Ep #247 Negotiation Skills That Create Win-Win Deals in Business & Life (Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss)

Do you consider yourself a good negotiator? The truth is most of us aren't - our emotions get in the way or we end up compromising to end up with a bad deal we resent. Whether you're struggling with supplier costs, co-packer terms, or retail placement, these powerful tactics I share with you from the book Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss will help you secure better deals while building stronger partnerships.

You'll learn three of my favorite (and life changing) strategies from the book including:

• How "tactical empathy" helps you understand what buyers and suppliers truly want
• The mirroring and labeling techniques that reveal crucial hidden information
• Do an accusation audit ahead of time and name the elephant in the room to disarm your counterpart and open up dialogue

Packed with real-world examples from successful food founders in the Fuel community, this episode provides a practical framework for approaching any business negotiation with confidence. From farmers market customers to retailers, these FBI-tested strategies will help you navigate difficult conversations and create win-win outcomes that propel your business forward.

Join us for the bonus wholesale call inside Fuel on May 28th and get the negotiation strategy worksheet here.

Fuel is OPEN a la carte through May 26th! There are some incredible bonuses and you will finally be a part of a community of early-stage food founders doing the hard work of launching & growing their businesses into farmers markets, ecommerce and wholesale. Starts at $67/months with a money-back guarantee. http://foodbizsuccess.com/fuel

Stop the endless research and overwhelm! Know exactly what each sales channel looks like for success and create a roadmap for your unique business - it's all inside the Sales Channel Challenge https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/challenge

When you are ready to make the leap, get the support and accountability you need to create a beautiful business!

• Get Food Business Success to launch and scale to $100K guaranteed
• Scale your existing business to $300K in 2025 with the financial and operational foundations and become the CEO of your biz in Master Your Business

Pick up your copy of "Key Ingredients" on Amazon here.

Check out my YouTube channel at www.foodbiz.tube for how to videos to start and grow a packaged food business.

Transcript

Sari  0:00  
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host Sari Kimball. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach, and it's got to be fun. In this podcast, I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in and food founder journeys so you can learn what worked and didn't work not feel so alone in your own journey. Now, let's jump in!

Sari  0:48  
Welcome back to the podcast. So happy you are here with me today. Today we are talking about negotiation, becoming a better negotiator, and really, how do you get your way. How do you get more of what you want in your business and become a better salesperson, become better at negotiating deals, and also become just better with people, and, frankly, in your whole life? So I'm going to foreshadow just a little bit here. I don't want anybody to get upset, but I am going to be taking a little bit of a pause on the podcast soon, and don't worry, I will tell you more later, not after this one, I promise. But I was thinking about, what is it I really want to be sure that you know about, like, why do I want to make sure is in your toolkit? This book has been in my mind for so long, and it's something that I'm like, I got to do a podcast about this. So it's been on my mind. I've actually been traveling around with it too. So if you're on the YouTube channel, you see, I'm holding up the book. It's called, Never Split The Difference Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. It's by Chris Voss, and he is a former FBI negotiator. It's a great read. It's also a great listen to. I literally have this book as a Kindle version, as a hard or paperback version, and as an audible version. I have probably listened to this maybe three or four times. I refer to it all the time. And little cheat sheet here, a little cheater is that I will often use a prompt for AI that says, write an email response to this email as if you were Chris Voss, author of Never Split The Difference and game changer. So even if you don't read the book or listen to it or anything else, hopefully what you learn on today's podcast and then using that little cheat, cheater, I don't know, is it cheating when you use AI? I mean, that's just the way things are going. But using that is going to change your world. Okay, so I was thinking, I don't want to give, like, the whole book away and do this long podcast, but I wanted to give you a couple of things that I use all the time that are so powerful in both business and, frankly, in my personal life, and getting more of things going my way, or feeling like we are all like we're all winning, which is interesting, because in the book, it's called Never Split The Difference, right? And this idea that oftentimes negotiating, we think of it as being I'll give a little and they'll give a little. And ultimately, neither party is happy. And what he's actually talking about is, how can you create win wins, where you actually get the whole thing, what you want, and the other person feels amazing giving it to you. They feel like they're winning, and that, my friends, is a mighty hat trick to pull off, but Chris Voss makes it very doable. So I'm going to give you a couple of the key ones that have been really impactful in my life, and I want you to practice them, marinate on them, start using them, and then go get the book. Go listen to it. Become a CEO. Start learning, start reading, or go get his master class as well. That could be another option. But I am telling you, this stuff is gold. 

