Authentic Negotiating

Corey Kupfer: So, you know, people automatically think "authentic" means just integrity and transparency, and there's some base in that; that "Listen, you need to be ethical in negotiating or else you're going to run into trouble." But for me, what it means is being true to who you are, as you said in the introduction. True to yourself, and the ability to do the internal work to get to your inner truth, to hold to it and not get thrown off in that negotiation, so you truly achieve the objectives that you want to achieve.

Rachel Salaman: Does this authentic negotiation approach actually deliver better results than other types of negotiation, or does it just make you feel better?

Corey Kupfer: No, it absolutely does. This is not a matter of saying, "Hey, we want you to just feel better," this is based upon 30 years of determining, and being heavily involved in, negotiations from small to multi-billion dollar deals. And what happens is people think, "Oh, I need to learn this tactic or technique or counter-tactic," as you sort of said in your introduction.

But really, what I've learned over the years, you know, for the many years I've been doing this, is that most negotiations go off the rails, or people don't get what they want, not because they don't know some tactic or counter-tactic, it's because they get upset, their emotions get engaged, or they're not clear on what they want and then they don't get there.

It's all of this work that we need: the harder work, the internal work; not the surface-level tactics that cause negotiations to go bad, when people's egos get engaged, or their fear comes up, or any of these things happen. So, this is real, practical advice. It may sound soft but this is really the key to true negotiating success.

Rachel Salaman: We'll talk a bit more about some of those things in a minute, but first I think it's worth spending a bit of time on the subtitle of your book, which is "Clarity, Detachment and Equilibrium, The Three Keys to True Negotiating Success and How to Achieve Them." So, clarity about what, to start with?

Corey Kupfer: In terms of clarity, I am amazed at how often even very successful business people go into major negotiations without close to the level of clarity they need. You know, one of the blessings and diseases of being a successful business person and entrepreneur is that we tend to think that we're good on our feet, and we can handle things without a lot of preparation, and we can shoot from the hip. And a lot of us are good communicators, and maybe we're good at doing it that way, but if you're going into a major negotiation you better spend the time to prepare and get that clarity.

And what is it clarity on? It's clarity on your objectives: exactly what you want on every major term on this deal, what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. And not only what's acceptable or not acceptable on each individual term, but then how do they relate to each other, and how do they prioritize. Because obviously if you want, for example, an objective of getting X amount of money for the sale of your company, that number may fluctuate a little bit, depending upon whether you're getting it all up front or you're going to get paid over two years or five years or 10 years. So they all relate to each other.

And that takes a body of work that a lot of people, unfortunately, don't do. So they don't enter into a negotiation with the level of crystal clarity they need – not only to know where they're going, but also to design a negotiating strategy around those clear objectives.

Rachel Salaman: The other two keys are detachment and equilibrium. Could you explain those?

Corey Kupfer: Okay, great. So, on detachment, I went into this a little bit before: people get triggered, they get worked up, right, and so that affects detachment and equilibrium. What attachment means is, if you and I are negotiating a deal, Rachel, I should have a preference. We get that deal done, or else why am I even spending time negotiating with you.

But ultimately I need to be detached to the outcome. I can't fall in love with the deal, so much so that we get down the line and either things have not checked out in due diligence, or you've negotiated way beyond what's acceptable to me, but I'm so in love with the deal or I feel like I have so much invested in the deal.

Or, what people do is, they get a vision in their mind about the deal being closed and what they're going to do with the money, or how they're going to be on the beach, or playing golf, or how they're going to move on to the next project, and it's already closed in their mind. And they get attached, or their ego comes up and they need to get the deal done. Whatever it is that causes them not to be able to maintain that detachment, has people do bad deals.

So ultimately I need to true up to my objectives, that I got clear on in the clarity process, and if the deal can meet my objectives, then I do it. If the deal does not meet my objectives, I don't do it, and I have no hard feelings against you. You're not a bad person. You know, if your objectives and my objectives don't line up so we can't do a deal right now, well, that's all that means.

It doesn't mean that we won't do one in the future, it doesn't mean that maybe another deal is coming along for me. I need to be in a place where I trust that if it's right, we do it; and if it's not, we don't. And the easy way to keep that in mind – although it's not truly easy, but it's easy to say – is keep in mind that the only thing worse than not getting a deal done is doing a bad deal, and too many people do bad deals because they get attached to them. So that's the detachment piece.

Rachel Salaman: And then finally, what about equilibrium?

