Andres Lares: Navigating High-Stakes Negotiations

the best way to find out what someone cares about is you offer it and then when you take it away you find out hey everyone welcome back to make it happen mondays where we talk about sales business entrepreneurship personal growth mental health and everything in between with guests who i truly respect and i think make a positive impact on the world around us now today's conversation is with andreas lares now he is the managing partner at shapiro negotiations institute and co-author of the book persuade the four-step process to influence people and decisions his expertise ranges from coaching live negotiations for sports clients like the cleveland browns bookland nets and more and he's developed a ton of online content and he's even a guest speaker at john hopkins university and teaches the sports negotiation course this conversation was a master class in negotiation so if you are interested in upping your game on negotiations you're gonna want to listen to this one we got into his four-step process of building credibility engaging emotions demonstrating logic and facilitating action but more importantly i validated a lot of the stuff that i trained on negotiations quite frankly you know i shared with him how we what we teach and how we teach it and it was right in line with his mentality so i was super curious to make sure i validated what i was doing but also learn a lot from it as well so hope you enjoy this conversation as much as i did let's make it happen andreas welcome to make it happen monday podcast my friend how you doing thank you doing well how you doing i'm doing well like we were talking i was a little little snafu this morning had to take my daughter's school in an uber because i'd pop my tire which is not exactly my finest moment it was actually right next to my house too so it's not even like i you know there's a pothole or anything it was my own dumb fault but other than that things are going great well pretty nice of you living a day and age where you can call a you know a taxi replacement on your phone and do it right well what happened 20 years ago so at least you got that going for you exactly that's why there's uh there's a book called i don't know if you've ever read the book by uh matthew mcconnell it's called green lights and the whole i know it yeah put it on your list man it's awesome it's it's he i mean unless you're like hate matthew mcconnell if you know how can you hate the guy that's my point right so he actually this is where i recommend listening to it because he talks he it's oh he's the narrator oh yeah and it's his life story and the whole concept is you know he talks about all this shit that happens to him throughout his life that a lot of people would look at his red lights like oh well he's me i can't believe that happened but in retrospect it's a green light because if that didn't happen then he wouldn't be where he is today type of thing so the concept is you know i used to say to people and i and i wish i never said this because i now know how insensitive it is which is you know everything happens for a reason right i think that's bullshit because you know you tell the people in ukraine or whatever it is everything happens for a reason like really okay but i think if you look at it and say you know if you look hard enough there's a silver lining to almost every situation that's i think a better way of looking at it and that's what green lights is all about so it's like no matter how bad that thing happened like green light you know maybe something came up because maybe i was supposed to you know maybe i was going to get in an accident on the way to work you know drop my daughter off and i was in an uber instead so yeah i think it's it's you know that life is about the the way you respond to things and how you see them more than anything right i mean exactly i think more and more i'll see people say you know life is hard you know that's just kind of a reality that maybe people weren't willing to say before but the realities it is yeah it's just how you respond right everyone's gonna have tough things happen to them and so some are i guess as you know as you said go through it as a green light and some is a red light that's the difference love it so let's uh let's get into this you know we're going to talk about negotiations for everybody listening today uh because andreas wrote a beautiful book on this and that's what we're going to be talking about in detail because i think negotiations now is more important than ever um but uh before we do that andreas i always like to know the the kind of the your your origin story here not just your work story that everybody can look at on linkedin even though i do have some questions uh because it sounds like you're it looks like you're an eagles fan so that'll be fun uh but uh but talk to me like growing up uh family where you're coming from and kind of where'd you get the itch to to you know get into sales or business and those type of things so give us a little context here for sure so i you know the the name of this is is venezuelan so obviously uh you know it starts there so i was born there when i was young we moved to canada as a family um and then all the way to kind of the college or is in canada it's called undergrad so i've got it's a process and process and you know i've got to do some American translation here um so and then i came down to grad school in the states i went to a high university and that's kind of how i i got to the states and i've been here ever since so um it's been you know a good almost two decades now here and so hopefully you don't hear an accent anymore but uh so and then as far as getting into sport well you know you run up the eagle so uh i i went to i came to the states for grad school i would work in sports and so i think one of the best things that happened to me in grad school is i realized that working in sports it's such a big field so it isn't just working for teams with agencies and there's teams and there's organizations and there's you know there's so much there and so i happened to actually end up at shapiro negotiations about uh what now 15 years ago and so i worked here for about seven years under the founder which is the reason i came a gentleman named ron shapiro who was a very successful sports agent uh lawyer civil rights attorney so we did a lot of things and as he's the reason i came and then about seven years ago as he was taking a step back i took over with that with a partner jeff cochran and so now we brought it up for the last almost eight years so uh this was kind of accidental i came for the sports piece and the sports piece is still there it's still very much part of our you know kind of a evolution story and what we do we still work in it but the real growth has been in just because if you think about it's kind of crazy to say this but sports teams were actually pretty small i mean it sounds shocking to people but they might be worth two three four five billion now but as far as like large companies if you look at like the boeings and googles and sher williams bank of americas and pwcs type of clients you work with you know they're in minuscule so that's kind of where the real growth is and so hopefully there's a hybrid permanently for us because that's kind of the best the best case theory for us so what what aspect of negotiations did you get into with the sports side of the house was it like contract negotiations for like player contracts or what like walk me through like what aspect of negotiations was specific to the sports arena for sure so and that'll take us to the eagles piece so the eagles piece i was uh work on the salary cap side and contract negotiation side okay and so and i wouldn't say i was an eagle fan before that but i i definitely you know became a fan in the sense that some of the folks are still there and and so i was uh i had two really incredible bosses while i was there so one that's still there and so i'm uh i'm i'm not a quasi eagles fan as a result you're gonna have to be like if you're not a fan of like i always tell people like you can't sell what you don't believe in right exactly like if you didn't believe if you if you hated the eagles it would have been a terrible job exactly yeah um and so and that lingers because having it you know i've been very fortunate i've pretty good bosses of my entire career and hopefully some people can say the same way out of them but i would say those experiences that you realize how fortunate you are and how much of a difference that makes in your professional career and so you know that's kind of why i'm still a fan if you will but uh so that was the the contract side salary cap side and that's kind of where it continued and so uh when i came to s and i in the first place was for that so really the focus was on