Negotiation

Flattery is to listening as sincere compliments are to…?

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Today I have an idea that might help you if you ever talk to friends, clients, or even random strangers like your wife or husband.

I thought of it yesterday when I saw a family of three walking in the park.

Mom was trying to have a serious conversation with dad. Meanwhile, their 8-year-old daughter kept trying to get mom’s attention:

“Mom! Mom! Mom!”

So in between sentences to dad, mom put her hand on the back of the little girl’s head and said, “Tell me, sweetie.”

The girl rattled off a few sentences, a typical 8-year-old’s story that goes nowhere.

“That’s great,” the mom said. And then she picked up the conversation with dad right where she had left off.

Meanwhile the daughter, satisfied at having made an important point, went back to playing and left her parents to talk in peace for a few moments.

A few days ago, I wrote that flattery works great. Well, so does listening, even if you only make a show of it. That’s what I was seeing in that family scene above.

But just as sincere compliments are a step beyond flattery… there’s also a step beyond listening.

Negotiation coach Jim Camp called it blank slating.

That’s when you drop your preconceived assumptions and ideas… give the other party your full attention… and allow them to draw on your mental etch-a-sketch.

Camp thought blank slating is so important that he made it a cornerstone of his negotiation system, which was used in billion-dollar deals as well as in hostage situations (FBI’s Chris Voss was one of Camp’s students).

Blank slating is not easy. But with practice, it becomes possible.

Except… why? Why go to the trouble?

If plain old, in-one-ear-and-out-the-other listening works already… why put in the effort and practice needed to blank slating?

Only this:

Because you’ll uncover information you wouldn’t uncover otherwise.

And this:

Because you’ll build deeper rapport.

And this:

Because your own brain might kick in, and produce new options and alternatives you hadn’t thought of when you entered this situation.

Finally, because you might avoid some real bad situations on occasion. Speaking of which, here’s a bit of barber-shop humor that comedian Norm MacDonald once did on Conan O’Brien:

I looked in the mirror and all I see is a fat old man.
So I says to my wife, I says to her:
Sweetheart I feel old and fat.
I need you to give me a real compliment.
So she says, your eyesight is perfect!
So I says to her, you dirty dog!

Now let me leave you with another analogy:

Listening is to this blog… as blank slating is to…?

If you said my daily email newsletter, you win the prize for most attentive and open-minded. Click here in case you’d like to sign up.

Where to go when a negotiation hits no

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Do you dread having to negotiate?

Is it worse than having to take a cold shower in the middle of January in a bathroom without heating?

If so, maybe the following news item will help:

Women’s tennis world no. 2 Naomi Osaka just shocked the world by withdrawing from the French Open. As you might know, the French Open is one of the four Grand Slams, the biggest tennis tournaments of the year.

It all started a week ago, a few days before the French Open began.

That’s when Osaka wrote a post on Instagram, saying she won’t do press appearances during the tournament. Talking to the press is harmful to her mental health, Osaka said, and it feels like kicking a person when they’re down.

This created a lot of buzz in the tennis world.

A few days later, the French Tennis Federation, along with the other organizing bodies of the Grand Slam tournaments, put out a statement.

They offered support to Osaka, but also said she would be fined each time she failed to talk with the press. The fines would escalate. Eventually, Osaka could be disqualified from the tournament, and even banned from participating in future Grand Slams.

That’s when Naomi Osaka decided to withdraw.

​​She wrote to the tournament organizers for not explaining her position in a better way. And she said she wants to work together in finding a solution. But for now, she is taking time off the court.

To which the French Tennis Federation made its own statement. They said they were sad and sorry at Osaka’s decision, and they want to work with athletes to ensure their well-being. They wish Osaka all the best, and they look forward to seeing her next year.

I don’t know what the outcome of this will be. I just want to point out that everything in life, at least anything that has to do with another person, is a negotiation.

And like negotiation coach Jim Camp used to say, negotiation starts with no.

