“Knowing how to negotiate with people of authority will help you avoid the path of despair.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“How To Negotiate Much Stronger With Police And Authority Figures”
People don’t realize they are always negotiating.
It occurred in the flap of a gnat’s wing. So quick was it; one might not have recognized the flaring mood shift occurring. At that moment, the posturing began. It had already started for the person with authority – the police officer in the process of stopping a driver. Meanwhile, the driver thought it’s time to negotiate.
What had occurred? A police officer set his red lights to flash. When the driver of the car recognized those lights, he immediately had a paradigm alteration. He assessed how he might negotiate during the stop. Knowing he was the authority figure, the police officer was also scripting how he might negotiate, based on his interactions with the driver.
So, how do you react to the police when they stop you? Especially when you know, they believe they are the power figure, the ones with authority. With the police and authority figures, the answer is, it depends.
Long before the infamous AMC show, the term “mad men” was originally coined in the late 1950’s to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue.
They studied consumer behavioral psychology and were masters selling products by associating them to things customers cared about.
And they still exist. And they have some fascinating stories.
Meet Rory Sutherland.
Introducing Rory Sutherland
If you haven’t heard of Rory Sutherland yet, you have heard of his agency.
Sutherland serves as the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, the historically infamous ad agency founded by the original King of Madison Ave, David Ogilvy.
Sutherland became Internet famous a few years back after his Ted talk video went viral criticizing Europe decision to spend £6 billion to construct a high speed rail in order to increase consumer satisfaction.
Because of his knowledge of consumer behavior, he could have achieve the goal in and sixth of the cost.
Here’s the video:
Perspective is Everything
So a few years ago the UK greenlit a massive engineering project to improve the journey of the Eurostar rail line.
Why?
In order to increase commuter satisfaction, the UK decided the best way to increase the journey was to spend an enormous £6 billion to construct a high-speed rail track from London’s St. Pancras station to the coast of Kent.
This train would shorten the commute from Paris to London by a grand total of…40 minutes on an overall three and a half-hour trip.
Sutherland’s cheeky critique on the project was that the UK made a fundamental mistake (like most businesses do).
His argument was that consumer satisfaction could have been achieved much cheaper by altering consumer perception. Heres the argument:
Consumer Satisfaction. I Don’t Think That Means What You Think it Means…
The UK assumed customer satisfaction would be achieve to shorten the length of the commute and the quality of the experience was not relevant or even an option given for them to consider.
Rory suggested rather than write a £6 billion check to make the experience shorter (the proposed brand promise), the capital investment would have been better spent using a fraction of the budget to simply make the journey 10 times more enjoyable (his proposed brand promise).
Considering the budget they were consider, for a fraction of the cost (£1 billion), they could have hired male and female supermodels and pay to them serve free Chateau Petrus at $4,000 a bottle to every adult passenger on board
Effectively salvaging billions from the original budget, and in turn, passengers would have demanded the train to be slowed down, rather than save an extra 40 minutes of travel time.
There’s a War on Marketing?
Sutherland suggests that the war we face in marketing and advertising today, is that every operational role today believes that what they do is a rational science.
When human behavior economics proves we are anything but rational.
Sutherland has spent his career studying behavioral economics, a field that attempts to explain why people do what they do or more importantly why people purchase one product over another.
Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory makes the assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider real value.
For marketing to be effective, we must become as irrational as our customers perception. In a rather odd unassuming parallel, Sutherland compares this marketing mindset to military strategy. Here’s why…
What You Didn’t Know About Military Strategy
If you follow military strategy, the first thing you can’t be, is logical and efficient.
Wtf? Because that’s exactly what your enemy will expect you to do, making you susceptible to walk head-on into every trap the enemy sets for you in anticipation of your most obvious attempts to win the war.
Today’s consumers, while far from the enemy, are waiting for our much anticipated and obvious marketing tactics. They see right through them.
The strangest element which marketers face is the psychological one.
Rather than focus on rational improvements, we must make an effort to look at the far less obvious psychological innovation.