helping teams in the really the kind of say three of the four major leagues so it was a little bit less hockey but basketball for sure football and baseball is helping teams negotiate player contracts so that is kind of our focus we did some trade work and some contract work and then as time went on we started to evolve on the sales side some sponsorship sales especially some of the dollars i mean 15 years ago they weren't anything what they are now like a jersey patch deals you know a stadium right through you're talking tens hundreds of millions of dollars easily for some of these major leagues and so they started to realize hey like what's what's one two three five percent more on these deals you know it's easily worth getting some some help and so that's kind of the space that we opened up in and so that's we still kind of play both of those we do the player contract trade stuff and we do the sponsorship side uh that's kind of our main work on the sports side hey i hope you're enjoying the conversation so far i want to take a quick minute to share with you what i'm working on these days with my new jb sales membership it includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses which are filling the funnel and driving a close to cover all aspects of the sales process it also includes monthly workshops that'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat gvt and how to leverage ai throughout the entire sales process finally the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip i've ever done and as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners if you go to jbarrows.com click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout you'll get 25 off now let's get back to the conversation do i'm just my own pure curiosity here do players do many of them negotiate their own contracts like how what percentage has shifted over the years of players who kind of because one of my favorite players in football american football is teddy bruski and one of the reasons i love teddy bruski is because he he was a dedicated hometown kid he was his own negotiating like he negotiated his own stuff now did he get taken advantage of probably right could he have got a lot more maybe and he only got an agent towards the end when he got injured like when he got hurt right to negotiate a little bit better for him so what have you seen a shift like are there like does everybody have an agent now or are there still um people who don't and is it a better or worse negotiation when somebody's representing themselves so yeah it's an interesting there's a lot there and i think so it started with not a lot having agents because the dollars weren't there right so if you look at the evolution of sports no one had an agent i mean even before that there wasn't even collective bargaining so they had no power and they were basically getting screwed right so you're like that's the beginning of sport and the dollars start to rise people start to realize hey and actually ron was our founder was really a big part of that so baseball started getting agents so he worked on uh you know some a lot of hall of famers early on kind of the you know 70s and 80s when that rise really occurred and so the dollars started to come around but his biggest deal early i was a million dollars to give you a sense a lot like any murray billion dollar deal i think he was the first deferred contract or any compensation was deferred that was a million dollars right that's that's 10 times less than the average player makes in the nba in it i mean just to put into perspective like it's not you know so um and he's all a fan player but so that's that they started now then everyone went to an agent and then now there's a few that are i would say there's still a very small percentage and i think the reason is if you think about an agent making let's call it two to five percent just for kind of generalization and if you think about it two or five percent almost think of what i said earlier you know can i can i help a team get more than two to five percent more and the answer is easily yes i'm really good at what i do so the agent's the same you think about the role of the agent there's a couple things actually that so the biggest loss for me is an agent in any space real estate agent sports agent i mean any agent of any type having a lawyer in a negotiation when you're dealing with mna for example it's that you can be kind of the good cop bad cop i don't mean in a tactical way i mean there's some things that are very difficult to say i'm worth this much to say with is a difficult thing to say that with conviction right not to mention if you're an amazing athlete that doesn't necessarily make you an amazing business person doesn't mean you're not but those are really independent things and so i think just the mere having an agent a very good agent in my opinion and i'm on the other side and we're a team so i i should be incentivized to say the opposite can definitely make their money's worth and then some not to mention all the other services if you think about the relationships they have with every gm so they they kind of know maybe ahead of time they can be aware of some things that you would never know as an as as a player so that's i would say um we're probably going to see some but we're not going to see a lot more because i think people realize i mean the dollars at stake are really significant the and and if you get screwed you get screwed you know what i mean and now you're stuck with something that you have to then deal with whether it's the team and then they can do whatever they want with you and move you wherever they want or whatever it's it's kind of like real estate again i always kind of used to shit on real estate agents now don't get me wrong most real estate agents i don't think are worth their shit but the good ones absolutely because i i always had a problem with that from a negotiation standpoint because i'm like wait a minute i'm trying to get a lower price for the house that i want to buy and if i get a lower price your commission is going to be less and i trained like for me personally i'm like i train negotiations so i i'm gonna pay you to negotiate for me with no incentive to get a better price i'm like i just did but when they when they're the agent who actually knows the area knows the details like that type of that's a totally different story if they're coming with that you know with knowledge of of the market and what's going on and what's real and what's not to educate me that's a totally different story but almost every agent i've had from a real estate agent i've just been like what the fuck's the point here why are we having this like why why am i paying you um so it's interesting to see which ones kind of push because with the so on that on that front what attracted you to negotiations just in general like what attracted you to like do you enjoy it did you kind of grow up as as somebody who who enjoyed negotiating as a kid like how did how did you come to this as a profession for yourself besides the fact that you know you're just general evolution there was it something that attracted you so it's interesting because i think the uh i want to be a general manager in sports and so that's kind of the direction i want i want to grad school that was it the eagles that was it that was my track and i thought the working for rod here was going to be essentially kind of a a step and now we both kind of agreed it was a stepping stone that i'd be here for a period of time where he needs to help with some deals they were negotiating and i was you know starting off basically supporting him and what i realized is that it was kind of the two parts and i enjoyed the negotiating component a lot more than i thought because you didn't that doesn't even at grad school didn't exist as like uh that's a that's a job you could have you're like wait what uh so that's the first and then the second was that this allowed me to work with a lot of different teams different sports and i realized i prefer that to the constant working for one team now some of the teams we work with we've been doing for a year i mean more than a decade so i am as passionate as they are and i feel as high or as low when they win and lose but it's distributed across a bunch of leagues and so to me that's the piece that you know that was most so it was the combination of the two and then i think part of it is i didn't feel this way that uncomfortable but of course i came to learn from ron and there's i mean i could have the whole session with you about some of the things that i learned but a couple of the biggest ones are about listening and so i think people think negotiators are these you know smooth talkers and slick talkers same as sales right oh sales people are slick so i do you realize that's not what they are and then i hate