Negotiations Are About Time
- Dan Greenberg
- May 9, 2024
- 5 min read
There are a few excellent negotiation books out there. There is “Negotiation Genius” by Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman, which focuses on the preparation and calculations that go into a negotiation. There is “Getting to Yes”, by Roger Fisher and William Ury which focuses on the psychology of negotiations, and there is “Start with No” by Jim Camp, which is not only one of the best negotiation books out there, but also one of the best sales books out there, and it focuses on the conversational groundwork needed to set boundaries and have productive conversations with partners and clients.
I highly recommend all three of the books above but I want to spend a bit of time in this article focusing on a concept, and a less talked-about book written by Herb Cohen, called “You Can Negotiate Anything”. I think we can learn a lot from this book due to its simplicity, and it’s focus on recognizable and controllable circumstances and actions. I want to take the liberty of adding a bit of interpretation to the book, but I’ll start with a quote from author and former FBI hostage and SWAT negotiator Chris Voss, “Negotiations are always over time. That is the frame to think about it through. Money is {just} the label.”
Let’s be clear and say that negotiating is not selling, and much of selling is not negotiating, but the principles used to understand the psychology of those sitting across the table from us in a negotiation go a long way to informing our sales approach. When we step back and understand what Chris Voss is teaching us, we can see that what he is really saying is that the party across the table from us has a deadline. If they didn’t have a deadline, they wouldn’t be taking their valuable time to talk to us about the thing that we are trying to sell them. Their deadline may be nebulus, it may be far off in the future, and it may lack urgency, but nonetheless, it exists. This is incredibly important, because if our deadline is perceptibly more urgent and noticeable than theirs, they will always win the negotiation, and they will also, always have the upper hand when it comes to power dynamics.
Herb Cohen’s book is structured around three key ideas in a negotiation. They are; time, information, and power. However, if we take a look above at what we just talked about, we realize that they are all one in the same. Sure, information and power take on a few added elements beyond their relationship with time, but the crux of the information dynamics has to do with which side knows more about what the other side really needs, and more importantly, how quickly they need it. Meanwhile the crux of the power dynamics have to do with who is more constrained by urgency, and therefore who needs a deal sooner.
Time: Sellers must be prepared to be more patient than their buyers. Of course it is important to accentuate urgency for the buyer, based on their understanding and needs, but urgency cannot be artificially created. Deals always get done close to deadlines, according to Cohen. This is because human nature causes us to delay decisions, hoping for more information, until we are forced to make them. This means that sometimes, regardless of efforts to surface urgency, a seller’s patience and lack of neediness will end up winning the day. It will signal to the buyer that their urgency is actually lower than the buyer’s urgency, and this can help make a deal a reality because it shifts the power dynamics. Sellers must be willing to voluntarily push the deal deadline and remove time pressure. This means having contingency plans with other deals so that quota does not suffer. As sellers, we need to have a healthy pipeline to rely on when we are forced to exercise patience, and we also need to show perceptiveness and understand the difference between a power dynamics struggle and an uninterested buyer, so that we know when to focus on urgency or time-pressure releases, and when to move on.
Information: Cohen talks at length about helping to form opinions rather than trying to give others information once their opinion is already formed. Of course, this makes logical sense, but oftentimes we leave things like price negotiations, and hard conversations until the end, because we are afraid of the confrontation that may be caused by them. If a deal has a fatal flaw, it is better to learn about that flaw early on instead of wasting time. But more importantly, if a deal does not have a fatal flaw, it is also good to get as many issues on the table as possible early on so that your conversation with your buyer is about the total value equation rather than just pieces of it. This is important for connecting price to value rather than just racing to the bottom against your competitors. It is also important because as you curate the information that you share and highlight, you can start to learn about your clients needs and their urgency around those needs, while at the same time signaling your lack of urgency. I’m not advocating price negotiations early in sales processes, but I am advocating price conversations that allow your buyer to calculate value. That way price negotiations later on will have much less ground to cover.
Power: A seller’s main job, from the perspective of control over power dynamics, is to remain calm, and to never betray a sense of neediness to the client. The knowledge that a seller has about the industry, the product, and the client’s needs and desired outcomes serve to convey confidence and control. A seller’s composure and confidence in their current pipeline, and ability to generate more pipeline convey a lack of need. This attitude and approach tell the client that your deadline is farther out than theirs, which serves the purpose of keeping you in the driver seat and highlighting the importance of the client’s deadline.
It’s all about time: Herb Cohen’s framework for thinking about a negotiation is very helpful, but it becomes even more so when we understand that everything discussed eventually ties back to time in the form of patience, and lack of need. Information about time, the power of asymmetric urgency, and time itself can be used to the sellers advantage all throughout the sales cycle, so long as dynamics of the interactions do not slide backwards into the familiar and indefensible posture where sellers need buyer money to meet their quota. This frame is disastrous for sellers because it gives up information about urgency, it gives up power, and it allows the buyer to be in control of time, and therefore, the deal.
Although the negotiation, as we commonly understand it, is only a small portion of the sales process, the principles that we learn from negotiation, and the skills that we sharpen when thinking about negotiation, can be used throughout the sales process. These skills help us position the buyer, and the conversation, within a frame that is advantageous for getting a deal done.
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