Sari  4:35  
Okay, let's get into it. First, Chris Voss would say that you really need to know what it is you are trying to get out of this. I talk a lot in coaching about what are the results you want to achieve here? So you need to know ahead of time what it is you want, right? Is it I want to be on your store shelves, but only at this margin and only paying this for shipping or freight, and doing these promotions right at this rate? And so you're very clear on your yes and your no, right? And the whole thing of this is that ultimately you are willing to walk away, because if it's a bad deal and you're compromising, and they're compromising, or maybe it's just you compromising, then it's never going to work out. It's going to be a bad deal. If it's a bad deal from the start, it's going to end as a bad deal. So you first need to do your homework and be really clear on this. And I've actually put together a worksheet that we're going to use inside Fuel. So if you have been wanting or thinking about joining Fuel, you guys know that it's only open for a little bit longer. Let's see when this comes out. You'll probably have one more week to join us in Fuel, and we're actually going to be doing a full bonus call on wholesale and how to approach buyers, how to negotiate, what are the things you need to be aware of, what do you need to know? And so I thought this was a great lead up into that, because knowing how to negotiate is a really great skill. And I'm putting together, I have a whole worksheet that's all about negotiating and using Chris Voss strategies when it comes to specifically around wholesale. Okay, so after you know what it is you want and where your line in the sand is, what your walk away point is, you're very clear on that. That is super important, and definitely strategy number one. So then you walk in, whether it's email, this could be email, this could be phone, this could be zoom, this could be in person, but you are negotiating with people. And the first thing is, sometimes we think of negotiations like, I'm going to go in there all big and blustery. No, no, no. We actually want to be very receptive, very open. And I'm using my arms here be like I'm open. And we really want to first practice what he calls tactical empathy. We really want to understand the other side. Yes, you have your side of things. You have the way you think it should be. But I'm telling you when you are talking with a co packer, a retailer, a supplier, even a customer, we have to first lean in and really understand their side, their perspective, their concerns, their motivations. We have to get really curious about that. So let's take a retail buyer, for example. They're juggling hundreds of products and vendors, and their job performance is measured on things like sales per square foot, or inventory turns velocity, like health quickly products turning over, or a growth in that category. And when you go and talk to them, and you walk in, you're like, oh my gosh, I make the best fill in the blank, right? And you're telling them how amazing your product is, and that they should definitely put it on their shelf.

Sari  8:22  
Hey, there, food preneur, if you are tired of figuring everything out on your own, you're hitting roadblocks. You're throwing spaghetti at the wall, and you want to say no to that and say yes to getting answers and feeling supported and not so alone in your business, I have exciting news for you. Fuel membership is open right now through May 26th. We only open up Fuel a couple of times a year that you can join us ala carte. This is the community you have been searching for real food business owners, supporting each other, sharing resources and leveling up together. The Fuel membership includes twice monthly group coaching sessions where myself and April will offer you coaching, will get your questions answered, will help you get unstuck. There's a monthly Power Hour where we get work done together, and a 24/7 community feed where you can get help anytime you need it. No more late nights googling packaging regulations or talking to people who have no idea whether your pricing strategy makes sense. Inside Fuel, you've got a whole team of CPG experts behind you, having experts and peer food founders can save you 1000s in potential mistakes and shave weeks, if not months, off of your timeline. One of our core values at Food Business Success is generosity, and we have put together some really great bonuses for those of you who decide to join Fuel this month. Go to foodbizsuccess.com/fuel for all the details, and you can get signed up for as little as $67 a month. Make this small investment in your business and see huge results. I will see you inside. 