to use the stereotype of the you know the used car salesperson but that kind of concept but i think it's the exact opposite like you get to a large complex technical sale it is not about that at all it's a simple thing prepared being prepared asking great questions and proposing a solution that really has empathy for the other side gives them some of what they want to to make it work for both parties it's a simple recipe but very very rarely followed and so i think that's kind of what attracts me to it i love it and what what what do you like most about and we'll dig into some of the details here but what do you like most about negotiations and i and i ask that because my mentor jeff hoffman right he's he's one of the best sales professionals i've ever come across in my entire life he literally like loves the like the negotiation like he loves the game of it he loves closing the deal he loves kicking the shit out of his competition you know what i mean those type of things and it's always in the best interest of the client obviously he's not trying to screw him at all and he's and he's doing it for the right but he loves the game now for me i don't love the game of negotiations i don't like the back and the foot like i'm a super transparent negotiator i'm like look this is how it makes sense if it doesn't make sense just tell me stop playing games here don't ghost me i'll tell you what i can do and i can't what i can't do but i don't get off by negotiating so for you what is what is your favorite aspect of negotiations and i i probably we need to define what your definition of negotiations actually is to get there so and i think you know for negotiation of this we started to have to kind of get into just a little bit because we the two big things we focus on negotiation and influencing and so you know where do you get to separate and influence you're almost compelling someone to do something versus negotiating is typically something that both parties want so there's kind of a you know a trade whether it's dollars for a service dollars for a product you know or prize for product whatever it may be and so i think for me um it's it's actually a little bit less about the actual negotiating component more my favorite part is the consulting others like advising others on negotiations usually kind of the bigger ones and the reason is it's less so being in the trenches with but it's it's that people like you see these trends and it makes it super easy to have an impact on people just because you're a little bit kind of objective and outside of it and so i'll give you an example so i feel like 85 or more of the time that we're advising on large deals the timeline when i ask people like when do you think this negotiation is going to end what's what's the time it'll look like to you literally at least 85 of the time i will tell them and in fact the time will be one two three or like two three four x longer it's they think of me oh we're almost oh we're almost ready here john we're about to get this done you know i we're about two weeks away and i'm like this is probably a month and a half away and you're at least three or four back and forth so what happens that first step is hey you have to learn that negotiation is a process not an event that's the first piece and people don't believe like no no he's already said this is his best and final like yeah people say a lot of things you know that's number one and then the other is that objective piece of it to me is kind of the enjoyable one where that's where the experience comes in after 15 years and you see some of these trends they're not predictable right so i'm not you know a prophet that says oh this is going to land here and there but there's definitely some common threads and so to be able to kind of impart those and to see the impact on people when they now change their strategy because you've been able to say look i know you think you're one move away but you're actually three so i want you to think of that when you make your next move and then when they counter they're like oh my gosh thank god and it isn't you know it isn't this amazing incredible thing it's just kind of seeing the common thread so that's that the advising of others for those ones are is really kind of what wakes me up and i get excited about like that and i you know i think that's the biggest misconception with especially young sales or young negotiators if you will is that it's an event and i always tell reps if you think negotiation starts with the price you've already lost like negotiation literally starts from the minute you and i start having this conversation for sure i don't i'm not talking the sleazy negotiation it's a give get process so i'll actually for context here i'll give you a kind of an outline of our negotiation training and i'd love your perspective on it because ultimately the way that we position it is negotiation about gives and gets right and the quality of those gives and gets and the problem is most sales reps and arts are givers right we give give give give give give give and we expect one very big get in return at the end and by then we've conditioned the prospect to keep treating us be like treat us poorly and keep asking for shit right but on the flip side if we get everything but we don't give anything that's usually when we're column fodder and we're you know a vendor they've already made their choice to go with somebody else and we get happy ears and we wonder why they ghost us at the end so we go through this process of outlining what are all the gifts what are all the things that your clients ask of you right they want information they want discounts on proposals they want all this stuff and then we prioritize it easy to give away hard to give away so there's 20 things on the list one to 20 and we flip it over in the gets decision process timeline you know sign contract that type of seven then we prioritize that early to late so now i got one to 21 to 20 and then we match it up so when somebody asks for five ask for five return ten ten return right and we score a deal so we try to make it as objective as possible so you can kind of need a full list and again it's not perfect it's not every single time and it's not you you don't have to get all 20 and give all 20 but it's an objective view because i find negotiations a lot of times is wrapped in subjectivity like your feelings about things and those type of things so how do you try to make negotiations from your standpoint objective and try to remove the emotion out of it what's your approach there yeah and i think a couple of things really i love that i think what you you know what you just talked about i think it works and i think the probably the biggest impact is the process of doing that of writing down all the things that that you care about that you want from them kind of those jets and then all the things that you think that they're going to want and value or that you know that they want to value because of what they've told you just that process alone will already make you better and just step one and then the fact that you're making an objective or trying your best to i mean so certainly that's effective and i think in line with some of the things that we do too so i think that works really well i think the you know the the biggest piece though is about or one overarching piece of a mindset too and so we could talk about having stockholm syndrome and you said you know they're that sales people are often the givers and of course they're they're kind of aiming to please right the idea is it's a bit like the agent you talked about earlier for real estate as if you think about okay you know what would i rather get this deal at five percent less margin than not get it at all okay yes ten percent fifteen what's that number now of course there's some number where they're saying okay no or my boss is going to kill me if i do this but you know with stockholm syndrome generally you're thinking okay you know i hear only as you said condition i only hear if i'm selling to john john's never going to say oh man this that is a hell of a deal i mean you really reasonably priced this i appreciate that you're much cheaper than the competitors i was looking at you're never going to hear that even if you're literally the by far the best value they're going to say john i wish i could do it i just need a little bit more i need an extra free month i need whatever and so we get conditioned but here's the crazy part that people don't realize and it sounds like you're certainly addressing this too and yours is what we do is we think we're doing john a favor john you know what i can give you that extra month if we're thinking man we are really going to and john's going to love me for it but what's actually happening is john's oh okay he's got an extra month to give so what do you think is