Don’t make the following mistake.
The Modern And Wrong Assumption of Consumer Behavior:
Sutherland states that the modern business assumption of the economics of a consumer purchase is as follows:
“Every purchase or exchange arrives as a standalone, individual, utility optimizing transaction between two people in a state of perfect information and trust. The conditions of which don’t exist and never happen.
The current business model sees marketing as an inefficiency, an added hard cost in the value chain because the current business framework assumes every consumer knows exactly what they want to buy and exactly what they want to pay to acquire it.”
Economics Don’t Care About Your Feelings
The economics doesn’t calibrate for human experience of emotions, feeling and instincts like trust and perspective.
The weirdness of human perception is that you can create high levels of satisfaction without high levels of expenditure if you really know what floats the customers emotional triggers.
This is Why Mirrors Are on Every Elevator
Ogilvy worked with a Midwest company that received a high level of complaints that their elevator was too slow.
So, naturally they went to Otis, (one of only 14 elevator companies in the US) who said for a few million dollars, they could replace and update the current elevator infrastructure decrease the time it took people to wait for the elevator.
Makes sense… but just before investing $2,000,000 on the project, someone said no.
Instead, they suggested, installing floor to ceiling mirrors on the walls outside the elevator. While people waited for the elevator, they participated in small acts of voyeurism and would pass the time looking at themselves in the mirror.
And that’s when they discovered something weird.
What they discovered was that people were complaining about the speed of the elevators. But what they meant was they were just getting really bored waiting for the elevator to arrive.
Once the mirrors were installed, all complaints about the elevators completely vanished. Proving again psychological insight is just, as if not more powerful, then high-cost physical advancements.
Advertisers have become masters at creating intangible or “perceived value.” But intangible value gets a bad rap in business operations because it’s much more difficult to quantify.
When Marketing Fails. Take It From GoPro
Most marketing goes wrong when we focus on solving external conflict resolutions to solutions that are really internal.
For example, GoPro didn’t reinvent the video camera.
They changed the experience we had with every camera prior to GoPro. Before GoPro, it was difficult to simultaneously capture and experience life’s greatest moments while others participated with us as we captured our adventures through our own lens in a way that was never before possible.
One of GoPro’s greatest features is its easy-to-use video editing software that users access for free.
In addition to sharing life experiences, GoPro simplified producing and distributing videos with ease.
Conclusion: Marketing is, oftentimes, seen as creating a form of “fake” value…
But the truth is, all value is perceived.
Businesses that better understand consumers and what goes into their purchase decisions have the advantage.
When addressing innovation, it is critically important to know consumer psychological behavior.
“The absence of empathy is the completion of emotional detachment.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“Body Language Five Ways To Show Empathy In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Don’t tell me you empathize with my position in this negotiation. You’ve not shown any empathy that I’ve discerned. What about the concession I gave you? Didn’t that display my understanding of your plight? No! You did that for your benefit. The compromise you made was not what I was seeking in this negotiation.
That was the exchange that occurred between two people during a negotiation. Does it sound like something you may have encountered in any of your negotiations?
Empathy is a potent tool in a negotiation. Its display, or its withholding, impacts the mind of a negotiator and the overall flow of the negotiation process. Empathy is something that negotiators seek in a negotiation, but few consider its impact on the talks.
The following insights outline how you can display empathy through your body language during a negotiation. It’s also insightful on how you can express empathy in other aspects of your life.
“If stress were deeds, some people would never complete some actions.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“How To Control Increasing Stress Better In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Depending on the stakes of negotiation, the level of stress can be high. And, unless you control it, it can become the source that destroys the negotiation. Thus, the better you contain the level of stress, yours and that of the other negotiator, the more in control you’ll be throughout the negotiation. The following is how to achieve that goal.
“Outrage and bad behavior can be what one suffers when dealing with the follies of fools. And never forget, some fools are wise.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“Bad Behavior – How To Deal With Outrage In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Do you have no shame about your bad behavior in this negotiation, was the question raised by one of the negotiators? The opposing negotiator’s response was, shame died! Its death was due to your outrage and lack of self-control in this negotiation.