Corey Kupfer: Negotiations, especially on bigger deals, can get very involved and complex and tense, and a lot of things can come up. The other side may take positions that trigger you, that upset you. You may go into the negotiation with certain fears or feelings of scarcity or anxiety or desperation, or anything that will not have you be in that centered place.

Or, during the negotiation, maybe you come in in a centered place but you get thrown off, right, because somebody says or does something that you disagree with, or they challenge you or they insult you or any of those things that can come up in the negotiation. And the best negotiators can maintain that equilibrium. They can stay calm, they can not get thrown off, and what happens is, even if you come in with clarity and you are initially detached, if you don't maintain the equilibrium then you lose your ability to be connected to that clarity and maintain that detachment.

So, the third key is just really being able, in the face of all the tension, the stress, the tactics that the other side may do, to maintain your equilibrium and be able to stay calm, clear and connected to what you're trying to achieve.

Rachel Salaman: And that idea of clarity, detachment and equilibrium, it does run throughout the book, but so does an internal preparation process that you shortened to CPR, which stands for Context, Purpose and Results. Could you talk about what this CPR is and how it fits into this discussion?

Corey Kupfer: Sure. So the thing I want to be clear about is that CPR – and I'll go over exactly what that is – is a tool, it's a framework that, for me, is the most powerful way I know of in terms of any framework or tool to prepare for a negotiation and maintain clarity, detachment and equilibrium.

But the thing I really want to make clear is, because we have a human nature, we want to jump to just what is the takeaway, the tool, what can I apply. And even though CPR is a phenomenally powerful tool, it's still just a tool, and ultimately what we're trying to do is get to that clarity, detachment and equilibrium.

So let's talk about CRP a little bit and then I can sort of tie them together a little more. So what CPR is, it's a process that I take people through, or they can do it on their own once they understand it, that has them do three things: the C stands for "context," the P stands for "purpose," and the R stands for "results." Let's take them in reverse order.

So, results are easy. Most people understand, if they want to go into a negotiation or prepare for anything, a big meeting or whatever it is, you know, they'll usually say, "Hey, I should know what results I want to get." And there's all kinds of work out there on how to define results and specific measurables, smart results, all that kind of stuff. People are pretty familiar with that and that's not that new.

The problem is, a lot of people stop there. They just say, "Hey, these are the results I want," and they go into a negotiation to get those results. But the ability to maintain clarity, detachment and equilibrium, you don't get there by just defining your results. I mean, if you truly define your results you'll get a long way along the clarity piece but not necessarily the others, and not even fully there on clarity.

So what are the other two in the CPR? The P is, as I said, purpose, so what I always say to people is, "Now, OK, you know generally what the results are that you want, but what is the purpose, why do you want the results, what underlies those results, why are you in this negotiation?" You know, a lot of people really aren't fully clear on that.

To give a couple of examples, one where you're selling your company, and one where, let's say, you're negotiating for a job. So, if you're selling your company, it may be easy to think, "Oh, the purpose is to get my company sold," right, but if you cut deeper and there's... you know, Honda used to use this exercise that's come out years ago called The Five Whys. You ask "why?" at least five times to get underneath it, right, so you say, "Why do I want to sell my company?"

Well, for some people, they want to sell their company to make a lot of money and retire. For some people, they want to sell their company because they want to move on to their next venture. For some people, they want to sell their company because it's really important to them to put their family in a particular financial position. And for some people, they want to sell their company because they want to be freed up to travel the world.

So every one of these things is different, and if you think about it, if your real why is to maximize the amount of money you make, versus to get freedom and be able to travel the world, versus getting freed up sooner because you have another business opportunity, those will all affect the negotiation. Those will all affect how you approach the negotiation, because price, in the case of maximizing dollars, is more important than freedom. Whereas, if you're looking to get freed up to travel the world, then you may take less money, or you may take other terms that are different.

So, getting down to that purpose, the true purpose, the why of the negotiation, is crucial, because then actually you're going to really go back and look at those results you were thinking about, and what you're going to do is you're going to revise those to make sure they line up for the purpose. So that's the P.

Then the bigger one that people don't even do above that is the context. That's the "being" conversation. What does that mean? That means who you are walking into the negotiation. I say negotiation is a state of being, not just the skill, so what I say is, "OK, if you have this purpose, who do you need to be to achieve that purpose?"

Often, it could be a sense, but often in CPR, for me, it's a series of words. I give an example in the book where there was a tough negotiation – they really hated the other side, and they viewed them as horrible people – and I said, "Will that context get you to where you want to be?", and they realized that it wouldn't. And they came up with calm, patient, cooperative and firm, right, those were the "being," the context they needed to hold to achieve the purpose they wanted to achieve. So that's how CPR lays out.

