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 podcast, we're talking to special guest Tobias about how a chicken restaurant taught him the importance of understanding your negotiating partner's interests, the impact humor can have on a negotiation, and how to ask good questions. Without further ado, here's Philip and Tobias. Welcome to the Negotiation Club. Now this is our podcast opportunity, and this is really what I wanted to speak to anybody and anybody. Who might have some stories around negotiations, the skills, the tactics, and maybe some of the anecdotes of things that have happened in the past. And today I'm actually meeting for the very first time Tobias. So here we have Tobias. Now Tobias, I came across you literally on LinkedIn when you did a post about a negotiation. However, saying that, I think we've also crossed paths last year, didn't we? Yes, during a negotiation training that you ran. Yes, for Durham University, wasn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, okay, and you were on that one. Yes, I was. It was quite fun. I tell you what, I've got to ask you, I've got to say to you, how did you find that? It was memorable, I suppose? It was. It was quite a bit because of the amount of negotiations that were, I think, in terms of the short practices. That was quite good in terms of hosting multiple times. Yes, because I really focus on the practice side of things. So we had 90 minutes with you guys, and you would have done five or six actual negotiations all the way through. Every one of you would have done that as well. Yeah. And I would like to think, although I'm not going to take this on board, but when you wrote your post, just describe the negotiation that you did for the meal and what happened. What was going through your mind? So just explain the background to everybody and actually what did you do? Yeah, so we were just coming into Newcastle, which is a town in Northern England after a 20-mile hike. And it just started raining. So we were looking for somewhere to take shelter as cheaply as possible. While we waited for the train. It always rains up in Newcastle, doesn't it? It's only raining up to me. Yeah. Luckily, we dodged it. So I think we'll go to a cafe, buy some teas. It'll be inner city prices, so we're expecting three to four pounds for a cup of tea or a coffee each, because there's three of us. And then as we were walking towards the station, where we knew there was a cafe, we passed this sort of hot, so spicy chicken shop. And I was first outside saying, "Hey, we've got a deal. But if you buy a drink, then you get the hot wings for free." And we thought, "Wow, let's investigate this server." So we asked more about what the deer was, and if it was any drink. The person at the door said, "Yes." Then it turns out when we went in that it was only foul collic drinks. Now, the critical problem here is that none of us have ID, so none of us can get alcoholic drinks to get this deal. And this is £8.50 for a meal of chicken wings that we would be getting free with this deal, versus without it. So we thought, "Well, this is quite worth having a shot at." So went in and asked, "Well, does it really have to be alcoholic?" And they said, "Well, one of you can buy an alcoholic drink, and we'll give you a free of your offer." We thought, "Wow, that's already a good deal, because that's already a good deal for expensive drinks." And then we said, "Okay, well, why have to be alcoholic?" And they said, "Well, alcohol, well, eventually they said." Well, the issue said was, "That's just the deal, which you should never accept as a bad sir, because there's always a reason." So they only went on to say that it was because alcohol drinks were where they got their margin. So I was thinking, "Well, if the problem is just that they want one of the three of us to pay an extra £1.50 or something on one of our drinks, and then we all get £8.50 each worth of free chicken wigs, they essentially will pay £50 each for £8.50 of chicken wigs." In terms of on top of a normal soft drink. So I essentially said then, "Well, why don't I just pay the price of an alcoholic drink and just get a soft drink for that price?" And then surely the marginal map would be even higher than with an alcoholic drink. So he went back to the manager to confirm this. They had been back forth to manager actually a couple of times when we were clarifying things by this point. So I'm abridging it slightly. And he came back and the manager laughed. He came back and said, "Yeah, the manager loves how cheeky you've been. We'll just give it to you, through offer to you for just soft drinks, you don't have to pay extra at all." So I was very happy with that result. So in terms of what was it was, I did £8, signed £8.50 for £32.30. I can't remember the exact numbers off my head. But about, yeah, over £30 for about £8. You see what I love about that is obviously there is value that you got from that. From the fact that what's on the menus and everything else. But what I also like, I like the different skills that you used in that negotiation. I mean, when you did it with me, you had four minutes, practice negotiations. So much happens. But even here, you've asked a lot of open questions, closed questions. You persevered. You didn't take no for an answer. You challenged. When you got the information about the margin, it provided more problem solving opportunities. The way that they had a segregation of authority between the guy at the front and the manager who's making the decisions. So they had that separation in there. And again, the use of humour, keeping it warm. People like to negotiate and make deals with people they like. And if somebody's smiling and laughing, you'll be amazed at what you