negotiation mastery: beware of counterfeit yes in negotiations

Hey guys, I'm here to talk to you today about the three kinds of yeses. Now as we all know there's three kinds of yeses. There's the commitment yes, the confirmation yes, and the counterfeit yes. Yes is nothing without how. Beware the counterfeit yes. Counterfeit yes is what you get when you're trying to get people to say yes. How do you know you got a counterfeit yes? Well they can't answer how. Ask them enough how questions and the counterfeit yes will go away. Once an individual was giving me yes to something and I didn't know if he wasn't telling the truth or he just hadn't thought it through. We were in Abu Dhabi, my team and I, and we were supposed to be getting a ride to a function and a guy that I suspected just didn't want us there kept telling me that we could take a cab. Well in Abu Dhabi you can't take a cab unless you know where you're going and we didn't know where we were going. We didn't have the address and so I said how are we going to take a cab? He said well I'll send you a map and I thought about that for a second and then I almost bit because I realized he didn't have a way to send me the map. So I said how are you going to send me a map? He went dead silent. Then he agreed to come and pick us up. Yes is nothing without how. You may need to ask more than one how question to get past either the counterfeit yes or the yes they're giving you when they just don't have a thought in their head.