happening the next round the next year when you renegotiate it's no longer an extra month now it's two extra months because you gave me one extra month last time and so it's incredible that we are complaining about the pressures we get from the other side but we are actually conditioning that to occur even more and so i think it's uh so yeah what you said really kind of hits on with what you see all the time and so you know because now we know that happens that it's about managing expectations the best negotiators manage expectations and it goes back to what you said around okay so those that these are the given gets i get the planning of that out then now you start making trades then the days of john asking for something without me getting something in return are over and the moment that you think of negotiating that way you're already you know in the top quartile of negotiators by far so how do you avoid quid pro quo though because i find that quid pro quo tends to get contentious right where it's just like i'll do this if and we talk about a slight nuance of reciprocity which is when somebody asks for something there's kind of this yeah and i'm sure you've read influence by robert gialdini um i don't know if you have you read that book with you know the whole it's the first book source in our book persuade i mean he's right so so reciprocity right when somebody asks for something there's that fleeting moment that they actually feel obligated to give you something in return and if you ask for right then and there then you usually get it right so we try to work that so it's like hey i'm thrilled to give you that and the nuance is look i'm i want to give you exactly what you're looking for and it and not but and in order for me to do that this is what i need in return from you right so it's like i'm now what i'm what i'm asking from you is actually in your best interest to give me so i can give you exactly what you're looking for but then there's the need for uh quid pro quo which is look i just can't sign that contract unless you're gonna yeah i just can't give you that discount unless you're gonna sign the contract right so where do you stand on quid pro quo which i think most negotiations is actually fundamentally trained on is quid pro quo so where what's your stance on that so i think the um you know some of it can't be avoided but i'd say the the best way to not necessarily get around that but do it in a more strategic fashion is to is to be negotiating more than one thing at a time so if you think about the two things that happen is there's kind of a deal fatigue if you're doing okay john i can do this if you do that and then you get to the next one i can do this if you do that and so when you got 15 points like we're both tired and we just like at some point i'm either gonna walk away you're done with it and like okay i can't go to my boss seven more tonight you know it's just kind of a tiring experience so instead if you're thinking about and certainly this would complement very well when you talked about having your list their list okay let's work through multiple items at a time and so now you've got two or three rounds for eight things rather than eight rounds and so and that also becomes strategic because i want to go back to something you said when you're ranking yours and ranking theirs right the best negotiators the focus is on these are the three things that i value a lot that don't cost you very much and these are the three things that you value a lot that don't cost me very much and you're training for those and so now you're thinking strategically rallying the concept of quick pro quo awesome gets like line item number two line item number two and then like for example you fought really hard and the thing that you got back is it worth much you only did it just to make sure you got something because you kind of felt like you needed to and then when you take a step back you know why did that why did that happen and so i think if you're negotiating or multiple things at one time that can help less rounds that can help be more strategic and that helps to align it i think in a way that there's going to be more value for both parties do you put things in your nego do you put things in your quote contracts or whatever that aren't really that important to you that you know they're going to ask for and you're willing to give up just to kind of show a little bit of a give because i i used to do that early like as kind of like for a dumb example here is you know i used to put net 20 terms so every you know here in the net 30 terms right so i would put net 20 in there just because it would be something they would always redline right and i'd be like well hey as a small business owner here you know net 30 is really net 45 so i put net 20 in there so it's closer to net 30 blah blah blah but i didn't give a shit it was just to make sure that i gave especially the contract negotiator stuff but that was when i was younger and kind of playing games so do you do you have do you put those things purposely in contracts for instance knowing that you're okay with giving those things away so i don't and actually a very similar kind of story to you and we had a couple that were like that and i would say for for me you know there's i'm the one he's literally going out telling people that it's a process not an event but i'd say for us we're very straight shoes in the sense that we've actually i'll give you an example so our contracts you know we're working with companies that are much larger than us right like fortune 5000 types and we will structure the contract in a way it's fair it's actually as likely as possible to be accepted by the other party and we'll tell them up front is like like for example intellectual property protection and confidentiality for both sides are super strong and the point is i'm trying to make your life easier so the approach is rather than like you know and so that makes it so that when they say oh can you do this then i would i would i bring up the fact that the contract is very fair they know and even when they say it or not like i get you and so that i think it also makes it a lot faster because for these these are already like you know especially some industries like pharma and aerospace these are already massive msa and so do i want this thing to take six months to negotiate or a month and so i think we kind of streamline that but i did start there because of that now i will say we do advise sometimes our clients if they don't have a lot of things to negotiate we might advise that right you only have two or three key negotiables you're trying to grow the pie have a couple of other things that not ridiculous but okay are fringe benefits but okay you've got now you know an extra fourth and fifth negotiable because that's the thing you're only going to go to one or two things it feels like a fixed pie right like i'm it's a it's a pie that do you want two slices and i get three or you get three i'm getting two and so then the problem is that it's hard to collaborate because it just feels like every dollar out of my pocket is going into yours so to grow the pie that's that's one of the things we will on some occasions do that yeah put some stuff in so yeah i mean and that it's it always cracks me up like it seems like legal and procurement don't understand the like it because i remember like my first when my first company we did outsourced it services to the smb market right so not huge negotiations but we dealt with people's infrastructure right so if we screwed something up i could put you out of business you know this was way back before cloud and everything else so like servers on site if i burned your server down your business was over basically right so one day like my cfo came to me with this 12 page msa and i'm like calvin what the fuck i'm like dude like this is like five thousand like three thousand dollars a month of it like if i put that in front of their legal team they're gonna laugh me out of and he was like nope we have to protect ourselves at against all costs and the and i tried to debate with him about this but he was draconian about it and and i literally lost 10 i had to lose 10 deals where i would have a great relationship with the client everything was going good got him to agree and then i would give him this contract and i would get emails back like uh what the fuck is this like i'm not even going to read this because it wasn't just 12 pages it was 12 pages in like two phones you know what i mean and i'm like can't we be reasonable here can't we just look at it and say let's make this as easy as possible for them and just assume that they're not going to immediately negotiate with us and screw us out of stuff because i think it it i don't know why but why did why does certain roles start so far like anchor so far out so like