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

5. WHEN YOU DO TALK NUMBERS, USE ODD ONES
Every number has a psychological significance that goes
beyond its value. And I’m not just talking about how you
love 17 because you think it’s lucky. What I mean is that, in

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terms of negotiation, some numbers appear more
immovable than others.
The biggest thing to remember is that numbers that end
in 0 inevitably feel like temporary placeholders,
guesstimates that you can easily be negotiated off of. But
anything you throw out that sounds less rounded—say,
$37,263—feels like a figure that you came to as a result of
thoughtful calculation. Such numbers feel serious and
permanent to your counterpart, so use them to fortify your
offers.
6. SURPRISE WITH A GIFT
You can get your counterpart into a mood of generosity by
staking an extreme anchor and then, after their inevitable
first rejection, offering them a wholly unrelated surprise gift.
Unexpected conciliatory gestures like this are hugely
effective because they introduce a dynamic called
reciprocity; the other party feels the need to answer your
generosity in kind. They will suddenly come up on their
offer, or they’ll look to repay your kindness in the future.
People feel obliged to repay debts of kindness.
Let’s look at it in terms of international politics. In 1977
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat dramatically pushed
negotiations on the Egypt-Israel peace treaty forward by
making a surprise address to the Israeli Knesset, a generous
gesture that did not involve making any actual concessions
but did signify a big step toward peace.
Back in Haiti, a few hours after the kidnappers had snatched

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his aunt, I was on the phone with the politician’s nephew.
There was no way their family could come up with
$150,000, he told me, but they could pay between $50,000
and $85,000. But since learning that the ransom was just