This is not a matter of hard-line posturing, or telling people to take it or leave it, or walking away.

But real negotiation starts with no. And it doesn’t end with yes.

When I first heard Jim Camp say this, it sounded bizarre or intentionally contrarian. But when you look at negotiations in the real world, like the Naomi Osaka situation above, it becomes obvious Camp is right.

Naomi said no.

Then the tournament organizers came back and said no in their own terms.

Then Naomi came back, and said no in a different way.

And all throughout, the two parties are still engaged, are still talking, and are still working together to reach an agreement.

The question then is how to best manage that process.

What do you do when the other side says no… and you say no… and yet you both have an interest in working together in some way?

The best guide I know for that is Camp’s book, of course titled Start With No.

​​It lays out a system for negotiation, so you can get to an outcome you want, while minimizing that “cold bathroom” feel.

Plus if you write sales copy, this book might have the knock-on effect at making you more persuasive. (A couple of million-dollar marketers say this book is their favorite copywriting book, even though it never mentions the topic.)

Fair warning:

Camp’s book is dense and it might take multiple reads to grasp. But in case you’re curious, here’s the link for more info:

https://bejakovic.com/start-with-no

Eleemosynary enlightenment

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The atmosphere around the large conference table was tense.

At one end sat a team of lawyers, dressed in three-piece suits and aggressively staring down the table.

At the other end sat a bunch of sloppy-looking beatnik types, trying to keep calm but obviously nervous.

The time was the late 1930s. The place was Hollywood. The lawyers were studio lawyers. The beatnik types were studio animators, trying to form a union. Among them was Chuck Jones, the famous director of all those Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons.

Jones really didn’t want to be there. He certainly didn’t want to start trouble.

And then one of the lawyers stood up. He stalked down to where the animators were huddled together. And he slammed his hand down on the table.

“One thing I want to make eminently clear,” he said. “Mr. Schlesinger is NOT running an eleemosynary institution.”

Leon Schesinger was the head of the studio. That much was clear. But what about that eleemosynary? What the hell did that mean?

“I loved words always,” Jones said later. “And I knew what he was doing.”

Jones felt like he was being played, manipulated, made to feel small and dumb. Like his vocabulary was small. Which it wasn’t!

In a flash, this sense of injustice boiled up and over. And Jones, very unlike himself, stood up, slammed his own hand down on the table, and started to yell.

“What do you mean by that word!”

The lawyer took a step back. “It… it means a charitable organization.”

Jones kept yelling. “Well why in the damn hell didn’t you just say that? How dare you use a word like that? We’re supposed to be working together here to try to solve a problem!”

The other animators suddenly took courage also. A team spirit was forming, thanks to Chuck Jones’s unexpected outburst.

The meeting didn’t go anywhere. After it was over, Jones expected he would be fired for his combativeness and troublemaking. And sure enough, he was called down immediately to Leon Schlesinger’s office.

But it wasn’t what Jones expected. ​​

“I want to apologize,” said Schlesinger. “The lawyer didn’t understand we were trying to work this thing out together.”

The negotiations continued for some time after that. The animators kept together, with Jones at their head, all starting with that fight that Jones decided to pick. And eventually, Schesinger signed the contract allowing his workers to unionize.

My point for tonight is enlightenment. In other words, I don’t want to push a one-sided but misleading conclusion from the story above.

Instead, I want to throw out the idea that in complex situations, like in dealing with people, there is no single best way to proceed in all situations.

So in the interest of enlightenment, since we’ve already heard from Chuck Jones, let me leave you with some words to the other extreme. They come from that great philosopher of human nature, Dale Carnegie:

“You cannot win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. […] Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It may be you at your worst, not your best.”

And one final thought for tonight:

If you want more complex and multi-sided negotiation and marketing advice, you might like to try out my email newsletter.