Sari  10:23  
You are missing what they care about most. So when you have that buyer meeting, when you are face to face, or having that phone call, or Zoom call, asking curious questions, getting to really understand where they are coming from. And when you understand maybe it's category related, like, you could say, like, are you missing something in this category? Well, my product could help fill this, right? My product is going to help bring you sales. And here's how I'm going to be a great partner. But first you have to listen. We make the mistake all the time of making assumptions that we understand. We know what their problem is, and we think it should be this way. But first, the art of negotiation comes down to listening, really, really listening, and one of the most important things in tactical empathy is that you aren't thinking about what you're going to say next. You're really listening. You're really hearing them. You're like, nodding, and you're absorbing it, right? It's, you are really understanding where they are coming from. Okay, so now we're going to talk about two really simple strategies that he talks about in the book, and they're kind of so simple that you're like, really those actually work, but they do, I promise you. So the first one is mirroring, which is very hard to say for me. So mirroring is very simple. All you're going to do is, when somebody says something, you're going to repeat the last few words of what they say, and then you're going to do the hardest thing, you're going to pause, you're going to not say anything. And naturally, the person's going to want to fill in the space, and they're going to keep talking. We love to keep talking. Most people love to keep talking when we feel like there's space made, and someone's really listening, and when it comes to negotiation, is that what often will happen is you're going to learn more about the situation than you would have if you just came in. Like, I know everything. What's going on here, right? So let me give you an example of this, and this is so relevant to right now when I'm recording this, which is in Spring of 2025, where price increases are happening with tariffs and everything. So I want to give you an example that could be really useful for right now. And whenever you're listening to this, we're always going to be having issues like this. Let's say you're talking to a supplier, and they're telling you, we've had to increase prices due to shipping costs. And instead of like, oh, well, like whatever you would say there, right? You instead just say shipping costs, and then the supplier is going to fill in the space there. So then the supplier might say something like, yes, well, specifically for this ingredient that's coming from California or coming from China, but our other ingredients haven't been inspected as much. That little bit of information now gives you an opening. It's like, oh, well, what other solutions could we look into? Are there ingredient, the same ingredient, coming from somewhere else? Do we have a conversation about how we reformulate a little bit? What I would suggest to work on your mirroring skills is first try this in networking, when someone's talking about their vacation or what they're working on, just grab those last few words that they said and then repeat it back to them as a question, and then practice not saying anything, being quiet, and this is the hardest part, right? And just allowing and like seeing what comes up. When you're doing it like in practice, like role playing. We tried it in the 10x Mastermind. It can feel a little forced, but I promise you just practice it like covertly, and you're going to be amazed at how much people will talk and how much they will reveal about themselves or the situation. Okay?

Sari  14:42  
And then the next one is labeling. And I'm pretty sure that I have used this for a very long time as a life and business coach, but I didn't have a term for it, and apparently the term is called labeling. And labeling is identifying and naming the emotions you are observing in the conversation. So it helps us to stay out of the fray and get all wrapped up into it. Instead, we're putting on, I mean, it's our coach's hat, right? It's our science hat, it's our observer hat, and we're trying to stay out of the emotion of the conversation, and instead, we're labeling what's going on. Let's say something's getting a little heated, and you might say it seems like you're really frustrated, or it sounds like you're concerned about. As a coach, I do this all the time. I will just observe and watch as my clients are talking, and then I'll throw out a label. It seems like you're having a lot of anxiety about this particular issue, or it seems like you maybe really don't want to do that thing, or it seems like you're having a lot of excitement about this thing. When you correctly label somebody's emotions, something really powerful happens. They feel understood, and the defensiveness will start to melt. It'll start to relax. And the beauty of this is that it doesn't matter if you get it exactly right. In a negotiation situation, especially if you label something and or you mislabel something, it can allow for the person to push back and say, actually, no, that's not it, but it gets the conversation moving, and it gets them building up more trust there. So in a buying situation, so let's say you're meeting with a buyer, and they're, you know, you have your product in their hands, and they're kind of like, yeah, I don't know. I mean maybe, and they're like, not giving you really clear feedback, and it's like, really vague, and they're not committing to anything. You could label it something like, it seems like you're hesitant to try out my product in this category or on this shelf or next to these other products. And then you wait and you find out what comes back if you mislabel. It might be like, no, that's not it actually. I'm actually thinking about, would we want to put it here? Would we want to put it here? Or it might be the truth and they're like, yeah, I am, because, right? And they're going to give you feedback because your packaging just isn't quite up to par where we need to be, or I'm concerned about your pricing, or XYZ, right? But now you have something to go on. Now you're like, okay, well, let's talk about my packaging, or let's talk about a promotional strategy, right? And so then you're able to be more of a partner with the person, because they feel really seen and really heard. The key to labeling is using tentative language, so you are not forcing something on it. You're not saying you are really hesitant. You are saying it seems like you're really hesitant, or it sounds like you're hesitant. So there's this tentativeness about it, you know, you're just being curious, and then you allow them to confirm and give you more information, or to deny and give you more information. 

