Say NO!

What is the magic word? NO. If you want to get what you are asking for then you have to get them to say NO.

This is another tool to negotiate successfully, if you missed the Jedi Mind Trick tool then click here.

Why?

Because saying NO makes feel secure, autonomous and powerful in front of other people. As Chris Voss in his book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It mentions:

When people say “no”, they feel they’ve protected themselves. “No” is protection. “Yes” is commitment. People worry about what have I just committed to by saying yes. But when you say “no”, you don’t commit to anything. Since you just protected yourself, you have a tendency to relax. People actually become a lot more open if they feel they’ve protected themselves.

Because you want your counterpart to relax, open up and enter the negotiation by lowering his guard. You don’t want them feeling their autonomy is questioned by trying to squeeze out as many yeses as possible.

How?

If you ever watched Peanuts, the remember that NO is to the counterpart what blanket is to Linus. By getting the other person to say NO they are comforting themselves and will feel secure.

Reconfigure you mind and think in terms of NO answers such as:

Do you want this deal to fail? NO.

Would it be a bad idea if we/I...? NO.

Have you given up on this project? NO.

Is now a bad time to talk? NO.

Is it a problem if I ...? NO.

Am I being ridiculous? NO.

Does it sound crazy to you? NO.

You want them to open gently as tulips blossom in spring, you don′t want to yank the answers out of them, seduce them with this psychological tool. Appeal to their need of autonomy specially in a negotiation room where egos can feel very insecure.

It was hard for me to start thinking of questions that you could answer no, but as the book mentions we are accustomed of the YES method where we are supposed to build a tower of yeses in order to get the final yes.

Keep in mind that the key objective is to make the other person feel his autonomy in the room, run away from tactics that will make him feel otherwise because it might make the negotiation and concessions difficult.