why is that it's an old school tactic or is it a mentality like why why do they start like here's everything i want and then okay i'll finally give up to this exactly you're like wait why did you not start more recently so it's funny because um this i think i live this they're very similar we had a bunch of different attorneys supportive so the last 15 well more eight because our founder was a lawyer so we didn't even but um so what's interesting is when it's an outside of attorney that we worked with and now we kind of have someone specifically focused on us that was kind of lesson learned was it was there's two parts there was one that it was me not necessarily managing that role well and the other side is the fact that they're like their job is to protect themselves and protect us and so we think that's if that's all they think about then it kind of makes sense because like you know they're giving you the laundry list of stuff but what happens i we get these agreements back and you know our head of sales would give an agreement back with like 500 red lines and this seems to you i cannot take this back to the client we're going to lose the deal immediately and so what happened is some of it was i think their way of thinking and some just weren't a good fit like they were used to councils for other deals that where you could pull that kind of thing off or here like if the negotiation cycle six weeks like there's a maximum number of things that you can put in but the second is i learned to manage those roles a lot better same as an agent i mean it brought up real estate agent in the beginning so i have a real estate agent i love we bought a bunch of properties with and so i advise on the strategy of negotiation and he executes it but like everything else i trust him he's incredible comps and experience and all these things but they'll i'll make some tweaks and he he doesn't take it as an insulting thing he other way around if anything he says he uses that elsewhere when he negotiates for other clients and i think the same with the attorney it was actually i wasn't managing the attorney well in the sense that now we said okay i want you to give me the things that you're absolutely adamant we need to have and then i want you to give me the things so it's the absolutes and then the nice to haves and then the kitty bonus and then that way we could pick as a company okay there's 30 things that he's listed but these four we need to have these you know 15 are really good to have and then these are kind of hey if you care about any of these things just be aware and i think it was it was really we'll learn to manage it and it's a lot of it was actually on me and on us that you know because that's the mentality you want because the thing is you can't do the other if the lawyer doesn't point it out you're never even going to be aware and so i think it's their job to do it but then you've got to kind of find a way to streamline that so it's reasonable so it was less learned for me for sure i certainly made mistakes along the way and so you know i think i've learned to manage it better yeah and it's also about i think when you involve them too in the sense that i you know to your point of lawyer's going to do what a lawyer's going to do procurement's going to do but procurement's going to do without context they're going to cross every t dot every i cancel everything that's going to put them at risk and that's why like so many sales reps are scared of procurement like i was early in my career i'd be like oh man i i literally i'm going to develop a champion here internally so that my champion can beat up procurement because i literally don't want to even talk to procurement because they get out of me because they negotiate better than me but now i realize how important it is to actually include procurement earlier in the process or you know legal earlier in the process to say hey let them be part of this so they understand it because i mean what would any of us do usually what happens is a vp of sales am i right vp of sales and we negotiate right we go back and forth and we are okay cool we're going to do this and then the vp of sales comes to the procurement dumps a contract on their plate and says hey get this done by the end of the month and they are you know next day it's like with no context okay red line red line red line red line red line but it's like hey can we bring them in earlier can we like because once they they can then become your advocate for sure right so i think it's that's the most under you know that's like uh you know um so that we do some trading in the pharma space for example that's the same as the gatekeeper that the best reps in medical device pharmaceuticals realize that is a really critical ally and the same with procurement right and so and the best part is if you're the only one that does that that gets them involved early and there's three other competitors are getting them involved last minute who do you think here was kind of more want to work with and the reality is and you said something earlier about you know kind of emotions and i think you cannot remove emotion from selling from negotiating nor should you but you have to manage it it uses the user to your advantage and so that's a perfect example this procurement person a want to be thrown something at the end and then kind of minimize and get this done immediately and in lack of any empowerment whatsoever or do you want to work with them in advance and power them in a genuine way so then okay one of the things that are important to them can you find a way to structure it so you get a couple that wins for them because look they're trying to look good at their role too it's not just the vp of sales trying to hire the best sales trainer it's also the procurement person that they've kind of validate why they exist and they have their own processes to follow so do you want to find out those processes a month before or when you've got 36 hours to get the deal done so i mean it's funny because these things are so simple but that's the thing earning your career it's like oh this is kind of scary i'd rather i'd rather my eternal champion deal with this than me and the thing is your eternal champion needs help otherwise they may not get done well and also what people don't understand is that procurement is actually on the hook if they water down the contract so much that they don't get the value from that contract that they were expecting so it's not like they just redline it and say piss off we got the best deal here if they redline it so much that the overall value or the relationship is diminished from what was originally discussed and therefore when they implement that solution because of things that had to get taken out or whatever it might be it ends up not being a good solution for the business procurement is actually on the hook for that just as much as the decision maker is right yep yep and i think that's the because look at these things don't happen in the vacuum at the end of the day the business leader if they're really frustrated you don't get the impact then you go back and yeah we removed x and y from the scope because you wanted a 20 reduction in price or we removed you know any of integrations with your technology because your it didn't like it well there's a consequence to that and so being aware of that and so i think yeah i mean certainly starting earlier gives you the chance to do that and actually it's funny because i used to find the longer processes super painful but the reality is the other way around now we started earlier and they're going to go longer but we find this i mean we do not lose any agreements based on the contract now because there's enough time so like when people say oh i want training in uh three weeks you know if it's a fortune 500 that ain't happening because i unless you can tell me that you're going to get this signed in three days and so then now it's okay great now as long as you build enough timeline but again i think once we start we are very confident that we're not going to get displaced because we can make some internal allies throughout including procurement including it including so the holistic thinking is the only way to do it but it does require more prep so then yeah because i think we both agree obviously that's the way to go but i think the reason it's not done is requires more prep you got to think about procurement you got to think of your decision maker you got to think of the other stakeholders and you got to have a strategy for each of them and so it's just a lot easier to just kind of push it through at home and so that's that's why it's not done it just takes yeah and i think someone is to so many people these days are so transactional in nature that they're just trying to like i'd get the deal done whatever it is and they don't look at it