Sari  18:22  
But the last one I'm going to leave you with today is what's called an accusation audit and then putting out an extreme anchor. So when you are negotiating something, whether it be to get on a store shelf, whether it be at a farmers market, and you are having a conversation with somebody who's looking at your product and they're like, I don't know. Like, it could be at a farmer's market where you are negotiating a sale with someone for your product, right? There's so many ways we are negotiating all the time, but let's just take a buyer example, an accusation audit is where you do your work at a time to identify what you think the other person might be thinking that's in the extreme. So it's kind of like worst case scenario. And what we're doing here is identifying the stinking elephant in the room, and we're naming it, and we do the work first. So much of the time we go into situations where we know that there may be thinking something that we don't want them to think, and yet we're trying to dance around it and trying to show that we're not that. And we do this whole song and dance thing. And the whole thing with the accusation audit is you've done your work ahead of time, and then you go in and you use what's called an extreme anchor. Okay, so let's say you have, you just launched your business, you have product, you're legal. You came and you did launch and grow. You are in Fuel. You're like, all right, I'm ready to go. I'm going to start approaching buyers. You have no record of sales, right? You just have your product, and you're new to the industry, so instead of trying to be something you're not, you're first going to do this accusation audit. You're going to write down things like, what could they be accusing me of? That I don't know what I'm talking about, that my product is pricing correctly, or that I'm new to the industry right, or I don't know how to be a good partner. All of which are true. So we're going to just write it down. These are things that people, buyers could potentially be thinking and then we're going to actually just come right out and say it okay. So how this would work is you would go, you're going to go have your meeting with the buyer. You're going to say something like, I know you're probably thinking, I'm a total newbie to the industry, and I have no idea what I'm doing. And you might be right. The power of this is getting probably a no, or you might get a yes, and that's okay. They might be like, yeah, I actually am thinking that, tell me more, right? And then you get an opportunity to share with them about how your inexperience isn't going to be a problem, or how you're in a membership in a community that's helping you to learn how to be a great partner. You have some mentors, or you've done this in other industries. And so you're just labeling. You're naming the the issue that they might be thinking, which is getting in the way of a yes. They could also be like, oh no, I wasn't thinking that at all. And the power of them saying no is really important, and now we're just getting over that hurdle, right? And it opens up the conversation and the power of doing this and dropping in some of these accusations that people might be thinking ahead of time, but you're just you're just getting in there, you're just naming it is that it's going to disarm them and they're going to start again to feel more trust with you. Of like, oh, they actually have thought about this. They're actually maybe seeing it from my side. And as Chris Voss says in the book, we go from self defensive to you defensive, meaning that they're actually defending you. They're like, oh, no. I don't think you're a newbie. I think I just don't know you very well, or, no, I don't. It's not that I don't think you know what you're doing. I mean, you obviously have a great product, and you're here as an example. Let's say you're at the farmers market, and you are, you know, you sampled your product, and they're like, hemming and hawing over it, and they're thinking about it. And you might say something, like, you might be thinking that this is a really expensive product. And I know some of you are like, what, we don't say that out loud. Well, they might probably be thinking that. And then they get an opportunity to be like, oh, actually, no, I wasn't thinking that. I actually think this is really valuable for the money or something like that, right? Or they might say yes, like, well, yeah, I kind of was, but then it like, at least opens the door for more conversation, instead of them just staying in their brain about it and then putting a product down and walking away. I think for me, the accusation audit, doing that thoughtfully ahead of time has been really beneficial for all types of conversations that I have had, and certainly it can help a lot with even your email marketing, your social media like stop trying to hide and pretend like people aren't maybe thinking what they're thinking, and just get it out