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

party money, I was aiming much lower: $5,000. We were
not going to compromise. It was a matter of professional
pride.
I advised him to start off by anchoring the conversation
in the idea that he didn’t have the money, but to do so
without saying “No” so as not to hit their pride head-on.
“How am I supposed to do that?” he asked in the next
call.
The kidnapper made another general threat against the
aunt and again demanded the cash.
That’s when I had the nephew subtly question the
kidnapper’s fairness.
“I’m sorry,” the nephew responded, “but how are we
supposed to pay if you’re going to hurt her?”
That brought up the aunt’s death, which was the thing
the kidnappers most wanted to avoid. They needed to keep
her unharmed if they hoped to get any money. They were
commodity traders, after all.
Notice that to this point the nephew hadn’t named a
price. This game of attrition finally pushed the kidnappers to
name a number first. Without prodding, they dropped to
$50,000.
Now that the kidnappers’ reality had been bent to a
smaller number, my colleagues and I told the nephew to

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stand his ground.
“How can I come up with that kind of money?” we told
him to ask.
Again, the kidnapper dropped his demand, to $25,000.
Now that we had him in our sights, we had the nephew
make his first offer, an extreme low anchor of $3,000.
The line went silent and the nephew began to sweat
profusely, but we told him to hold tight. This always
happened at the moment the kidnapper’s economic reality
got totally rearranged.
When he spoke again, the kidnapper seemed shell-
shocked. But he went on. His next offer was lower,
$10,000. Then we had the nephew answer with a strange
number that seemed to come from deep calculation of what
his aunt’s life was worth: $4,751.
His new price? $7,500. In response, we had the cousin
“spontaneously” say he’d throw in a new portable CD stereo
and repeated the $4,751. The kidnappers, who didn’t really
want the CD stereo felt there was no more money to be had,
said yes.
Six hours later, the family paid that sum and the aunt
came back home safely.