as hey let's let's kind of holistically look at where we're at right now and what we're both trying to accomplish at this point and and look and and educating i mean where are you with kind of challenger sale type of thing as far as lead versus follow right whereas it's like hey this is like when things go well because i i've dealt with you know that scorecard that we're talking about one of the more interesting approaches that i saw a company semantic as a matter of fact use with that scorecard when early days when i was part of bash the company basho was they would outline every give get right like and i'm talking like 50 or 60 in it like a multi-million dollar deal and then they even went so far as to job costing each one so they said okay well this give is this role and that's how much time it's going to take and therefore x amount of dollars right and they walk into situations and legitimately say all right andres um here's the deal we've mapped out kind of the buying and the selling process here and here's all the things that you're typically going to want from us here's all the things that we're going to need from you and here's all the people on your side that are going to be involved and here's all the people on our side and when things go well it typically takes this and this is what happens and by the way that's probably going to give or take cost you about 20 30 grand just to help make this decision and it's probably going to cost us 20 to 30 grand to help you make that decision and that's when things go well right and i was sitting there like holy shit like i don't know if i'd have the balls to walk into a client and say hey it's going to cost you about 20 30 grand just to help make the decision with us and by the way that's when it goes well and that's just with us and if you want to triple that up with three other vendors your it's a hundred thousand dollar decision for you right i don't think i'd have the guts at least earlier in my career to do that but i mean and a lot of people would run away like absolutely not oh my god i have no interest in going through that nor do we have the resources but the ones that said yes i mean they were obviously in the driver's seat so kind of where's your fit on like because you're an expert negotiator do you bring that to the table with them to help educate them on it or do you feel them out to see where they are on the sophistication scale well i think you know i think it depends on it's kind of like do you go first or last are you the market leader or kind of a new start right so in their case they're a market leader right and so we're a market leader that come with this credibility and i think they further that brand of the credibility they walk in okay john here's everything you need to know because they're almost educating the client like i've done this before so let me tell you very real and i think there's that is actually essentially the you know statement against self-interest like they're telling you the things you don't want to hear so you're going to lose a bunch you know the people that are oh i don't know now you may lose temporarily right some of them may come back a month or two later once they talk to competitors and realize you were the only person that told me straight so it definitely comes with some risk but i think there's kind of you know do you want to get rid of some of that that's not ready they're not real decision makers they're not actually going to make a difference or change they're your cannon fodder all those things and you're really getting kind of the you know the sweet spot if you will say they can do that because they're a market leader but if i'm advising a startup i don't think they could do that right because who are you and you don't have the credibility walking in so you're not as likely to listen to them when they say this is what it is because somebody's got you know all the other brands to show for it so i think there's it just depends on you know kind of the amount of credibility you're coming in with but i will say one of the things that i love in negotiations to do the work for them and so when they do that that's what they're doing like it not only they tell it to you straight but and there's a transparency there which is refreshing and it makes it a lot easier to deal with you talked about you being a straight shooter so am i and so if you get to another person that's like that it's refreshing and they know that and there's there's trust immediately built you're not screwing around here you've done this before because here's the thing we do a lot of professional service consulting and like it's a very simple recipe i've got to have x margin so i'm going to increase my rates by that much that's what you're going to get so when the client starts to say can you lower the price 20 it's like okay simple math something will get cut out so that you have to decide do you want to cut out 20 of the scope or not because i've got my set margin and so i will do whatever you want me to do but that's that piece is an accordion it'll adjust as you do it so i think that transparency of like you don't need to get into the person's business model but it's pretty clear i mean that's it it's just how much do you how much value do you want you're the decision maker and you tell me how big of a check you're gonna write and that's i think the mistake a lot of sales or i see a lot of sales make is that they they're afraid to present the what the solution should be with all the different components included like the onboarding and the training and the whatever the long-term stuff right because they're like ah that's too expensive right but the beauty of doing that like hey i'm i'm doing this based off of what you told me your priorities were here's what it should look like and then when somebody starts to beat up instead of it's a dollar figure to your point you're then taking pieces away from them it's like yeah well okay we can get to that price but i have to take this and this and this and that's out of this and you had told me you'd wanted that well we can't afford you know those need to be in there well then you have to pay for them you know what i mean like those aren't just free services here so the idea of like bundling the whole real solution even if you're scared to present it gives you so much more leverage to to to negotiate on something other than price that's why because you can't go you can't go up you can't negotiate up so that's how people negotiate against themselves like you said they get there so this is what they were at they were at you know a hundred thousand dollar deal and they pitched the eighty thousand dollar deal because they're afraid of pitching the hundred thousand dollar deal well the hundred and eighty are now golden because the hundred is never possible the eighty is where you start so you end up at seventy and so that's number one and number two though is the best way to find out what someone cares about is you offer it and then when you take it away you find out right so you've got a b and c are included for 100k and when you say okay well i can get to 80 but now a is gone no no no no no okay now that is the only way to find out someone cares about it right because they're going to tell you we talked about the conditioning no matter what they're going to say yeah i don't care about that then you pull out a like whoa whoa i need a back oh okay boom now i know a is actually valued and so i think you know being aware again that's that's the process not the event because that first offer is never you know it's very rarely going to be taken certainly not with procurement it all the stakeholders involved you know it's just going to end up being multiple iterations and you got to be aware of that in advance yeah and it's it's so funny you know i wrote a post a while back like stop negotiating with yourself right and like say you know in a real simple example it always cracks me and again i'm in this boat i did it early in my career i think a lot of reps like they don't have confidence because all they do is get beat up on price and a lot of times they don't even know where the price comes from especially in in my space where it's sass like sass is kind of like an extra license for an extra 100 bucks like it really shared like i know what the cost of that is so it's free you have marginal yeah it's zero yeah point zero one exactly so like it's funny it's like say something's a hundred grand right like and like the answer should be it's a hundred thousand dollars and then you should shut the hell up and wait for the reaction from the client to say holy shit that's more expensive but it's never a hundred grand it's always well it's it's a hundred thousand but it depends on dirt or dirt or dirt or dirt or and it's like your your prospect could have been here you know