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    Never Lose Again: Become a Top Negotiator by Asking the Right Questions
    Never Lose Again: Become a Top Negotiator by Asking the Right Questions
    Never Lose Again: Become a Top Negotiator by Asking the Right Questions
    Ebook307 pages4 hours

    Never Lose Again: Become a Top Negotiator by Asking the Right Questions

    By Steven Babitsky and James J. Mangraviti, Jr.

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    About this ebook

    The Most Practical Book on Negotiating Ever Written

    Negotiating is an art. It's complicated. To become an exceptional negotiator traditionally requires years of experience in negotiations. But that doesn't mean that most people can't quickly and easily learn proven negotiating skill and techniques if someone shows them what to do. This book does exactly that.

    Never Lose Again reveals a simple but remarkably effective set of fifty questions that anyone can immediately use to become far better negotiators. The fifty questions apply to all types of negotiation situations, from conflicts like buying a home or car to business transactions of all kinds. Each question has been designed to put you in the best position possible, helping you to avoid tricks, break deadlocks, discover conflict and dispute resolutions, and find hidden deals in all types of negotiations.
    No other book on the market distills the key negotiation principles into such a simply, effective, and instantly usable form. By learning to use these questions, you can start thinking like expert negotiators and make better deals for yourself, your family, and your business.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 4, 2011
    ISBN9781429975858
    Author

    Steven Babitsky

    Steven Babitsky is the president and founder of SEAK, Inc., a professional training, consulting, and education firm. He was a personal injury trial attorney for twenty years and is the former managing partner of the firm Kistin, Babitsky, Latimer & Beitman. He has developed and taught numerous courses on negotiating, is the coauthor of over twenty books, including Never Lose Again: Become a Top Negotiator by Asking the Right Questions, and serves as a professional negotiation consultant. He resides in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

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    • 5/5
      Excellent and well written book on negotiating. A must read.

    Book preview

    Never Lose Again - Steven Babitsky

    PART I

    Stealth Information Gathering

    INTRODUCTION: Success in negotiation is often directly related to how much accurate information you can gather concerning the other party’s goals, deadlines, and alternatives. For example, if you were able to determine that the other party was under a tight deadline and didn’t know where else to turn, you would be in an extremely favorable negotiating position. A highly effective way to gather useful information is through the seemingly innocuous questions detailed below that are designed to get the other party to reveal valuable information.

    Question #1

    HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT US?

    Information translates directly into negotiating power. The more information you have when negotiating, the better off you will be. How did you hear about us? is a superb, zero-risk question that should be used routinely by sellers in an attempt to gather information.

    The idea behind How did you hear about us? is simply to get the potential buyer talking. The question itself is very open ended and encourages an open-ended response. The person you are negotiating with will often blurt out damaging information, including how you were recommended, their current situation, why they are desperate for a deal, etc.

    How did you hear about us? has the big advantage of being risk free. It is completely polite. It’s innocent sounding and almost conversational. There is really no downside to asking this question as a matter of course. How did you hear about us? can and should be asked routinely by sellers of goods and services.

    We have found that new potential clients almost always answer How did you hear about us? The reason for this is simple. The question is so innocent sounding and on its face so reasonable that the person you are negotiating with has no reason not to answer it. A sophisticated negotiator might be cagey when answering, but you are still very likely to get some sort of an answer.

    Another important advantage of How did you hear about us? is that it allows sellers to track how various marketing campaigns are working. Let’s say your business placed an ad in a certain newspaper and you routinely ask people calling to inquire about your services, How did you hear about us? If several people respond that they saw your ad in that newspaper, you know the ad worked and you might consider repeating it at a later time. If nobody mentions the ad you might consider discontinuing it.

    The benefit of How did you hear about us? can be greatly enhanced if you ask follow-up questions. Once the person you are negotiating with starts answering one question it is more likely that they will answer follow-up questions. The conversation is flowing in this direction and the person you are negotiating with has already shown that they are willing to answer questions.

    Asking the right follow-up questions depends on carefully listening to the responses you receive. The goal of all of this is to get the person you are negotiating with talking in the hopes that they will reveal information about why they called you, their situation, timetables, problems, budgets, or anything else that can be used to your advantage. Let’s look at some examples.

    *   *   *

    Recently, we got a call from a person working at a federal governmental agency. He was interested in hiring us to train some of their employees. Here’s how the negotiation went:

    LEAD: Hi, I am interested in your company doing some training for us.

    AUTHOR: That’s great. How did you hear about us?

    LEAD: One of our people here has been to your seminars and told us that your training is superb, that you are the best.

    AUTHOR: What’s your time frame for the training?

    LEAD: Well, here’s the thing. We have a lot of money we need to spend by October 1. So we’d like to move this along on the fast track.

    AUTHOR: Well, we can certainly help you with your problem.

    From the above example, you can see the potential phenomenal benefits of asking How did you hear about us? and innocuous follow-up questions. In response to How did you hear about us? we were able to learn the extremely valuable information that they already thought that we were the best. That is, they were already sold on us. The biggest and most valuable information score came on our follow-up question, What’s your time frame for the training? The response we received about their having a ton of money they needed to spend fast was exactly the type of priceless information we were fishing for. Once we heard this answer, we were able to negotiate quickly and agree upon the highest fee we had ever collected for training.

    Here’s an additional example. Once again we were being contacted by an organization that was interested in hiring us to do some consulting/training.

    LEAD: Hello, my group was interested in hiring you to do some consulting and training for us.

    AUTHOR: Hi, nice to meet you. How did you hear about us?

    LEAD: My boss is the president of the company. He’s been to one of your seminars and loved it. He told me to hire you.

    AUTHOR: That’s very kind of him. Who’s your boss?

    LEAD: John Smith.

    This also turned out to be a very easy negotiation. By asking the simple question How did you hear about us? we were able to learn that the potential client was already sold on us. More important, were able to discover that the person we were negotiating with basically had zero alternatives. He was actually instructed by his boss to use us. Needless to say, after learning this information, we were able to easily negotiate a favorable rate.

    Lesson

    Sellers should ask leads How did you hear about us? as a matter of course. This is a no-risk question that may result in valuable information being provided to you. The information often gained about the person you are negotiating with—motives, deadlines, budgets, intentions, etc.—can greatly enhance your negotiation position. This question can also help set up follow-up questions that can obtain additional useful information. How did you hear about us? has the additional important benefit of tracking the value of various marketing campaigns that you may have

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