Host: Philip Brown, Founder of The Negotiation Club
Guest: Mike Inman Negotiation Trainer of TableForce
“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” - Peter Drucker:
Episode Overview:
In the latest episode of The Negotiation Club Podcast, Phil Brown sits down with Mike Inman to delve into a standout technique that Mike utilised during a taster session at The Negotiation Club. This episode is a treasure trove of insights into the nuances of negotiation practice and strategy.
Spotlight on Mike Inman’s Technique
Mike Inman’s approach caught Phil’s attention due to its strategic finesse and practical effectiveness. During a negotiation practice, Mike successfully moved the other party’s position by focusing not just on empathy but on anticipating the other party’s next move. Mike emphasises the importance of understanding the other party’s BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) to maximise the available value in a negotiation.
The Critical Moment
The episode highlights a crucial moment in the practice session where Mike was negotiating with a lady representing a seller. She had lowered her offer to £538. Mike’s pivotal move was to ask;
“So for £532 you would walk away?” and then purposefully go silent.
This silence, as Mike explains, is a powerful tool to gauge the other party’s reaction. The absence of outright rejection and the lady’s summarising response indicated that the position was negotiable.
Analysing the Technique
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Describing this technique isn’t straightforward, as it incorporates several elements:
- Closed Question: The question posed by Mike was direct and specific.
- Minor Movement: The slight reduction in the offer (£6) was strategic.
- Use of Odd Numbers: Psychological pricing often employs odd numbers to appear more precise and less arbitrary.
- Silence: Crucial for observing and listening acutely to the other party’s response.
- Observation: Understanding subtle cues and reactions to determine flexibility in the position.
Phil Brown adds that there was a subtle undertone of incredulity or mild accusation in Mike’s question, suggesting disbelief that such a small amount could be a deal-breaker.
Avoiding Repetition
Mike also stresses the importance of not overusing any single tactic. Repetition can make a negotiator’s style predictable and less effective. He advocates for a versatile approach, likening a skilled negotiator to a carpenter who knows how to use every tool at their disposal. This aligns perfectly with The Negotiation Club’s ethos of learning and practicing a wide array of techniques to ensure adaptability and proficiency in real-world negotiations.
In line with our commitment to providing practical resources, we have created a unique podcast negotiation card for this episode, titled “Closing Accusation.” This card includes a detailed explanation of the technique and is designed to help you practice and master it. Club members and podcast listeners can access this card, along with more in-depth insights, on our website.
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Welcome to the Negotiation Club Podcast with Philip Brown. The Negotiation Club is the only community focused solely on enhancing your negotiation skills training through practice with others. Today on the show, we're joined by special guest Mike Invin, who's here to share a different approach to closed questions than you're used to. Here's Philip and Mike. Welcome to the Negotiation Podcast, and in this podcast, what we do is we look and listen to different techniques from different experts from across the globe to see if we can actually incorporate them in our own negotiation skillsets. We do that by practicing them. Now today, we have a friend of mine, Mike Invin. Now, Mike Invin is actually a negotiation trainer himself based in the States and is part of the company table for us. So Mike, do you want to just, again, give yourself a little bit of an interest to more information there? Sure. Thank you, Philip. Thank you for being my friend. I appreciate that. I am a practitioner of negotiations. I spent about 15 years in the seat, three on the sales side and 12 on the procurement side in all sorts of different industries, products and services, capital and direct. And about 14 years ago, I came over and became a trainer of negotiations. I teach 80% of my classes are sales oriented, either salespeople or project management, customer facing and the other 20% are on the procurement side. And I've taught on six continents in more than 30 countries, a global style of negotiations that helps people have better relationships while they're getting better deals. Thank you for having me on the show. No, that's absolutely fine, Mike. I mean, I've actually listened to some other podcasts where you've been interviewed and I think you've got an absolutely fascinating background, so I'd certainly encourage anybody else just to search you up, have a look and listen to some of the other podcasts where you're on. However, the reason why I've got you on here is because when we first met, you came along to the Taster session. And for those of you who are listening, a Taster session, it's a free session I run every month, come along and you practice with others and you're going to experience this. But what it also does, because I love it, is I'm a fly on the wall in these negotiations, okay? So I'm listening to the way people in negotiate. And Mike, I got to say that there was a phraseology, a particular type of question that you would use in your negotiation, which I thought, Oh, I