talking to your competitors they heard 150 200 and they heard a hundred from you and you they were like holy shit that's actually really reasonable but literally as soon as the word but comes out of your mouth they ain't paying a hundred grand for it you just gave them a discount that they didn't even ask for so how do you build the confidence in a rep who maybe walks into a company that's a sass company and you know knows like doesn't really understand margins and that and their cfo hasn't educated them on the background of where their pricing model came from even if it matters and they're constantly getting beat up on price how do you build the confidence in that type of rep um to to build the confidence so that they don't have to negotiate with themselves and there's a couple of these there the other one i love that an example we just brought up is you also get like okay we're gonna ask for a hundred thousand and then okay john this is going to cost anywhere between 80 to 100 grand then you finish the meeting and i've been in those like i'm glad we asked for 100 grand like you did not ask for 100 grand you asked for 80 to 100 grand which means you're starting at 80 now you're going to end up at 70 and it's funny but what's incredible is when you finish the meeting we're inviting someone they will in their minds like well we were on a grant i said 100 grand yeah but you also said 80 and i don't think anyone's thinking 100 when you also said 80 and so one of uh one of ourselves is my partner you know says is in a in a way that's amusing that i think you will remember so you know for anyone listening he says yeah that would be cool if you go into a job you know potential interview and and you get the job offer but they're talking about okay well this job pays between 80 and 100 and how many people are going to say well you better start me off at 80 grand because we're not sure if this is going to work out you know and he tells that it's a it's a very you know vivid way to think well then why would you think when you use a range like that they're going to think the other way so i think from a conference perspective there's there's two big things what's preparation and preparing for the negotiation and i think a lot of people are inefficient in the way they prepare for the negotiations what they think is that this means that you're going to spend 20 hours prepared and it doesn't just about having a process that's the first thing that and that i mean it's so simple but if you do it between experience and doing it a few times and preparing that's it i mean you literally do that you'll get it that's one and then i think the second one is kind of preparing for those objections and having the concept of answers ready so it's kind of the part two preparing how to so you're gonna you're gonna say 100 and i mean i love the way you said it say 100 and shut up no but no explanation you know keep your mouth shut well they respond as they will because that's what they should do and they say that's too much or i think i could get it less for a competitor whatever they say then you've thought about a couple ways you could go you got your what a b c response but now you're not kind of thinking on the fly oh my gosh how can i respond because look the reality is you could come up with something very good but the chances are you know it's a quick flip so that but if you've thought about in advance i'm going to 100 when they push back where am i going to go am i going to go to you know potentially for example okay well you said these things were important are they still important or okay well what would you want to remove or then you got your a b and c and go to so then of course the confidence which you say those things will be so much higher you've almost had the conversation before you get there so i mean there's a lot more too but i think those two are good easy practical that you know anyone really and then the third for leaders i would say is copying on that so over the last five years in particular i've seen so many of our clients go to a revenue and margin cop now for their sales teams so it's kind of a cop they go a kicker for the margin so you know if you sell over a million dollars but if your average margin is more than x percent you get you know 2x or something so you're really incentivized there is one thing that's super important though is you have to be willing to at least respect and support possibly celebrate the walking away from the deal so there's lots of companies that say oh yeah we want a minimum 20 margin and then someone walks away at 18 and they're like ooh you couldn't get the deal done well i mean are you training people to get the deal done at any cost or are you training to get the deal done at the minimum 20 margin you said and so that takes some guts from the leaders to be willing to do that to celebrate guys john walked away at 15 it's tough to walk away from it but it'll be worth it because they'll come back eventually where someone else will do it at 25 will make it worthwhile it's are you actually celebrating those so i was going to end on that like your your your kind of feedback or thoughts on walkaway lines right so because my my theory on this is we all have a walkaway line in our head some at some point in a negotiation when you are getting beat up it goes past the point of you feeling like it's fair and fair i think i don't know i'd love to get into the you know chris chris boss stuff you know fairs the you know the four letter word and in negotiations whatever but but it there is a subconscious like wait a minute now i'm getting taken advantage over now i've done too much and you've gone too far and then it's the self-fulfilling prophecy right because then you start reacting poorly you start like you know not responding and it just basically throws the thing down in the trash and it's all but it's also funny to me that like and i use shark tank as the easiest examples like people walk in going all right i'll give away 20 of my business for 200 000 that's what i'm going to do right and then they walk out giving away 85 of their company for like 15 bucks and they're like what the fuck happened it's like you dipshit you know that they're going to ask for more like and you should you should walk in going all right well for a normal vc i'd give 20 for 200 g's but because it's shark tank and mark cuban and all this other stuff i'll go up to 30 for this and maybe another option here but once it hits 31 i'm out right so what what's your but that is hard when you say like pressure right especially under pressure but even with like like 30 okay because you hear it on shark tank all the time oh what's another one percent but what's your take on nope our hard line is 30 if it goes to 31 i'm out like do you hold that hard or is there a flex there that you try to come up with some type of compromise once it gets to that point because i've seen negotiations literally fall apart over one or two stupid things because somebody has dug their heels in so deep even though that was their line and i usually recommend you should have a line because if you don't it's going to get pushed by anyways yeah so i mean so it's there first of all this i i have always had the idea that we should um advise and we should be part of shark tank we should advise them when they have like five minutes to think about the deal that we should be brought in to advise them before they go back to the shark so you can give us a plug in the shark tank but this is my one if you got any connections there but i honestly i think nothing you're taking advantage of but of course you've got sharks that do this for a living and you've got folks now get some of them are very you know they've sold they exited multiple times we're not talking about people who don't know what they're doing but they don't have the same experience of 20 years investing in in you know companies like this but um i think two things there one is the walkaway line we see this kind of a stop sign so you have to walk with that because if you don't you're just negotiating blowing but the stop sign i think the key is you stop and you say okay is there a good reason a compelling reason or something that has changed that i'd go by past it so for example 30 percent is it and it takes literally 31 percent to get it done then if you take a stop you really objectively okay well one percent is that going to be worth much no i would be willing to go one percent but for example that also makes you think okay well then it doesn't just mean you accept 31 so you know you 200 000 20 percent let's say that's what i'm 31 well then ask for 250 right well that's right and so then but then it gets you to a point where okay i'm not giving up on this because we crossed 30 but i need to really take a step back for a second and make sure i'm aware there's a