Negotiation skills, influence, salary negotiation, persuasion, active listening, dealmaking, and communication all start with understanding the person across from you.
In this new episode of the Rising Author Experience, I sat down with Professor Giuseppe Conti, a man who has spent more than 25 years negotiating from the buying side of the table at companies like Procter & Gamble and later teaching negotiation at some of the top business schools in the world.
And one idea from this episode completely changed how I think about negotiation:
Most of us walk into a negotiation thinking about ourselves.
My goals. My price. My argument. My needs.
Giuseppe says that’s backwards.
Great negotiators develop what he calls a dual vision.
You need to understand what you want, but you also need to understand what the other person wants so well that you could almost argue their position for them.
Their goals. Their pressures. Their incentives. Their fears. Their hidden motivations.
Once you understand that, negotiation starts looking less like a battle and more like problem-solving.
Giuseppe shares a brilliant example from his own salary negotiation.
Instead of telling an employer why continuing to teach at business schools mattered to him personally, he reframed the request around why his teaching could help the company recruit talent and build its brand.
Same request.
Completely different framing.
We also get into something that I think matters far beyond business: ego.
What happens when someone insults you?
Flatters you?
Makes you angry?
Gets you emotionally invested in proving that you’re right?
Giuseppe explains why emotion can quietly destroy your ability to negotiate well and gives us a surprisingly simple technique for pulling your brain back into rational thinking when things get heated.
Then we move into influence.
How do you prepare for an important meeting?
How much should you know about the person before walking into the room?
How do you find common ground without being fake?
And maybe most importantly, how do you actually listen?
We spend a lot of time learning how to speak.
Very little time learning how to listen.
Giuseppe breaks down three techniques you can use immediately to make another person feel heard, including reflective listening and paraphrasing.
Toward the end, I asked him the question I really wanted answered:
What makes people lose negotiations?
His answer wasn’t some secret closing line or psychological trick.
It was mindset and preparation.
Too many people enter a negotiation believing that for them to win, someone else has to lose.
But some of the best negotiations happen when you stop fighting over the existing deal and start asking:
How can we make the deal bigger?
That applies whether you're negotiating a multimillion-dollar corporate agreement, your salary, a speaking fee, a client contract, or even buying a carpet while you're on vacation.
Negotiation is everywhere.
And the better you become at understanding people, listening, preparing, and creating value, the better you become at navigating life.