love this, I've got to try it myself. Now I don't know what the terminology is for it, but let me just explain what I heard. So for example, you were negotiating with a young lady, she made a proposal, something like, you know, I'll pay 500, the price is 552 pounds per ton. And then you said something back. What did you say back at that moment? So throughout the process, I'm always trying to get on the other side sheet of paper, okay, which is different than empathy. Empathy is more about, it's closer to sympathy related, you know, gee, why are they here? Why are they buying? I had they had a bad day with their boss, whatever, but I'm trying to understand what is their next best alternative, their batna, if you will. And what techniques are in play and what are they telling me about my positioning? Do I have the deal or am I just being used for them to negotiate with someone else? So I'm trying to understand that and throughout the process, I felt that there was a little more there that she was just negotiating. That's her job. I never hold it against someone to try to get the best deal possible for them. My job is I considered a fiduciary responsibility to get the best deal possible for my side, while I'm having a good relationship with the other side, building a relationship and want to make sure that they get a good deal too. So in that process, the four minutes of your taster, I felt like there was a little more there. And whether there was or wasn't didn't really matter because I was going to ask the question. So the question I said was, so for, I think she was at 538, she was selling and I said, I said, so for 532, you'd walk away. And then, importantly, in my brain, the voice was yelling at me, shut up. Do not say a word, silence. But I, well, silence is, you know, that's, that's polite. I was, I was there just shut up. Let her reveal some information. So she could have said, yeah, Mike, 538, it's my bottom line. You could have said, Mike, I'm not walking away, but 532 is pushing me away, okay, which would have revealed some information. But she didn't say that. She said, and it was a long pause to me was an eternity. She said, let me summarize what I heard, and in that moment, I said, I've got it. She didn't say no. Yeah, yeah, and you've heard me on my training courses talk about rejection. If you don't reject it and you ask a question or you do something else, it suggests it could be acceptable. So the way, so there's a couple of things here. It was, obviously you've been driving a bargain, you've been moving the positions and you get down to a position where the other party is pretty much saying, right, this is it, this is it. And then you literally have this kind, it's a closed question because they could say yes or they could say no, so it is a closed question, but it's the type of closed questions that you've already mapped out, you use it regularly when you start to get to the end points. I wouldn't say I use it regularly. It's not a, in my view, a negotiator needs to be like a carpenter. There's a wall of tools and they should be, you can't be great at all the tools, but you should be competent and know how to use all the tools and techniques and decide when to use them. If all you have is a hammer and you're the best hammer in the world, that will be a very funny looking house. Because everything's a nail. Because everything's a nail. So it's a technique that I felt was appropriate in that moment. It was not a part of my plan going in, by the way, to do that. No, no, but this is exactly the point, isn't it? In negotiation, you need to have a repertoire of different techniques and skills that you use, depending on how the negotiation goes for it. This is the whole point of negotiation practice. You try all of these things because you might get to use them. Not because you will use them, but you might get to do that, but you need to be good at using them when you have to use them. This is a key thing. Now, like I said, I heard you use this phraseology and even when you just did it now, you even changed your voice, you literally changed your voice when you did it as well. But if people were to practice this, is it a name or would you coin a phrase to that particular type of wording? You could phrase it something like, would you walk away? You know, as a term for it, I haven't trademarked it. I can't say that I've heard other trainers talk about it. It could be just a unicorn that's out there, but yeah, so you'd walk away from. Something like that would be my phraseology for what it is. I would state it's a closed walk away. It's like a closed walk away question. It's a particular, because to be honest, a lot of negotiations is questions. We pick out these different types of questions, but I liked this particular way that you used this type of question at that moment. So much so that, listen, it was years ago, and I'm still remembering it now, and I still look for opportunities myself to try it out. Tell me something, I didn't plan, and I didn't, in the moment when I was talking to myself in my head, I didn't say, now change your tone, Mike, I call myself Michael in my head, that's all different, that's a trip to the psychiatrist's couch. Tell me what you heard on the tone change and how you felt about what you heard, because I think those are two different things, there's what you heard, and there's how you felt. Tell me about that. Oh, that's cool, because I'd have to go back and just listen to it, but it was basically like a subtle question with a tone that is suggesting that, I don't know, you'd be mad to