Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know Quotes

“The Thirty-three Rules • Every negotiation is an agreement between two or more parties with all parties having the right to veto—the right to say “no.” • Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective. • Results are not valid goals. • Money has nothing to do with a valid mission and purpose. • Never, ever, spill your beans in the lobby—or anywhere else. • Never enter a negotiation—never make a phone call—without a valid agenda. • The only valid goals are those you can control: behavior and activity. • Mission and purpose must be set in the adversary’s world; our world must be secondary. • Spend maximum time on payside activity and minimum time on nonpayside activity. • You do not need it. You only want it. • No saving. You cannot save the adversary. • Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary. • All action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action. • Always show respect to the blocker. • All agreements must be clarified point by point and sealed three times (using 3+). • The clearer the picture of pain, the easier the decision-making process. • The value of the negotiation increases by multiples as time, energy, money, and emotion are spent. • No talking. • Let the adversary save face at all times. • The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary will never see. • A negotiation is only over when we want it to be over. • “No” is good, “yes” is bad, “maybe” is worse. • Absolutely no closing. • Dance with the tiger. • Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness (Emerson). • Paint the pain. • Mission and purpose drive everything. • Decisions are 100 percent emotional. • Interrogative-led questions drive vision. • Nurture. • No assumptions. No expectations. Only blank slate. • Who are the decision makers? Do you know all of them? • Pay forward.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Be ready to walk away. Remember, you only want this deal, you do not need this deal.”
― Jim Camp, Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“treat every warm call as though it’s the coldest one you ever made. When emotions run hot and heavy in negotiations, the high-pitched voice is a sure sign of need. The rushed delivery is another sure sign. While needy negotiators raise their voices, negotiators under control lower their voices. So lower your voice in times of inner turmoil. Slow down.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Should you simply walk away, no hard feelings? Whatever your decision, it will be a good one, because you have retained control of the negotiation.”
― Jim Camp, Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Whether we like it or not, it really is a jungle out there in the world of business, and it’s crawling with predators. In my work I often use the image “dance with the tiger,” because the tiger is viewed or even worshiped around the world as the ultimate predator. To dance well—to negotiate well—we must hear the music, we must feel the music, we must be tuned in to our partner—our “adversary”—at all times,”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“If you’re not working on behalf of your own mission and purpose, you’re working on behalf of someone else’s.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“being right is very important to most of us. It is a powerful need, and like all needs, it must be overcome.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“in order to blank slate you’re probably going to have to give up some habits that you may think are beneficial but are hurting you in more ways than you can imagine. I’ve already pointed out some of the dangers of neediness. Another danger of neediness of any kind is that it interferes with blank slating. So does the fear of hearing “no” and the fear of failing. Obviously the tendency of some of us to “know it all” interferes with blank slating, because if we know it all, why bother to listen?”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“if our own mission and purpose is too cloudy, we make it difficult for our adversary to make a decision? The same thing goes with questions.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“We’ve all been to social functions where someone seems to know it all, and he makes the ridiculous assumption that people enjoy hearing him unload his vast stores of knowledge. But what really happens when you find yourself trapped in that situation with that guy? For one thing, you may feel unokay and get a little defensive and resentful and turn him off entirely. How seriously do you take him? How much do you remember of what he said? Talk about a bad assumption: His assumption that you’ll be impressed by all his talking literally takes him out of the game.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“If you can’t keep from talking, you won’t be able to blank slate.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“They know that what is really said and what we actually hear during a negotiation is far more important than what we allow ourselves to think while others talk. In order to blank slate effectively, the little voice in our own heads must be silent.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“He was able to hear the world say “no” to him in the form of failed experiments;”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Discipline is difficult. But without discipline, you will never be a great negotiator.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“you are so dedicated to goals over which you have control, so oblivious to anything over which you don’t have control, and so free of neediness that expectations shouldn’t even enter into the equation.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“The essential problem is that they are I-centered. They are set in the world of the individual building the mission and purpose. This is why they are 100 percent invalid and worthless for any person, business, or negotiation.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“What you had to say was important to this individual, and she or he wanted to listen. Just to be listened to can bring good thoughts to mind.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“You or your company may well have many M&Ps, because you have one for almost every major task you undertake, and for many seemingly minor tasks as well. You have the overall mission and purpose for your business or enterprise. You have a second mission and purpose for your negotiation with a specific adversary. Within that negotiation you have yet other layers of mission and purpose, each of which guides the decision making at that point. In complicated, high-stakes negotiations, my clients may have a written mission and purpose for almost every phone call to anyone on the other side. No kidding. And each, of course, is set in the world of the adversary.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Stop Trying to
Control the Outcome Focus on Your Behavior
and Actions Instead”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Winning isn’t everything, but the will to prepare to win is everything.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“you’re scorekeeping, and scorekeeping means you’re thinking about results over which you have no real control.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“History and experience should tell each and every one of us, time and time again, that having wealth and/or power as the aim in life will destroy any individual (and many other people, in some instances).”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“My purpose here isn’t to elevate your success regardless, but simply to provide you with the opportunity to do so.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“The mission and purpose is not self-evident. If you work for yourself and do not have one in place, you are working at a great disadvantage. You’re just as vulnerable to working and negotiating on behalf on an invalid mission and purpose as is an employee at a giant, faceless multinational corporation. You must begin to develop one immediately.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“People who are unhappy and frustrated in their work either have invalid mission and purposes—“I want to make a million dollars before I’m twenty-one”—or they don’t have one and are serving someone else’s, and some part of them understands this at some deep level.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Why would you want to load down a business relationship with a lot of emotional baggage, including guilt, which can be the by-product of “friendship”? It doesn’t work. It doesn’t pay.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Making decisions based on a sense that the adversary seeks your friendship is misguided. They would much prefer your effectiveness.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“I’m inclined to give credence to the theories of learning that suggest we humans need about eight hundred hours to truly master a complex concept and the habits necessary for its application.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“many problems relate to the major categories of my system: Who are their decision makers? What’s their pain? What’s their budget?”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“The only agenda that is valid for purposes of negotiation is the one that has been negotiated with the adversary.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know