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

would have damaged Anna’s firm’s reputation with a very
important customer, and could have led to litigation from
ABC.
Faced with this scenario, Anna set up a meeting with
ABC where she and her partners planned to inform ABC
that its pay was being cut to three people. It was a touchy
situation, as ABC was already unhappy about the first cut.
Even though she was normally an aggressive and confident
negotiator, worries about the negotiations ruined Anna’s
sleep for weeks. She needed to extract concessions while
improving the relationship at the same time. No easy task,
right?
To prepare, the first thing Anna did was sit down with
her negotiating partner, Mark, and list every negative charge
that ABC could level at them. The relationship had gone
sour long before, so the list was huge. But the biggest
possible accusations were easy to spot:
“You are the typical prime contractor trying to force out
the small guy.”
“You promised us we would have all this work and you
reneged on your promise.”
“You could have told us about this issue weeks ago to
help us prepare.”
Anna and Mark then took turns role-playing the two
sides, with one playing ABC and the other disarming these
accusations with anticipatory labels. “You’re going to think
we are a big, bad prime contractor when we are done,”
Anna practiced saying slowly and naturally. “It seems you