3 reasons to 3+ your prospect

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Negotiation expert Jim Camp promoted a technique he called 3+. Camp said to cover each point of your negotiation at least 3 times in slightly different language.

“So you’re saying you want to subscribe to my email newsletter today. Is that right?”

“Are there any reasons you’d rather wait to subscribe?”

“And if you do get to the end of this post where the optin is, would you still be interested in subscribing? Are you sure?”

Camp did 3+ because he wanted to get to a decision that sticks, rather than just a flaky agreement.

But you can do something similar to get a click or a purchase from a prospect, even a flaky one. All you have to do is repeat your basic promise at least three times.

Don’t worry about annoying your reader. You won’t annoy him, as long as you surround your promise with new info. Phrase your promise in a new and surprising way. But keep hammering away at it.

Really? Yes. Because there are at least three reasons why this 3+ stuff works in sales copy.

One is that repetition creates belief. It shouldn’t, but it does. Just look at the stump speeches of politicians, or the headlines of the major news outlets. Repeat an outlandish idea one, two, three or more times, and people will adopt it as their own.

But that’s not all. Because repetition also creates desire. You’re greasing the groove.

Promise me something once, and I only hear your words. Promise me something twice, and I’m starting to imagine your promise being a reality. Make the same promise three or more times, and I’m getting impatient for the outcome.

But there’s a third and possibly most important reason to repeat your message over and over and over. And that’s the fact we’re living in a noisy world. Your reader doesn’t hear your whole message. He is distracted. He skims. He checks his phone. His mind is elsewhere.

You think you have his whole attention. You don’t. But you can still get your message across, if you keep repeating it. How many times? At least three. More is better.

None of this is new. Almost 300 years ago, Samuel Johnson said:

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

You might already know that quote. What few people know is that Johnson kept talking after the dictaphone stopped recording.

“Yes,” Johnson said, “promise is the soul of an advertisement. But repetition, constant repetition, is the body of an advertisement. So keep repeating your promise to make it more real. Even if you get tired of it. Over and over. Because eventually, your prospect will hear you. And then he will buy.”

By the way, remember that 3+ from the start of this post? About subscribing to my email newsletter? You do?

Well, I’m not sure if you’re still up for subscribing. In case you are, here’s where to go.

The George Costanza method of client seduction

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There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza, the fat short bald loser who is always making up exciting careers for himself to impress women, realizes that everything he has done in life has lead to failure.

Desperate, George takes another tack.

He goes bizarro. He does the opposite of whatever he would normally do.

George starts by ordering the opposite lunch from what he normally gets. He then notices an attractive woman looking at him from across the restaurant.

Bizarro George decided to get up and go talk to her — because normal George never would.

“Excuse me,” George says to the woman, “I couldn’t help but notice you were looking in my direction.”

“Oh yes I was,” the woman explains. “You just ordered the exact same lunch as me.”

George takes a deep breath.

“My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.”

The woman turns to face him fully, her eyes sparkling and a smile spreading across her face. “I’m Victoria. Hiii…”

Chris Haddad said in a recent interview that if you are a freelance copywriter, then you should be constantly going on Facebook, bragging about how great you are, and sharing all of your successes and testimonials.

That’s one approach. It can definitely work.

But there’s another approach. It’s when you seek to not impress. Instead, you give clients reasons why you are not a good match for them. You refuse to talk about your experience and successes, or at least you put it off as long as possible.

This is nothing more than a page out of Jim Camp’s negotiation system. You’re looking for a no. More importantly, you are eliminating any neediness that’s typical when freelancers talk to clients.

Very likely, this approach is not right for you.

But if you find that the typical advice of confidence and bragging has lead you to failure over and over… then this bizarro George approach is worth a shot. Because it can work, and not on just on TV.

Here’s another thing that is very likely not right for you:

My daily email newsletter. Very few people subscribe to it. Even fewer read it.

Beware “win-win-win”

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The hair stands up on the back of my neck whenever I hear the phrase “win-win-win.” And I’ve hearing it more and more often.