there. And it's a little bit of a cousin to the accusation audit, but there's something called extreme anchors, and I use this all the time, and I am telling you, I used it with my landlord. I was living my year of adventure that I'm on right now, and I was living three months in the mountains, and on the day I moved in, my landlord gave me a key, but the door had like, a code on it, right? And I have absolutely no idea what happened to that key. I used it, apparently, and then I don't know what I did with it, and it was gone. And I didn't really think about it. I just kept thinking like, it's gonna show up, right? It'll show up. Well, it never showed up, and now I'm running around like a crazy person the week before I'm supposed to leave for Costa Rica, and I'm like, ah, dang it, that key. Okay, so I texted my landlord, and I'm just going to read to you the exact conversation. So I texted and I said, I have really bad news. Dot, dot, dot. And that's it. I just left it. And you could do this in conversation too, right? I have really bad news, or I'm about to blow up your day, or you are going to think I am totally crazy. So he texted back and with like, three question marks, and then I said I have no idea what I did with the key for the front door. And I did like a laughy face, and I said, do you have another copy, or can I make one? And then he was like, oh, don't worry about it. I have an extra one. No big deal, right? So I went from being like, oh, now it's going to be this whole big thing to like opening up the conversation. So I solved a problem really quickly by using an extreme anchor, where I was worried that he was going to be upset that I lost his key. And instead, I used an extreme anchor, and I kind of set his expectations that I was going to share something really bad with him, like, you know, I don't know, set something on fire or something. And then when he was like, oh, it's just the key. That's fine. I have another one. No big deal. I was kind of, I was reading the book at the time, so I used it as practice. And I'm telling you what I was like, practicing it a lot, and it works so well. And then recently, I was watching a movie, and this guy was trying to ask this girl out. And he did it. He did it an extreme anchor. And I was like, oh my gosh, there it is, righ there. It was something like, you're probably gonna think I'm totally crazy, but I would love to ask you out, right? I'd love to take you to this thing. And what it does is it puts the person right? The girl, in this case, she's like, What? No, I don't think you're crazy, right? It's like, no, no. And then when he asked her, then she was like, oh, okay, sure, yeah, I can do that, right? And so it's an amazing strategy that I highly recommend you start practicing and learning how to do it in a way that doesn't feel like super manipulative, but it is going to disarm the other person and allow there to be space for you to start negotiating and asking for what it is you really want. Alright, so those are the strategies and tactics I wanted to be sure and share with you. Like I said, there are more in the book, and they are really powerful. So go get this book. This is one of the most powerful books you can own as a business owner and practice. And come back to and like I said, do use my little cheater of going on AI and asking it to write a response to something that's happened, an email or a conversation, and just see what it comes up with, and see where it feels authentic for you to just do some tweaking of your verbiage, to help put the other person at ease, to help build more trust, to build more empathy, and that is how you start getting more of what you want. And you might be thinking that I am overly salesy, always talking about Fuel and coming and joining us there, but I'm going to make one more offer to you to come and get inside the bonus call, where we are going to talk more about wholesale strategies, what you need to do to be able to approach a buyer, what you need to know, things to be prepared with. And you're going to get my negotiation cheat sheet. To join us, go to foodbizsuccess.com/fuel. And if you're listening to this the week it comes out that means that Fuel is closing very soon, so don't wait. All right until next time, have an amazing week. 

Sari  28:26  
The smartest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to invest in a who to help you with the how to speed up your journey and help you skip the line. When you are ready for more support and accountability to finally get this thing done, you can work with me in two ways. Get me all to yourself with one on one business coaching, or join Food Business Success, which includes membership inside Fuel our community of food business founders, that includes monthly live group coaching calls and so much more. It's one of my favorite places to hang out, and I would love to see you there. Go to foodbiz success.com to start your journey towards your own food business success.