reason i said 30 early on so that's why the one other thing i would say because i feel like every time we talk about a walkway which i love that you do because most people don't they just they're they're afraid they'll write it down not just say it not just think about it write it down so that you can refer back to them be like okay there's a reason i said that but every time you write a walk away down you should also write your high school because what happens is when you write your walk away you're going to end up there if the only number you literally have a target set and the only target is your walk away well then psychologically you're headed one direction if you also write down to your high school i'm going to start at 20 because i want to end up at 25 but my walk away is 35 well now that because that you formulate 20 gives you a chance to get to the 25 that is your highest goal your highest reasonable goal and then but that you know then you've got to really have your zopa ready your zone of you know agreement there that you can negotiate over and so again now when you're in the heat of the moment you're making decisions based on what things you've already thought about so you know if you're a shark tank just like you should know your numbers you know what's your cost of acquisition you cannot you should not go without because you're going to get ripped if you haven't thought about kind of the willingness to negotiate i think you're in you're in major trouble that's what i don't know because what the biggest thing about shark tank that i i recognize is nine times out of ten the person who is the the you know product sell whatever it is they need the money the sharks don't need that product they could give a shit you know what i mean cuban's a billionaire he doesn't give a shit about socks and you know like that type so for him to walk away he doesn't care and money doesn't matter to him so it blows me away that nobody could because to in that exact example 20 200 g's okay 30 well or uh i'd be like okay well then three hundred thousand dollars like four hundred thousand dollars i'll do i'll give because they'll they care about the upside of the exactly what the equity because if you know 110 will make make it really big and that's a 10 million dollar difference a 50 million dollar if it's not 30k 50k up front they don't give a shit about that so it's like you have to understand going back to what's important to them i know for a fact that money like short-term money is not important to any one of those sharks any one of them can write a check for a million dollars without it literally even blinking an eye but they're looking for the huge upside of this thing just turned into a 50 million hundred million dollar company where they can put 20 million bucks in their pocket because so that's why the percentage is more important than the cash outlay and so if you don't understand that and it and i and i watched shark tank incessantly to see like when are people gonna fucking get it to like just ask for a little bit more equity they just need a real live advisor that's all but i would say the other interesting part about that is you can only do that if and we have to get hold to another episode on this is because you gotta know who's across the table from you so you got five different sharks across the table and each one of them will have a bit i mean they're all are wealthy involved but you know for example someone who you know you got laurie who is going to experience some way she's thinking about a product that's going to be on tv so your pitch should have that concept in mind if you want her if you want you know everyone's got theirs and then i think the other piece is if you want to be good in shark tank in addition obviously the product but that is what the service it's got to be where it be but the people perform the best is it's the competition right so while they don't care about 27 percent versus 30 or you know 300 grand or whatever as much it's the competition so the moment you got what could be with the other and this is it with anybody you know it's kind of the winner's curse concept if you will make you know stupid decisions based and not that you're looking for stupid decisions but you certainly will get more because what's the thing worth the thing is worth as much as someone's willing to pay and so if you understand that and then these dynamics about what it's actually worth with the last person paid i don't care what you did in your first round right i care about what it's worth now you've got two sharks it's where the hell will up more than he got one you know it's so those kind of things those dynamics i think is is i mean it's critical in sales and then critical negotiation awesome and like you said i think there's probably about five different ways that we could continue to take this conversation but in the interest of uh of wrapping this up you got a book out it's you know i was going to get into those four steps so i think we addressed them all the way through right like the the build credibility engage emotions demonstrate logic and facilitate action so this this book talk to people about um what you're doing right now how they can find out more information and where you want to send them yeah so i mean the book persuade is uh you know has those four steps it kind of walks through how do you make decisions i think for us the chapire negotiation institute that's uh that's the company number like i said 29 year old firm found about ron chapire with kind of sports route but now it's it's really kind of more corporate training and consulting so i'd say take a look at our site and uh we have a blog that we're kind of producing more and more content i think over the last few years and so uh kind of a collected machine in addition to the books and yeah you know don't be don't be afraid to reach out we cover a lot of the topics we covered today and one of the things i appreciate about today is how much alignment not surprising how much alignment there is right i mean it's at the end of the day i think the more experience you have you realize these trends that we've talked about all the way through and so all you're doing is you're trying to kind of disseminate some of this experience that you've seen and hopefully you know if you will take away one or two things from today i think that's a win for sure yeah and i think this one was a super tactical one so i appreciate that because i was like getting into the weeds here like theoretically it's like no no here's some tactical things that you need to do right now to get better and sharing the experience i mean you might have been in the game for a little while when i was 22 i had no idea what i was doing when it came to negotiation i was okay so i hopefully you know some of this stuff can can translate to some younger professionals who can maybe skip a few steps and not make as many mistakes as as i know i have uh throughout the process so for sure and i think for the ones that are experienced with the discipline i would say that you know i always thought it was kind of the younger folks that we would trade but also the discipline for those that are more senior and i think that's it's uh it that means there's habits lots of good ones but also some bad ones and i think being self-aware and reflect i mean i'm humble enough to i make still mistakes in negotiation you know what i mean it's selling so i think be aware of that being humble enough to know that and so i think hopefully there's some value for there for them too awesome andre as well i appreciate this man and uh thanks for coming on and uh let's stay in touch here this is gonna be a fun i think i'll be interested i'm gonna pick up the book and read the details i read kind of skim through it but i think now that uh that we have this conversation i'm gonna dive into some of the details and see what i can learn with two here so thanks man look thanks for having me absolutely everybody enjoy hopefully enjoy the conversation as much as i did and like i always say at the end of all these podcasts go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went you go out there and make somebody smile and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now so thank you all very much and i will see you on the other side hey everyone i hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as i did with your support and our incredible guests we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and i can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network also i am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where i'll be sharing everything i know and everything i'm learning along the way while i'm out there selling every day just like you go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today let's all level up and make this happen together