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

fund-raiser for the Girl Scouts, who backed into naming her
counterpart’s fears almost accidentally.
We’re not talking about someone who sold Girl Scout
cookies: my student was an experienced fund-raiser who
regularly got donors to pony up $1,000 to $25,000 a check.
Over the years, she’d developed a very successful system to
get her “clients,” usually wealthy women, to open their
checkbook.
She’d invite a potential donor to her office, serve a few
Girl Scouts cookies, walk her through an album of
heartwarming snapshots and handwritten letters from
projects that matched the woman’s profile, and then collect
a check when the donor’s eyes lit up. It was almost easy.
One day, though, she met the immovable donor. Once
the woman sat down in her office, my student began to
throw out the projects her research had said would fit. But
the woman shook her head at one project after another.
My student found herself growing perplexed at the
difficult donor who had no interest in donating. But she held
her emotion in check and reached back to a lesson from my
recent class on labeling. “I’m sensing some hesitation with
these projects,” she said in what she hoped was a level
voice.
As if she’d been uncorked, the woman exclaimed: “I
want my gift to directly support programming for Girl
Scouts and not anything else.”
This helped focus the conversation, but as my student
put forth project after project that seemed to fulfill the