Rachel Salaman: That's fantastic and offers a whole range of tips for people going into negotiations. Can you just circle that back to clarity, detachment and equilibrium, so we can see how they fit together?

Corey Kupfer: Sure. So, like I said, CPR is the tool, one of the most powerful tools I know, so if you go through that process and get really clear on the context, the being conversation, and really clear on your purpose and your results – well, obviously that is a deeper cut on clarity, right, because now you not only know your results, but you're really clear on your purpose, and you're really clear on who you need to be going into the negotiation, so we have the ultimate level of clarity that I suggest you need.

It also gives you much more ability to be detached, because what I say to people is, "Hey, listen, you memorize your context and your purpose and your results if you can," right, you try to memorize them, and you also carry it with you in written form.

So let's say you're in a negotiation and you're starting to feel attached, right, you're losing your detachment. Well, you could do two things. One, if you're really off, you take a break and you could pull that piece of paper out and take a look at your CPR and say, "Hey, am I on course here?" Or, if you've memorized it – which, again, I strongly recommend people memorize it – when you're sitting in a negotiation I say to people, "Hey, listen, when you feel yourself being triggered, whether you're feeling attached or your equilibrium's getting thrown off, ask yourself this question: Is the next thing I'm going to say or do going to move me closer to my purpose, or further away from my purpose?" And that's the only test, right.

So, if somebody says something that triggers you, and you're about to come back at them, you say, "Wait a second, is this response that I'm about to make, is this thing I'm about to say, is this action I'm about to take going to move me further towards my purpose or away from my purpose?"

Then the other question you ask yourself is, "Am I holding the context?" So if your context is calm and patient, and you feel anxious and upset, you know you're off mark, so you know you've lost your equilibrium. So in that case you take a breath, calm down, get trued up back to the context. Maybe you call for a break in the negotiation and take a step out, make a phone call, go to the rest room, suggest you have lunch – you know, whatever you need to do to realign yourself. But it's sort of a north star tool that will let you know whether you are maintaining that detachment and equilibrium in addition to helping you get that clarity in the first place.

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Rachel Salaman: Now, a large part of your book is given over to several reasons why negotiations fail, and you touched on some of these earlier – for example, ego getting involved, or people becoming too emotionally attached to certain positions. Perhaps you could talk about some of the others now, starting with lack of preparation. What's the most important part of preparing for a negotiation?

Corey Kupfer: I divided it into two pieces, and I don't spend a lot of time in the book on the first one, because there's a lot of other materials out there, but I need to mention it because people often skimp on this one, which is the external preparation.

The research, your research on the company on the other side, and the individual negotiator – try to figure out what their objectives are, what industry standards are, all of that kind of stuff. I give some examples in the book on how, in this one deal, doing some external research saved my client two and a half million dollars. But I don't spend a lot of time there because that's the one that people tend to do better on, and there's a lot more resources on.

What I spend a lot more time on is the other piece, which is the internal preparation. We've alluded to this to some extent already, but it's really doing that deep inner work that people need to do. Now the CPR tool helps, but it's also to figure out, you know, if you are in a place of attachment or fear or scarcity. My argument is you can go through negotiating course after negotiating course and learn tactics and counter-tactics, but if you're in a place of scarcity or you're in a place where you're afraid to lose the deal, or you're going to get triggered and go into that negotiation, I don't care what tactics you learn, you're not going to do well – people are going to sense that.

You know, there's a lot of work out there already that talks about tone of voice, and that it's not only what we say but it's how we say it; and body language, and how people can read body language; and then there's some training out there that try to sort of counteract that – they teach you how to control your body, and you shouldn't look up to the left because it means this. I believe in the side of it where you can read that stuff, but I don't believe in the side of it where they try to teach you how to mask all of that, because that's exactly what you're doing: you're masking it, as opposed to getting to the deeper work of being able to not go into the negotiation from a place of scarcity or fear.

And now it's been determined that we have 45 facial muscles that give off micro facial expressions that we can't control, so I think we need to stop trying to mask over... you know, it's sort of like taking a pain medication for the symptoms and not dealing with the underlying disease. You know, we need to do the work to get to that internal space of clarity, so we don't go into a place from scarcity or fear or any of those things, as opposed to trying to mask it. So that internal preparation, which is tougher, is really where the game is won or lost in negotiating.

Rachel Salaman: So apart from using the CPR tool, what does that preparation involve? Or does it differ from negotiation to negotiation?

