One of the main pastimes of managers is to persuade. To convince a client to buy their new service, the board to keep financing their project, the bank to extend the credit line. What is that Y? This article is better read with a personal example in mind.
Why aren’t we as persuasive as we believe ourselves to be?
We put too much trust in our natural ability to convince and therefore we usually turn up for the meeting totally unprepared
- Chris Voss, hostage chief-negotiator for the FBI, wrote a book, Never Split the Difference, in which he advises us to write down, before a negotiation, the purpose of the meeting, the best result we expect and also the worst
Prepare for the no, not for the yes
Before offering arguments in favor of your claim, deal with the reasons for which the other would say no.
- Our instinct is to start persuasion by serving people reasons to say yes, while completely ignoring their reasons to says no.
How do you prepare for no?
Identify a few likely candidates
- Pre-mortem
- Put yourself in my shoes and identify a few of my possible reasons to say no
- Perform a quick pre-mortem of the encounter
- Why did I say no? Why did the other person say no