“It’s a real win-win-win situation…”​​

I guess that’s how markets evolve. First we had “win-win,” as in, “win-win negotiation.” Once that became old hat, marketers had to crank it up — hence the rise of “win-win-win.”

The reason I am wary of this phrase is because I’ve read Jim Camp’s negotiation book Start with No. And one of Camp’s big enemies is win-win. That’s just a clever name, Camp says, for fear- and compromise-based negotiation.

According to Camp, win-win negotiation is not principled… it’s not in your best interest… and if somebody is pushing it on you, you’re about to get flayed alive.

But maybe you think this is crazy. Maybe you think that “win-win” is great, and that “win-win-win” is even better. So here’s a quote by one very famous and successful copywriter, John Carlton:

Nearly every biz transaction is an inherently hostile situation.

Behind the smiles and back-slapping and promises of “working for the common good” between, say, a freelancer (or consultant) and a client…

… the freelancer actually wants to do as little work as possible for the maximum possible money…

… while the client wants to bleed every ounce of productivity from the writer for the least outlay of cash.

John uses the terms “veiled teeth-baring” and “primal snarling dance” to describe the reality of business interactions.

That’s certainly one way to do it. But I don’t think it’s the only way.

And if you want to know how to handle business situations in a way that’s neither snarling nor based in fear, then Camp’s book is worth a read. Or two. Or three.

Or you can just subscribe to my daily email newsletter. I’m no Jim Camp. But I’ve read his stuff, and it’s near to my heart. And while my newsletter is mainly about marketing and persuasions, sometimes I also write about the business of copy.

Maybe that doesn’t appeal to you. But in the odd case that it does, you can subscribe to get my emails by clicking here.

The “Attractionist” lure for weak negotiators

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My sophomore year in college, I had a girlfriend who loved me so well she ran off to live in Japan.

I bought a plane ticket to visit her during Christmas vacation. But I was careless with my travel arrangements. I booked my flight for the day before the final exam of one of my computer science classes.

The ticket was nonrefundable. And expensive.

My only option was to go talk to the professor. Maybe I could convince him to let me take the exam early.

As I said, this was a computer science class.

The professor teaching it was a beady-eyed automaton who thought in C code and expressed himself with the preciseness of a computer printout. At one point, there was an entire website, created by current and former students, dedicated to the man’s inhuman, Terminator-like nature.

I mustered all my courage and showed up to his office one day.

He was in there, wearing the same short-sleeve button-up shirt he always wore. It had seen so many washes that it had become faded and paper-thin. His nipples regularly poked through during lectures in the cold engineering building.

“Professor Terminator?” I said from the door to his office.

He swiveled around in his chair and focused on me with his cold and fishy gaze.

I explained my nonrefundable ticket predicament. Would there be any chance to take the exam early? Or late? Or anything?

Without saying a word, he swiveled back towards his computer and started typing and clicking. He pulled up the course syllabus.

“The syllabus clearly states the final is scheduled for December 6!” He faced me again. Through his expressionless mask, I sensed he was furious that I would approach him with such a disturbing and illogical request.

I explained that in that case, I would have to miss the final and probably fail the class. He threw up his arms — how was this his problem?

So I tucked my tail between my legs, thanked him for his time, and left. My heart was beating at around 200 BPM. I felt defeated and ashamed.

Throughout my life, I’ve had a few wins like this. They made me think this is how negotiations and sales always go. And I wanted no part of it.

I bet there are a bunch of people out there just like me. Because if you look around, you will see a growing number of copywriting and marketing gurus catering exactly to weak and feckless negotiators.

I call these gurus “Attractionists”. They promise that you can create your freelance copywriting business without ever needing to sell. All you need to do is “attract leads by giving value,” “be human,” “know your worth.”