Corey Kupfer: Listen, everybody's different, and I say, "Take a look, and what is the thing that you do in life when you are off, when your mind is racing or when you're not sure what to do, or when you're upset about something, that gets you re-centered?" For some people it's going out for a run; for some people it's meditation; for some people it's more analytical, and they do spreadsheets and they've got to figure it all out and then their mind gets clear. Some people bounce things off their friends or mentors.

So the first thing I say to people is, "Listen, take the time to do whatever it is you do. If you need to be away, you know, at a friend's house or your country place for the weekend to get your head clear, do it. If you need to go out for a run before your negotiating session, make sure you have time to do that." Do whatever it is you do to get yourself calm and clear, and then, if you combine that with the CPR tool, you know, you're in a much better position to be in that internal preparation place that you need.

Rachel Salaman: In the book, you say that your goal when you negotiate is never to win a negotiation, but rather to achieve your objectives. Could you explain the difference?

Corey Kupfer: Sure, and that may seem like semantics to some people, and for some it might be. But for me, just out of 30-plus years of professional negotiating experience, what I've seen is that the concept of winning, for a lot of people, throws them off. I had the pleasure of spending a week with William Ury, who wrote "Getting to Yes." We were in Israel and Palestine together a couple of weeks ago, and his work around getting to yes and win-win negotiations is classic and it's phenomenal, and if people truly applied it, it really works.

The problem I've found is that for a lot of people, the minute the concept of winning comes in, even if it's in the context of win-win, ego gets engaged, because we're in a society, in a world where winning tends to align with being competitive, and winning versus losing, no matter how much you try to maintain win-win.

So, what I do is, I say, "Listen, because winning can be an emotional feeling, which may or may not line up with what your objectives are, that shouldn't be the litmus test." The litmus test should be, if you've done the clarity work to get crystal clear on all of those objectives, did we meet them or did we not?

That is a successful negotiation if we have, whether you feel emotionally like you've won or not. In fact, I have very often been able to use this. When I know a person on the other side needs to win the negotiation emotionally, there's a lot of ways you can use that effectively to achieve your objectives, and have them feel like they've won. As long as your ego doesn't get engaged, and you have to feel like you've won instead of them, you can use that really effectively to achieve your objectives, even though they feel like they've won.

Rachel Salaman: Rigidity is another reason why negotiations fail, and you say earlier in your book that people need to have clarity about their bottom line. But that could easily turn into rigidity. So how can we find a good balance between sticking to what we want in a negotiation and not being too rigid?

Corey Kupfer: Yeah, it's a great question and it comes up a lot, because in my clarity process I literally talk about what I call "true bottom line" – like not a penny less, not a day more. So that could sound really rigid, but here's the way it breaks down for me: I think on those things that matter most to you, you need to have that level of clarity and hold to it, just in terms of the ultimate.

There's two things, though, about that where people run themselves into trouble with rigidity: one is sort of the route to get there, or being open to other suggestions, creative suggestions; and two is the emotional difference between the two.

So, in terms of the first one, although I say you should be clear on your objectives, you should be totally open to how you get there. I mean, the deal structure shouldn't necessarily matter. I talk about rigidity on timing: some people are over-anxious and they get rigid on time, and sometimes it will take longer or shorter than you think, so not having rigidity around time, not having rigidity around structure, not having rigidity around being open to listening to creative solutions that will get you your objectives but not look the way you think they should look. So that's one distinction.

The other distinction is around the emotional, the energy around it. When you're in a place of clarity, there's no charge around it, it's just what's 'so' for you, it's what's true for you, right, and you don't need to be defensive. In fact, if you're in a true place of clarity there's no defensiveness around it, there's no clenched fist, there's no "I need to get this," because also, you know, you're going to have the detachment, right, if you're doing what I teach.

So when you feel any of that energy around, and if it's like, "Oh no, I need this," then you're moving into the place where it becomes rigid. If you're breathing easy and you're just clear that this is something you need to get the deal done, and if it doesn't happen you won't do it and it's all good, then you know you're in a place of clarity.

Rachel Salaman: Now, in your book, as well as identifying some of the reasons why negotiations fail, you also present five steps to being a great negotiator, which pull together a lot of the ideas that we've been talking about. One of these is "identify and fully own your own value." This is clearly relevant in negotiations about pay, but does it have a broader resonance than that?