can achieve. I just think, I don't know whether that was 15 minutes, 20 minutes. It probably wasn't that long, but the amount of stuff you just did there was just brilliant. Yeah. It was probably about the length of one of your practice negotiations. Probably about five minutes. That's all done. Five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And there would be no preparation going into it. I'd personal, yeah. Just using your skill sets. And also, if you think about it, people talk about situations and everything else. I think what they had thought about this. You've just done a 20 mile hike. You're pretty desperate for a drink. No? So, you know, whether, again, I wasn't there. So I don't know. But whether you were kind of hiding that desperation of, actually, we really want a drink. Actually, I think this situation was really useful to use. I think you talked about how important sort of humour is and people make it just what they like. And I think that was a really, I thought it was quite important to bring that up. The absurdity aspect. Because I thought, you know, if I can say that, deliver that while in a laugh, then I've lightened this whole conversation and that seemed to work. And the segregation of authority was good for that as well. Because I'm not dealing with the decision maker. I'm dealing with someone at the front whose job, essentially, is to have a nice time making people happy, right? And they seem to be enjoying that as well. So, you know, you have a good conversation with them. And they go back wanting to give you the deal. And then you've got them convincing their value to 40. Yeah. I mean, they're doing the selling for you. I mean, you've created the logic argument, you know, with the margins and the alcoholic drink and actually, wouldn't you like to have a bigger margin for a soft drink, you know? And you provide, in a way, you're actually providing a solution to the front end staff to go away and have a conversation with them. And I will say at the end of the day, if you keep it humorous, you know, a group of students coming in. Yeah. And I'm not being funny. Everybody knows a student needs a bargain because they haven't got the money. So you've already got some aspects on your side. Well, there's a conditioning aspect there. Oh, it's students. You know, which obviously works for you on that kind of, like, I'm a charity. Give me some, give me some basic favors here. But at the same time, I can't afford an alcoholic drink, or I can't get an alcoholic drink. You know, I'm not going to get the thing for that as well. I love it. I absolutely love it. I saw your post on LinkedIn and I thought, that's great. You know, but a lot of people think about negotiations as being these really big things, you know, and all the other elements that go into it. But I promise you, you've used the same skills as corporate directors use in those big negotiations. And if you can practice getting those cheap drinks and those cheap chicken wings for the next year, you know, you're going to be in a great position when you leave the university, all right? Well, I think that's also what made it worth it. Not just the money saved on the bill itself, but you know, taking an opportunity to practice with something real, some real stakes. Yeah, and I think that's where, that's where you learn something when there's an element of the skin in the game, you know, and that kind of monetary value, you know, you're talking about a few pounds. It's not the end of the world, you know, but where you don't want to be necessarily practicing this and trying human, all these other things is when there's tens of thousands of pounds, you know, or repetitions on the line. But you know what, you know, a lot of people say, go to markets and practice in markets, yeah, go in, you know, worst, the worst thing can happen is they say no when you walk off, you know, it's not the end of the world, but, you know, or in this case, you walk 20 miles and you still don't get a drink, so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So out of that example, out of that negotiation you did, if you were to give some advice on maybe some little techniques or something that you felt really worded there, what would be the one or two of those that you thought, okay, this is great, this really worked well for us? Well, we talked about keeping it light, sort of the humor aspect, if you can inject your interest situation, even if it's very corporate, I think, you know, if you can take a couple of minutes at the start just to try and, you know, build a relationship, that's extremely helpful, even if you're on a tight budget five minutes in the practice, I think that generally work wonders. So that's definitely one of the two. And the second one is just listen carefully to what they're saying, you know, how they said enough, can you get them to say more, but also how can you, not just how can you use what they said, but how can you satisfy what they said? Yeah, if you want, if you're actually going in there thinking, how can I solve their problems, that is going to show, and they're going to like that. Yeah. A question I didn't ask, which probably should have done at the beginning as well is obviously the scenario itself. So what type of day, what time of day was this and were they busy at the time? They weren't busy, which, and it was quite late in the day. So I assumed when I heard the offer, so actually, when we said no practice, no preparation, I did think, you know, when you're walking in there, you are sort of running through, okay, what's my bad though, why are they choosing to sell off this ticket, you know, how desperate are they, et cetera. So even when it's a situation where you say you've got no type of