I’m sure people can get to the point where they are so in demand that they never have to negotiate. But my feeling is, you’re unlikely to jump from zero to total success, and completely bypass the phase where you need to do some selling. As Mark Ford wrote in Ready Fire Aim:

“To be a truly effective entrepreneur, you must become your business’s first and foremost expert at selling. There is only one way to do this: Invest most of your time, attention, and energy in the selling process. The ratio of time, creativity, and money spent on selling as opposed to other aspects of business should be something like 80/20, with 80 percent going towards selling and only 20 percent toward everything else.”

Now here are some good news:

As you go through life, you don’t have to be in hopeless negotiation situations like I was above, where your only hope is for the other side to take pity on you.

You don’t have to be powerless.

And you don’t have to be afraid of facing disagreement or having a conflict of interests with the other side.

Negotiation, persuasion, and yes, sales, can all be learned. I’ve done it. And I’m an anti-natural.

If you too are naturally reluctant to negotiate or sell, then I recommend Jim Camp’s book Start with No. For one thing, it’s an effective system, particularly if you are looking for long-term success rather than quick “wins”. For another, being accommodating and non-confrontational by nature can actually be an asset to you if you use this system.

One final point. Once you learn the basics of how to negotiate, you can choose to make it less of a daily concern in your specific business. But in my opinion, it makes sense to do that from a position of power, and not out of fear.

Anyways, if you want to check out Jim Camp’s book, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/start-with-no

Outrage with stupidity to milk info out of cagey or indifferent adversaries

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[Dear reader, in Hungary or elsewhere: In spite of saying I would quit it, I’m back posting my daily newsletters to this blog. I have two reasons. One, I never got going creating bigger articles out of these newsletters the way I planned. Two, I don’t want to kowtow to Google — they prefer fewer, longer articles — and I would rather write specifically for people like you. Thanks for reading. And now onto this inflammatory post:]

Two days ago, the president of the UFC, Dana White, got trolled into revealing a highly guarded secret. A bit of background:

The UFC hosts mixed martial arts fights, and on April 18 they were supposed to host the biggest and most anticipated fight in their history, between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson. These two fighters are both on 12-fight win streaks in the UFC, and they were scheduled to fight four times already. Each time, the fight was cancelled at the last minute for some reason.

This time around, as sports organizations around the world cancelled events because of corona, my man Dana White refused to give in. “We’re going ahead with the fight!”

The only problem was they couldn’t figure out where to host it. It was originally supposed to be in Brooklyn, but that was now out. In fact, any other location in the US also became untenable.

“The fight is still on, guys!” White would repeat whenever asked, though he wouldn’t give any more details. So over the past month, speculation kept increasing. Fans were alternating between getting resigned to the inevitable fifth cancellation… and hyped when some new possible location for the fight surfaced. Meanwhile, even Tony and Khabib, the fighters who were supposed to be fighting on the 18th, didn’t know for sure if the fight was still on.

So that’s the background. The update from two days ago is that somebody created a fake Twitter account, mimicking a well-known MMA journalist, and tweeted:

“#BREAKING: Dana White and Vladimir Putin have reached an agreement on travel arrangements for UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov to come to the United States. He will fight Tony Ferguson. It’s happening folks. #UFC249 will go on as scheduled April 18.”

To which Dana White, big goof that he is, immediately blasted out a Tweet saying that it ain’t so, that Khabib is not fighting on April 18, and then to prove it, he finally revealed the whole card that’s scheduled for this corona-infested bout.

Which brings us to the present day, and something called Cunningham’s law:

“The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

The sad fact is that in business, in love, and on online forums, there are many times when people are unwilling to answer your questions. Maybe the person you’re talking to is indifferent, or cagey, or hurt, or they just don’t like the implied power dynamics that come with you asking and them answering.

