Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

for 8 percent).
From the beginning, Joaquin and Bruno had a rocky
relationship. Joaquin is an excellent salesman, while Bruno
was more of a bookkeeper. The minority partner was also an
excellent salesman, and he and Joaquin believed that
growing sales was the correct strategy. That meant offering
discounts for large orders and repeat customers, which
Bruno disagreed with. Their planned spending on launching
a website and expanding inventory also rubbed Bruno the
wrong way.
Then Bruno’s wife became a problem as she started
nagging Joaquin about how he should not spend so much
on expansion and instead take more profits. One day,
Joaquin was reviewing inventory purchases and noticed that
some items they had ordered had not been placed on the
store’s shelves. He began searching for them online and to
his surprise he found an eBay store set up with the wife’s
first name that was selling exactly those missing products.
This started a huge argument between Bruno and
Joaquin, and soured their relationship. In the heat of the
moment, Bruno told Joaquin that he was open to selling his
shares because he felt the business risks they were taking
were too large. So Joaquin consulted with his brother: my
student Jesus.
Because they believed that pressure from Bruno’s wife
was why he wanted to sell, Jesus helped Joaquin craft an
empathy message around that: “It seems like you are under
a lot of pressure from your wife.” Joaquin was also in the