Negotiation Mastery: mastering the power of 'that's right' in negotiations

Summarize the situation. Summarize the situation from the other person's point of view. If you're summarizing and you've done it right, the other side is gonna say that's right. You gotta get them to say that's right. Not you're right. They say you're right when you've been pitching and they want you to shut up. You're right is secret code for please stop talking. We sort of joke around in my company, we say you're right is code for F-U. The two millimeter shift is describing to them and this is what Mike was talking about earlier. Discover what's important to them. How do you know when you've discovered it? When they say that's right. Not you're right. They say you're right when you're pitching. They say that's right when you reiterate it back to them what the world looks like to them. There's stuff here that you will never know unless they tell you. And they will only tell you after they've said that's right and they will then correct you and let you know what matters to them which is a lot quicker way than laying out a 10 point value proposition when only three of those 10 matter. Because all the time that you spend on the seven of the 10 that don't matter are wasted time. It is what everybody else is doing to them. Does it work on sociopaths? This is an American that was kidnapped in the Philippines and this is a sociopath that's got him and this is a raping, killing, murdering, head chopping terrorist straight out of the movies. And this is the negotiator that I'm coaching. Now our sociopath is calling for $10 million of war damages for 500 years of oppression from the Spanish to the Japanese to the Americans. It's a smart move because it makes $10 million sound like not that much money. Phishing harm, phishing rights violation, economic harm, everything that's happened over the last 500 years. Now I realize right now you're tuning this out because you've never been in a discussion when someone was mad at you and they were bringing up things from the past that didn't have anything to do with you, did you? People don't do that. That's just crazy, only terrorists do that. So we get into this and we go back and forth and finally we got to hit the reset button. This is what we refer to as the birth of the that's right moment. Because I coach my guy to say today all we're going to do is get the sociopath to say that's right. And you're going to summarize everything that he said and especially the bad stuff about us. That's where you're going to have trouble because you only want to talk about the good stuff about you but from their perspective, the bad stuff about us and lay it on thick because in this stuff, this tactical application of empathy, this tactical application of FBI empathy, if you're not laying it on thick, you're not laying it on thick enough. So we get on the phone with this guy. I'm coaching the negotiator and I coached all over the world. That's what I did, I coached negotiations. And he lays, my guy lays it all out. 500 years of oppression. Spanish to the Japanese to the Americans. Atrocities under Blackjack Pershing in the 1900s. Violation of the fishing rights. Economic harm, injustices, unfair. You're not Filipinos anyway, you're Moros. And you're being oppressed today by a puppet government in the Philippines that's held up by the last colonial power which is the Americans. And he goes on and on and on. And finally he gets done, there's a moment of silence and the sociopath on the other end of the line says, that's right. And in that moment we went from $10 million to zero. The ransom was never mentioned again through the duration of the kidnapping. It went away, it was just gone. Kidnapping took a couple more twists and turns. Couple months later the American walks away. Jeff Shilling the American just walks away. Local farmer sees him walking down a dirt road, sees, knows he's gotta be Jeffrey Shilling because there ain't that many Black Americans walking around the south of the Philippines. Says, you must be Jeffrey Shilling. Says, I am. They fly him back to Manila. The military, they hold a big press conference. President of the Philippines on one side, Secretary of Defense on the other side. Secretary of Defense says, in a daring rescue operation we have rescued the American Jeffrey Shilling. We shot all these terrorists and they were mortally wounded. They went off into the brush and died. That's why we don't have any bodies to show you. But it was a daring rescue operation. Daring operation. They gave him a ride. And back in the Philippines about three weeks afterwards another kidnapping has gotten kicked off and I connect up with my guy and he says, you're not gonna believe who called me on the phone. I don't know. The terrorist, the sociopath. He still knows my guy by his undercover name, he's got his undercover number. What'd he say? Have you been promoted yet? I don't know what it was he said to me on the phone. I was gonna kill the American. You're really good, they should promote you. He hangs up. What's he saying in that moment? I felt respected by you. I'd deal with you again. That's what he was saying. He was telling them that if they had to deal with each other again he felt respected enough that he would be willing to deal with them as a peer, peer-to-peer base. Understand the terrorist got nothing. Nothing. His organization ended up in a shambles as a result of this. And he was still willing to deal with the guy that got the Dutch right out of him. Everybody you deal with, everybody you deal with regardless of the outcome should feel that way when they get done interacting with you.