Unlock a Stalemate with the Power of "Yes, If..."

“This sucks. We should walk,” I said.

It was a tense moment. I had been negotiating a deal, a partnership, for a couple of weeks. If it worked, it would be lucrative for both of our companies. The lead guy on the other side, I’ll call him Arnaud, and I had gone back and forth a number of times and I thought we were pretty close to agreement on the economic terms. My latest offer had been just a hair below what he wanted. Today,  he’d come back to me with a curve ball.

“I ran the terms by my boss,” Arnaud said. “We need double, or we don’t have a deal.”

“Double? That’s even more than you asked for at the beginning!” I yelped. Yes, I yelped. I’m not proud of it, but I was shocked. This new demand was 50% higher than his opening proposal had been when we had begun the negotiation some two weeks earlier. Since then, he’d already agreed to take less. This was a huge step backwards.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not negotiable,” he said. 

“Then, I don’t think we have a deal,” I replied. I said it calmly (I think), but I was furious. 

Now, I was walking my boss through the terms. “The margin is too thin for us if we double his share,” I said. “Plus, he’s a [Insert colorful and salty descriptor for a guy who you can’t trust here.]” I repeated: “I say we walk.”

My boss frowned at me. “He’s not a [that thing that I called him],” he said. “He’s the delivery boy.”

“What?” I asked.

“You thought you were dealing with the decision maker. Turns out you aren’t. You’re talking to the delivery boy.”

I pointed out that Arnaud had a fancy title and a couple of fancy degrees. I added that he was responsible for corporate development in a pretty large organization. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized that this was not helping.

“He’s the delivery boy,” my boss repeated. “Rule one in a negotiation is to know who the decision maker is. This guy is just the mouthpiece. You never negotiate with a mouthpiece. He’s not empowered to do a deal. His job is to wear you down.”

“Okay, I said. “He’s just the mouthpiece. We still can’t accept the deal, and he said, ‘Take it or leave it’.”

My boss frowned again. His phone was ringing, and I could see he was getting impatient. “It’s not ‘no,’” he said. “It’s ‘yes, if,’” And with that he turned away from me and answered the phone. Conversation over. 

Yes, if...

What the hell does that mean, I wondered. I mulled it over and eventually something clicked. In many negotiations, the answer to a gambit by the other side is not to say ‘no,’ but rather to come up with a way to say yes. The secret to getting deals done is often ‘yes, if…’

A couple of hours later, I had a counter offer ready. We could propose two tiers. In the first tier, we would get 100% of the revenue to cover our costs and de-risk the deal. In the second tier, the percentage was what they had requested. On a blended basis, we would be better off with this solution unless the deal turned out to be a huge success. Under the circumstances, it seemed like a risk worth taking. I presented it to my boss.

“Fine,” he said. I turned to leave the room.

“And don’t talk to that [the thing I'd called the guy that my boss had earlier said was inaccurate]! Use your head. Talk to the decision maker.” 

So I did. I called up Arnaud and told him I had a proposal. I added that I wanted to review it with him and his boss together. He balked a little, but I was ready for that. I told him that it was better for both of us to have his boss at the metaphorical table so we’d both know whether or not we really had a deal. (It was clear that Arnaud recognized that his boss’s definition of success was a moving target. That left him in a jam. He really had no idea what he could say ‘yes’ to. With his boss on the phone with us, we both got certainty.) 

Long story short: we did the deal.

Here’s another example of “yes, if…” in action. A friend was in discussions to become the CEO of an interesting business. He liked the role, but the compensation was tricky. There was good upside if things went great, but the guaranteed compensation was too low. At the same time, he had another offer with better guaranteed compensation. Unfortunately, the other offer was for a role that was also dead boring. He wasn’t going to learn a thing if he went with the second job. A final, unfortunate point: the first company was pretty small. They really couldn’t afford to match the other offer. 

As we talked it out, we realized he could say yes to the first company if they would accept his working only four days a week. He had some other projects (which he would otherwise have had to give up), and these would fill the fifth day of the week. He proposed it, and they accepted. On balance, the company got a CEO it could not otherwise afford, and my friend got to work on stuff that he likes.

Yes, if.

Boiling it down

Too often, we have a binary view of a negotiation. We tend to either say yes or no. In life, there are, of course, decisions that are truly binary, usually for moral or ethical reasons. You’re not going to shoot your neighbor no matter how attractive the terms are. You’re nodding in agreement on that one, right? 

In business, however, most decisions are not like this. Instead of saying no, think about what would enable you to say yes. I’ve used this technique in deals large and small, in business and in my personal life. When I bought my current home, the seller and I closed the final gap by including a number of home furnishings (plus an espresso machine and a puppy, but that’s a story for another time). 

Oh, and don't forget the 'delivery boy' point. Often a person who looks (and acts) like the decision maker is not really the person with whom you're negotiating. Probe a bit. Be sure.

Okay, that’s it for this one. Have you used ‘yes, if…’ to find a way to accept a job, close a sale or do a deal? Alternatively, got a story about when this did not work?

Either way, I’d love to hear about it.

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Until next time…