When was the last time you were outraged and possibly held hostage by it in a negotiation? Were you aware of the seething anger occurring as you and your counterpart’s emotional temperature notched upward from one level to the next? Were you or your opposition’s perspective mindful that the destructive behavior caused the situation to escalate? How did you and they address it?
Bad behavior can beget worse behavior. And that’s why you must recognize the signs leading to it. Doing so will allow you the opportunity to block its efforts to derail your negotiation and other aspects of your life.
The following are observations that you can employ to gauge the pending escalations of troubles ahead. And what you can do to protect yourself from being pulled into a negotiation cesspool of despair.
“No one knows more the value of advice than the person that benefits from it.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)
“Insider Advice On How To Use ‘How’ To Win More Negotiations”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
There’s a stealthy ploy that great negotiators use in negotiations to get inside of their counterpart’s head. It can put the other negotiator at ease or put him on edge. How do they do that, you may ask? It’s by using the word ‘how’ during their discussion. Its use is so alluring that most people engaged in a negotiation don’t realize the spell that has captured them until it’s too late to adjust to it.
So, the question is, why is ‘how’ so powerful in a negotiation? What gives it power? And how might you use it to win more negotiations? The following answers those questions while outlining how and when to use ‘how.’
“To expose anything hidden, you must recognize its hiding place and possess the means to uncover it.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)
“How To Expose Hidden Body Language To Your Advantage In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
During negotiation, what body language signals do you observe to gain greater meaning into your opposition’s thoughts, words, and offers? Do you take into consideration the hidden body language signals you may be missing? Being able to provoke and then detect undisclosed body language signs can give you a considerable advantage in a negotiation. And here’s how you can uncover those signs to gain that advantage.
“Confusion can lead to confoundment, which can lead to confinement. Never be chagrinned by the perplexity of a puzzle.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)
“Babble-Talk – How To Deploy It To Win More Negotiations”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
If we do, no – scratch that – instead, well, nevermind – but maybe, nah – that probably won’t work either. If the other negotiator said something like that during your negotiations, what would you think? Would you attempt to understand her nonsensical statements? She could be engaging in babble-talk, incomplete sentences devoid of complete or complex thoughts, to pull you into her head. And that may be her intent – get you into her head while she’s really getting into yours.
Babble-talk can be disrupting in negotiations. But it can also be a stealthily used maneuver to extract concealed information. Thus, it can be used as a tool to lead, alter, and deploy the other negotiators’ will to adopt yours. Continue and discover how you can use babble-talk to enhance all of your negotiation efforts.
“An emotionally unstable negotiator hurts all parties in a negotiation.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“How To Avoid The Trap Of Emotions Versus Logic In Negotiations”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
It can be daunting and stressful when engaging in a negotiation. The task of doing so can become more exasperating when a negotiator’s emotions are uncontrollable. And that occurs when one allows their emotions to override their logic. They’re several reasons why logical good sense becomes subservient to one’s emotions. When logic finds itself in that position, logical reasoning is usually the loser, along with one’s negotiation efforts. To avert that faith from befalling you, take note of the following.
“How To Increase Your Emotional Awareness To Win More Negotiations”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
This negotiation is going nowhere, and I’m not going to continue with you! Call your superior and tell them I want to negotiate with someone else. The response was, call them yourself. And with that, bang went the emotional explosion in the negotiation. Both negotiators had lost their emotional awareness perspective. That led to the negotiators shouting at one another as the negotiation soared faster towards its demise.
When was the last time you found yourself caught by the exertions of emotional awareness in your negotiation? Were you aware of when it started, its exact source? Emotions determine the outcome of one’s negotiation efforts. That makes controlling emotions an integral part of the negotiation process. Continue and discover how you can become more masterful at maintaining emotional control in your negotiations and how doing so will increase your win rate.
