In the world of negotiation, where the stakes are high and emotions often run wild, Jim Camp, renowned as the #1 negotiating coach globally, introduces a game-changing approach that can transform your outcomes. By leveraging his battle-tested system of safe, decision-based negotiation, Camp empowers you to achieve all your objectives without unnecessary compromises or concessions.
Picture these scenarios:
- Your most valued customer abruptly demands a significant discount or threatens to take their business elsewhere.
- You’ve finally found a potential buyer for your home, but just before closing the deal, they insist on costly yard landscaping, or they walk away.
- Your child is struggling at school, and you’re faced with the challenge of dealing with a stubborn teacher who insists on “my way or the highway.”
When confronted with these and countless other negotiating dilemmas in both your professional and personal life, the common approach is to make educated guesses about how much you should concede to appease the other party. You might think, “I’ll meet them halfway, and we can resolve this issue.”
Jim Camp, however, offers a superior negotiation strategy that starts with the word: “NO.”
Saying “no” isn’t about being unyielding or uncooperative. Instead, it serves as a powerful disruptor, a means to clear the air and zero in on the true issues at hand. Camp’s system is tried, tested, and astonishingly effective. It eradicates unfounded assumptions, unnecessary trade-offs, and speculative concessions.
Based on my review of Camp’s two seminal works, here’s what’s been revealed to me:
Neediness breeds weakness.
How often has someone on your team offered a prospect a discount or concession to “just close the deal” so that they can “build the relationship”? That’s because most traditional negotiations start from a position of neediness. The attempt to create consensus and get to a “yes” creates the “need” to come to a deal that compromises each one’s value. Camp describes how to break free from the neediness mindset, replacing emotional responses like “I must retain this customer” or “I must sell this house right now” with a focus on what can be controlled—yourself. The source of this “neediness” is the desire to create “win-win” outcomes from the traditional mindset purported by the “common” negotiation gurus from the Harvard School and “Getting to Yes” school of thought.
When you’re no longer needy in your negotiation, you learn to live with being unok or uncomfortable in your current situation. When you’re NOT ok, then this feeling will drive you towards growth or a desire to grow. In the area of negotiation, it means that you are not in the “neediness” zone and keeps you focused on how to best serve your interests.
Gain strength from your Mission and Purpose:
Camp requires you to objectively look at your “Mission and Purpose” for your overall business as well as for each individual negotiation you’re engaged with. Because when you have a clear Mission and Purpose (M&P), then it’s easy for you to understand the borders of what you will and won’t accept in your negotiations. Because, as Camp says, each negotiation is just a series of decisions that you’re prepared to make, so you need to know “why” you’re making these decisions.
Your M&P provides the foundation for your decisions in your negotiation. In fact, instead of aiming for a predetermined outcome, focus on controlling the decision points throughout the negotiation process. This means understanding your alternatives and setting clear boundaries for yourself.
Start with a Blank Slate
One of the biggest impediments to any negotiation are the pre-conceived notions or assumptions that you have about the other party. Because you think you know their needs, desires and wants you then make decisions about your offering and how to negotiate with the other party.
You then get wrapped up in a whirl of emotions during the negotiation process because during the negotiation your counterparty isn’t acting as they “normally” would, but successful negotiators can manage their own emotions and remain objective. Avoid getting caught up in the heat of the moment and make decisions based on rational thinking.
Camp calls this the “Blank Slate” mindset.
So when you start with a Blank Slate, you have no expectations or assumptions as it relates to your counterparty. You’re better able to discover their real needs and understand, from their viewpoint, you might be able to help them achieve their desired outcomes.
Checklists and Journals are the key
Camp suggests like all good professionals you should be using Checklists and Journals before, during and after your negotiation. When you use these tools you gain insight as to what you planned and the actual outcomes. Specifically, here’s some ideas how to use these tools:
Checklists:
- Pre-negotiation planning: Creating a checklist can help you identify key negotiation points, research essential information, and prepare effective responses to potential counterarguments.
- During negotiation: Using a checklist can ensure you cover all important points during the negotiation and avoid forgetting crucial details.
- Post-negotiation evaluation: A checklist can help you review the negotiation process, assess your performance, and identify areas for improvement in future negotiations.
Journals:
- Reflecting on negotiations: Regularly journaling about your negotiation experiences allows you to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, identify patterns, and develop strategies for future negotiations.
- Tracking progress: Keeping a negotiation journal can help you track your progress over time, identify areas where you’ve improved, and set goals for continued development.
- Documenting negotiations: A journal can serve as a record of key negotiation points, agreements made, and any unresolved issues.
I’m not a big “journal” guy, but I do believe that you should review and analyze what took place each day, especially during a negotiation. The Camp method is more fluid on the usage of these tools but basically:
- Create checklists that are tailored to your specific negotiation situation and style.- so this is actually you and not some canned template
- Use checklists proactively, not just as a post-mortem tool.- if you’re doing this in pre-planning then you’re being proactive, if not, then you’re like being reactive
- Write journal entries regularly, even if it’s just for a few minutes.- I find that I need to schedule the time to write, otherwise it won’t happen
- Be honest and reflective in your journal entries. – this is sometimes hard, especially things aren’t going well.
- Use your journal to identify patterns and develop strategies. – another great idea is to have someone else review your journal and see if they recognize any patterns..
Your Budget is not what you think it is:
There are really 4 components of any endeavour or negotiation: Time, Energy, Money, Emotion.
These are the real resources that you need to plan for in any negotiation and you should budget each accordingly. Many unskilled negotiators view money as the only item that can be measured and budgeted as part of their process. But for most busy executives or operators the time and energy budget is of highest concern because there are only 24 hours in a day and so many of them can be allocated to any such endeavour.
So when you’re building the real “budget” for any negotiation or offering it’s imperative you take all four of these items into account. Because when building the budget right, your counterparty will actually feel the pain of their problem and they’ll want to resolve this pain as quickly as possible.
The Agenda Is Everything
When you’re engaging in a negotiation, setting expectations with your counterparty is one of the primary methods of gaining emotional control. And one of the key tools to gain this control is to negotiate the agenda for each interaction. Agendas don’t need to be fancy and have a hundred points on them, they can be clear and simple, but both parties much understand what each agenda item means, in advance, of the meeting or interaction.
Agendas also allow each party to remove the “baggage” found from previous interactions because it gets put on the agenda and dealt with or it’s removed. Agendas also help you negotiate the next steps of any further interactions and creates an understanding of what “done” looks like to both parties.
In any negotiation, the two worst words you can hear are “yes” and “maybe.”
Through Camp’s system, you’ll realize that “no” is not the conclusion of a negotiation; it’s merely the beginning. By harnessing the power of “no,” you can attain your every desire while fostering strong relationships with those you negotiate with.
Camp’s approach is a negotiation game-changer that promises to revolutionize your approach to conflict resolution and daily interactions with anyone.
Everyone should read these books over and over again.