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

What are we up against here?
What is the biggest challenge you face?
How does making a deal with us affect things?
What happens if you do nothing?
What does doing nothing cost you?
How does making this deal resonate with what your
company prides itself on?
It’s often very effective to ask these in groups of two or
three as they are similar enough that they help your
counterpart think about the same thing from different
angles.
Every situation is unique, of course, but choosing the
right mix of these questions will lead your counterpart to
reveal information about what they want and need—and
simultaneously push them to see things from your point of
view.
Be ready to execute follow-up labels to their answers to
your calibrated questions.
Having labels prepared will allow you to quickly turn
your counterpart’s responses back to them, which will keep
them feeding you new and expanding information. Again,
these are fill-in-the-blank labels that you can use quickly
without tons of thought:
It seems like __ is important.
It seems you feel like my company is in a unique position
to __.
It seems like you are worried that __.