let this go just for a small amount. I liked it. Oh, now that does piggyback off of lots of negotiations I've been involved with over the years. It doesn't happen in everyone, but this happens primarily a sales person. Yeah, please. No, I was about to say, because there's a few things going on here, okay? So you've got to break it down. So what you did is close question, you didn't make a huge jump, you're nibbling, you're just trying to get a little bit more in it, and you also put that silence, you put that pause, you kind of like, just stay quiet, let them ponder it and consider it, because this is the important thing about all negotiations, it's not just one thing, it's a combination. It's like the ingredients for a cake, yeah, and you've got to know how to put them together in the right order, the right time to make it bake. So I think negotiations become this complex topic, because people are looking at all the moving parts at once. If you break it down, there's some very simple, not always easy, things that are going on. Don't get distracted by everything. Now you still have to paint a mosaic at the end of it, and to summarize a negotiation, what happened? But each little technique is very simple, not always easy, in its application and what is happening in the moment, the micro moment, I think you've described the mask. Yeah, I term it the micro moment, and it literally can be a word, a pause, it can be any one of these, but it's literally the micro moments that have the impact that we can practice. So the micro moment that this stemmed from originally was, I've seen salespeople do this regularly, mostly on the sales side. They will say to the buyer, like until you've been a buyer, I can't believe you're going to lose this deal over something so small, and maybe it's like an introduction to somebody else at the company or a sister division or take a phone call for me or something like that. To which I said in the moment, as a young buyer, I was more assertive when I was younger, it was less collaborative. I would say, no, I can't believe you're going to lose this deal over something so small. It was almost a defense mechanism, you know, when they were daring me, how dare you lose this deal, I was like me, no, how dare you lose this deal? So it was combative, almost, in its initial application when I said it. And then as I matured, sophisticated, did more negotiations, I learned we don't have to be combative to be assertive, getting to the upside. But even in your questioning, it is a dare. I mean, you're literally daring them to say, no, it's just beautiful, honestly, honestly, Mike, I mean, like I said, there were so many elements to it, and yet it is just one of those moments in a negotiation. Right, listen, I'm taking up the 10 minutes that we want to sort of do this on. So what I would suggest is that for those people who are listening, all right, I would take on board what Mike is saying here, which is, first of all, it's all about these moments, and it's knowing the right skill and the right technique and the right tactic to use at the right time. And this particular one is I would guess a type of closed question, a bit of a daring type, you know, a dare to say no, but don't forget, you need to practice it because there are other elements that come to play. There's no point in saying, you know, what do you say, you know, so for 538, you would walk away and going, so for 200, you'd walk away, which is obviously too extreme. So again, there's all these little subtle things you've got to go into it. And it wasn't a round number. No, odd number, again, odd numbers, odd numbers, tonerality, timing, pulls, tell the audience something about your training sessions, the tasters that you do, and then the ongoing clubs. Yeah, very quickly. I'll give you a 60s. It's a very safe learning environment. There's going to be people there who love negotiating, and if you love negotiating like I do go there and you'll get to enjoy it and try stuff with new people from all around the world. And if you, if you have a fear of negotiating, if you're reluctant to do it and it sounds scary, Phil runs a safe learning environment. He doesn't call people out for doing poorly and make fun of them. None of that happens. If you, if you do poorly, you just, you just keep your mouth shut and you know you did poorly, but you can learn something. I think we learn more from our failures than our successes. So, so thank you for providing that safe learning environment for the negotiators of the world out there, Phil. No, thank you very much for actually staying in fact, I'm still failing after 30 years and I love it. So, yeah, we can all do right. So, listen, everybody, what we'll do is obviously listen to the podcast. There is a negotiation card now that's available. Don't know what the name of it is because this is, this is going to be done. But this one is a tribute to Mike, you know, Mike Inman, all right, to like I said, Mike Inman, plenty of experience, negotiation trainer, search him out. And other than that, I think we should say goodbye and best for everybody else. So, yeah, okay, all the best. Keep practicing. Keep practicing. Come to a taster. Find yourself a club. Take care. Bye bye. If you liked what you heard today, check out the negotiation clubs.com, where you can find professional development courses, join negotiation club communities, purchase negotiation practice cards, get a private consultation, and more. Until next time, thanks for joining us and happy negotiating. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] (gentle music)