pair, or, oh, I didn't do any preparation, it was just off the cuff, you are still spending, maybe you've got 30 seconds or so to just run through, what's my bad note, what can I guess is what situation they're there in, just trying to get an outline of what your options are? I love it, yeah. I think that's really important when you're walking in, and it's not just thinking about what you want, it's what they want, and when you can really put yourself into their shoes, and just think, if I was working here and, you know, it's this and that and others, what else is going on. I mean, I'll give you an example, I was in Costco a couple of years ago, and they tend to sell off things during the year, and they had this garden desk, which I think was like 300 pound or something, so it was like 300 pound being sold off, and he looked lovely, and then went back in, and it'd been discounted, it's like 250, I think it was down to 250. Then he went down to, I think it was like 200, and then he went down to like 187, so it was almost half the one, and now when you see a 7 in the numbers at Costco, that basically means it's been reduced to about as far as they're prepared to go on the system. So the wife was like, I quite like this, and I'm thinking, well, it's still quite, it's a lot of money for this, it's a big piece of kit, okay. So I was looking at the one on the show, anyway, when I was looking at it, there was a gentleman that was looking at it as well, and he was like, "Hmm, I said, "Oh, you're gonna do this, this, this, this, this, this, yeah, this, I said, "Okay, well, I'll leave you to it then." Anyway, nothing happened to that, but I thought, "Okay, I'll go and have a chat with a manager, so I went and actually found the manager, I said, "I'm looking at this, you know, is it ill?" And as we were walking back from the office up to the end, I said, "What, tell me what do you do with these things, you know, if you don't sell them?" I said, "No, sometimes I go into a crusher, you know, basically, it's expensive to send them back." I said, "That's not particularly environmentally friendly, is it?" "No, it's not, but we do our best, everything else, oh, fair enough, yeah." So we got to it, we had a look at it, I'm doing it hard, I think I offered him, like, 125 or something, and he accepted 145 or something like that, you know, so it came down again. So for me, the moral of the story there was have that conversation, just like you, make it personal, talk to them about their interests, their needs, because actually they needed to get rid of it, and it cost them to get rid of it as well, and they lose something on value. Funny thing was though, as I was leaving, the gentleman who was looking at the same time as me, he said, "Oh, did you get it?" I said, "Yeah, did you get a deal?" I said, "Yeah, I got a deal," and he says, "How did you get a deal?" I asked them for a deal, they wouldn't give it to me. I said, "Oh," I said, "Well, you know what, I got the negotiation club, if you want to come and practice, I'll show you how we did it." But it was just like what you were saying, if you can make it personal, if you can make it lighthearted, you know, for these types of things, it has an impact. Yeah, and I think it's also important to have a reason. I mean, if you're going in having that, if you have that discussion, you then have reasons, and in their mind, they're creating reasons to give it to you, right? But if you just go up to someone and say, "Can I have this for less?" Well, you're probably going to get a no, because why would, I mean, it's why is, yeah. Well, for starters, that's a close question, it's a yes, no answer, and they're not going to be able to give you a no, it's going to be a no, but you're absolutely right, build up a little rapport, you know, and a rapport isn't something that takes hours or days or weeks or months, a rapport you can build up in seconds, almost the way that you just treat you the person, you know, and if you instill a little humour in there. And again, before you start pitching your demands, you know, think about what you can do to help them first, you know, and if you're helping them first, then actually, you know, you're halfway there, which is great, you know, why would you not, you know, why would you throw this away and ruin the environment and everything else, it's going to cost you money? And we did read a little bit of the number, but I think that's great. Listen, Tobias, I think it's wonderful. If I'm right, you're back at the University for another year, I know. I will be part-stalled part of the negotiation society as a visiting coach, but I'll actually be taking a year out for the coming year. So I'll still be helping run the university as well, I'll start, I've started this week actually on the exec of the Negotiation Society, so I'll be doing trainings and things for that. Well, in that case, I think it's wonderful that we got in touch, okay, so hopefully I'll see you again. Listen, Tobias, as I suggested, we say goodbye to our audience on this. Any parting thoughts from you, any final thoughts? Um, in relationships, that it's worth repeating, I think, to just highlight the main point, is go relationships. Yeah, yeah. Alright then. Listen, Tobias, enjoy your out and your support back at the university, and for everybody else who is listening, okay, just remember, negotiations don't have to be big, they don't have to be difficult or tough, sometimes it's just being nice, we'll get you a lot further than you think, okay? So with that in mind, yeah, goodbye, see you all and tune in for another one in the future. If you liked what you heard today, check out thenegotiationclubs.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] (bright music)
