Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

APPENDIX
PREPARE A NEGOTIATION ONE
SHEET
N
egotiation is a psychological investigation. You can gain
a measure of confidence going into such an investigation
with a simple preparatory exercise we advise all our clients
to do. Basically, it’s a list of the primary tools you anticipate
using, such as labels and calibrated questions, customized to
the particular negotiation.
When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion
—you fall to your highest level of preparation.
One note of caution before going into greater depth on
this exercise: some negotiation experts fetishize preparation
to such a degree that they advise people to create the
equivalent of preordained scripts for exactly how the
negotiation will unfold and the exact form and substance the
agreement will take on. By now, after reading this far, you’ll
understand why that’s a fool’s errand. Not only will such an
approach make you less agile and creative at the table, it
will make you more susceptible to those who are.
Based on my company’s experiences, I believe that
good initial preparation for each negotiation yields at least a
7:1 rate of return on time saved renegotiating deals or

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clarifying implementation.
In the entertainment industry, they have a single
document that summarizes a product for publicity and sales
that they call a “one sheet.” Along the same lines, we want
to produce a negotiation “one sheet” that summarizes the
tools we are going to use.
It will have five short sections
SECTION I: THE GOAL
Think through best/worst-case scenarios but only write
down a specific goal that represents the best case.
Typically, negotiation experts will tell you to prepare by
making a list: your bottom line; what you really want; how
you’re going to try to get there; and counters to your
counterpart’s arguments.
But this typical preparation fails in many ways. It’s
unimaginative and leads to the predictable bargaining
dynamic of offer/counteroffer/meet in the middle. In other
words, it gets results, but they’re often mediocre.
The centerpiece of the traditional preparation dynamic—
and its greatest Achilles’ heel—is something called the
BATNA.
Roger Fisher and William Ury coined the term in their
1981 bestseller, Getting to Yes, and it stands for Best
Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. Basically, it’s the
best possible option you have if negotiations fail. Your last
resort. Say you’re on a car lot trying to sell your old BMW

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3-series. If you already have another dealer who’s given
you a written offer for $10,000, that’s your BATNA.
The problem is that BATNA tricks negotiators into
aiming low. Researchers have found that humans have a
limited capacity for keeping focus in complex, stressful
situations like negotiations. And so, once a negotiation is
under way, we tend to gravitate toward the focus point that
has the most psychological significance for us.
In that context, obsessing over a BATNA turns it into
your target, and thereby sets the upper limit of what you will
ask for. After you’ve spent hours on a BATNA, you
mentally concede everything beyond it.
God knows aiming low is seductive. Self-esteem is a
huge factor in negotiation, and many people set modest
goals to protect it. It’s easier to claim victory when you aim
low. That’s why some negotiation experts say that many
people who think they have “win-win” goals really have a
“wimp-win” mentality. The “wimp-win” negotiator focuses
on his or her bottom line, and that’s where they end up.
So if BATNA isn’t your centerpiece, what should be?
I tell my clients that as part of their preparation they
should think about the outcome extremes: best and worst. If
you’ve got both ends covered, you’ll be ready for anything.
So know what you cannot accept and have an idea about the
best-case outcome, but keep in mind that since there’s
information yet to be acquired from the other side, it’s quite
possible that best case might be even better than you know.
Remember, never be so sure of what you want that you

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wouldn’t take something better. Once you’ve got flexibility
in the forefront of your mind you come into a negotiation
with a winning mindset.
Let’s say you’re selling old speakers because you need
$100 to put toward a new set. If you concentrate on the
$100 minimum, you’ll relax when you hear that number and
that’s what you’ll get. But if you know that they are for sale
in used audio stores for $140, you could set a high-end goal
of $150, while remaining open to better things.
Now, while I counsel thinking about a best/worst range
to give my clients the security of some structure, when it
comes to what actually goes on your one sheet, my advice is
to just stick with the high-end goal, as it will motivate and
focus your psychological powers, priming you to think you
are facing a “loss” for any term that falls short. Decades of
goal-setting research is clear that people who set specific,
challenging, but realistic goals end up getting better deals
than those who don’t set goals or simply strive to do their
best.
Bottom line: People who expect more (and articulate it)
get more.
Here are the four steps for setting your goal:
■
Set an optimistic but reasonable goal and define
it clearly.
■
Write it down.
■
Discuss your goal with a colleague (this makes it

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harder to wimp out).
■
Carry the written goal into the negotiation.