Corey Kupfer: Absolutely, yeah, and you're right. I mean, the easy one to go to is pay, if you're negotiating a salary or your bonus if you work for somebody, but this comes across all the time with anybody – for example, in a service business, who is providing consulting services or any other kind of service, you know, they have a small business and what do they charge, what are their rates. And it even can come up in terms of product; I mean, when I say "your value," it's not necessarily you individually, it's your company, what you brought to it, what you've created.

Where I think people have most trouble with it, though, is in service businesses, because when you have a product it's more detached from who you are. When you are selling your services – whether you're a professional or a consultant, most people nowadays are in service businesses, in terms of small business – it's so tied to who they are, right, and what happens is people end up negotiating their fees, whether it's hourly, fixed, project, etc., from a place of weakness.

That's because they don't fully own their value and they haven't done the work, the internal work, to own it, and they're charging the wrong amount in the first place. And when I say the wrong amount, I mean one of two things: first of all, sometimes people are undercharging significantly because they don't really realize their value, and they're afraid, and they undervalue themselves, or they get into that place of ego or entitlement or "should," and they're overcharging, but deep down they feel like they can't fully own it.

Then what happens is, when you go in to pitch at a price, whether again it's hourly, project or whatever, that you can't fully own, people sense that, you know, we give off signals. Like I said before, we have micro facial expressions, and people will sense when you don't fully own your value, so then they're more likely to try to negotiate with you. So that work up front to own your value, to figure it out, and that takes some external work, figuring out what the market is, but fundamentally it takes internal work.

Let's just use an hourly rate, for example. If you really believe, based upon your skills, that you should be able to charge $300 an hour, but for some reason, in your body, in your energy, you can't hold, you can't really hold more than $200 an hour, you're better off quoting $200 an hour and holding to it than $300 an hour, because you're going to be able to come across as confident. And the client, who you are pitching, negotiating with, etc., will be more likely to hire you if you come in with a number where you can fully own it. And then of course you continue to do the work to be able to fully own the higher number as time goes on.

Rachel Salaman: Another of your steps to being a great negotiator is to have high expectations. Of course, if your expectations are too high, you're going to fail. So what are some tips for getting expectations right before a negotiation?

Corey Kupfer: Sure, that's a great point. So, first of all I want to say there's a lot of studies out there. I mean, this is based upon my experience over 30 years as a professional negotiator, but there's also studies on this that show that people who go into negotiations and other situations with high expectations do better, but you're right, they can't be unrealistic.

I run into this, for example, in a lot of the M&A, mergers and acquisitions work I do, where you sometimes have company founders who have unreasonably high expectations of what their company is worth because they've put 25 years into it. And it's not worth that, so it can become a problem.

So, what I say is this. There's some work I did in the past where you have sort of the expected return and then you have something on the other extreme that's called a pipe-dream, and then you have something that's called possibility. So, I say be in possibility, which means on the top end of what's possible from a somewhat realistic and grounded point of view, right – not, in that realistic point of view, to stretch it, but to be in possibility.

The minute you get to pipe-dream, you know, if your company's really worth $8 million and you want $15 million for it, not only are you unrealistic and not going to get it, but it may be a non-starter in negotiations. You have to temper those high expectations a little bit, but I find that a lot of people have too low expectations. And if they go in with those low expectations, again it goes back to if they're afraid, if they have these other issues coming up that we talked about previously, then they're going to temper their results, and studies say you need to have those high expectations going in. Just don't make it a pipe-dream.

Rachel Salaman: Well, we've covered a lot of ground in this discussion. What are your top takeaways for people who want to achieve more success in their negotiations?

Corey Kupfer: So, my biggest thing that I want to say about takeaways is there's no magic bullet – you gotta do the work, right. Do that work, do that hard work, do that internal work, take the time to prepare, and be willing to do the hard work for any negotiation that counts, because otherwise you won't get the results you want.

Then obviously, listen, if you want to get on top of it using the CPR tool to get there, there's a chapter I have in the book on how to deal with inauthentic negotiating techniques. I give some very specific ways, if somebody else is using an inauthentic tactic or technique, how you deal with it from an authentic point of view. You should read that and use those.

But again, if you skip to that and you don't do that deep internal work and take the time to prepare, to get to that place of CDE, everything else, I'm telling you, is on the margins.

Rachel Salaman: Corey Kupfer, thanks very much for joining us today.

Corey Kupfer: It was great, I really appreciate you having me on.

The name of Corey's book is Authentic Negotiating: Clarity, Detachment and Equilibrium, The Three Keys to True Negotiating Success and How to Achieve Them. You can find out more about him and his work at coreykupfer.com, and you'll find a quiz there which you can take to find out how authentic you are as a negotiator.

I'll be back next month with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.