yes is nothing without how.
I mean, whatever amount of time you spend on yes,
it's almost useless because if it's a confirmation
yes or a counterfeit yes, your real issue is, do you have how?
A confirmation yes without a how will die.
So how do we transition into how?
Remember, the key to negotiation is always using deference.
So it's with a tone of voice.
And if they haven't given you a way to proceed,
then your first question is, how should we proceed?
What are the next steps?
How would you like to proceed?
Use how or what to begin to pave your way into how
you're going to proceed.
And then think in advance a little bit
because there are always going to be implementation problems.
So in some anticipation of that, you
want to ask some how and what questions
to deal with implementation problems in advance
because if you haven't created a mechanism through what and how
to deal with the problems, those problems are going
to fester until they explode.
You lay those safety valves in in advance,
you avoid explosions or you avoid worse than an explosion.
You avoid nothing where they don't call you,
they don't tell you what's going on.
You only find out about bad news indirectly.
Put the safety valves of how do we know if we're on track
and how are we going to deal with it if we're off track,
and you'll take care of your implementation.