So if you ever find yourself in this situation, swallow your pride, and publicly make a dumb, completely wrong assumption about the right answer. If Cunningham is right, and I suspect he’s at least a little bit right, then an outraged somebody will jump in and say, “No! You’re so wrong! Let me tell you how it really is…”

But I think this Cunningham and his law go even farther. If you just swap out “right answer” and you swap in “response,” you get a good recipe for how to get yourself publicity and an audience online.

Of course, unless you want to be just a troll, you’ll have to figure out a reasonable argument to justify a seemingly “wrong” opinion that you use to attract attention. But it can be done, and guys like Matt Stone and Ben Settle prove it. Outrage and reason are a powerful combination. Aloe vera on its own is pretty bland and slimy, but it sure feels good once you burn your hand on the stove.

Simple price negotiation with long-term clients

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Yesterday I talked to a previous client about a possible new job. He offered me to handle emails for one of his businesses on a straight-up commission basis.

At this point, a lot of copywriters would start running and screaming “Red flag!” But I got no muss with getting paid all on commission, at least with this client. I’ve worked with him already… he’s legit… and his business is making money and growing.

At issue is how much commission I would get paid. The client wrote:

“What’s the minimum amount you’d want to be making for the volume of emails that I’m proposing?”

Hmmm. That’s not a question I have a good answer to. So I thought for a minute. And I responded using a strategy that I saw described on Mark Ford’s blog.

Mark says he saw his client/partner BB (I assume Bill Bonner, the billionaire founder of Agora) using this strategy throughout his career.

It’s a way of negotiating that’s very simple, but effective if your main goal is a long-term relationship and a fair outcome for everyone involved.

I think Mark’s post explains it very well, so I won’t rehash it here. It’s worth reading if you find yourself negotiating prices with clients, and you hope to do business with them again. Here’s the link if you’re interested:

https://www.markford.net/2019/10/23/11059/?doing_wp_cron=1576003704.1623599529266357421875

Marketing devil-inspired price negotiation tactics

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A girl I met this summer wrote me yesterday to ask for advice on pricing a copywriting project:

“Wassup busy bee? 🙂 i need professional advice. How much should i ask to write anarchist articles for commercial purposes (meaning to sell t-shirts) :))? Is 100 dollars per 500+ words too much or fair? How much would u ask for?”

Anarchist articles?

To sell t-shirts?

At $100 for 500 words?

That’s not the pond that I play in.

Because I made a deal with the marketing devil a long time ago.

Yes, I sold my soul to him. In exchange, I get a series of ever-higher-paying contracts, working on ever-more interesting projects.

So the particular rates I would charge at this moment are really no use to this girl, or to you in case you’re wondering what you should be charging for your work.

But I told her something that the marketing devil taught me. And you might find it useful as well.

It’s a super simple price negotiation tactic. It works 100% of the time to get you an outcome you can be happy with. And it goes like this:

1. Ask yourself, “How much would it take to honestly make this worthwhile for me?”
2. Make your potential client this offer.
3. If it works for them, great. If not, or if they try to haggle with you, tell them, “Thanks, but it’s not right for me.”

But maybe I hear you complaining, “This isn’t negotiation at all!”

And it’s certainly not the kind of nickel-and-diming, car-lot tactics you can read about in hundreds of Medium listicles. But like legendary copywriter and entrepreneur Mark Ford wrote recently:

“The difference depends on understanding that in business there are two fundamentally different kinds of negotiation: transactional and relational.”

In other words, if you use my simple devil-inspired price negotiation tactic, and you end up doing business with this client, you’re on good footing to form a long-term relationship that both sides are happy with.

And if you don’t end up doing business with them, for whatever reason (they can’t afford you, or they don’t value you enough, or they are simply lowballing jackasses), then you don’t really have a negotiation problem.

You have a lead generation problem. Which is another topic, for another day. For today, let me just say I solved my lead generation problem in the beginning by going where everybody says you shouldn’t go.

And that’s Upwork.

In case you want to see how I made very good money by dealing with quality clients that I actually landed on Upwork, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/150-dollar-per-hour-freelancer