97: Profiting from Conflict -- The Mindset and Skillset of a Master Negotiator with Real Estate Developer Rob Flitton
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Negotiating with others to get what we want is an uncomfortable topic for many. The word itself can evoke the image of selfishly trying to profit at someone else’s expense. But real estate developer and upcoming author Rob Flitton wants to change our negative bias towards negotiation and encourage us to embrace self-interest and the idea of principled reciprocity. Redefining what is often meant by win-win and challenging us to feel ‘worthy of winning,’ Rob not only shares seven skills to upgrade our effectiveness as negotiators, but provides a moral framework to dispel the negative cultural attitudes that make us shy away from bold, self-interested, and effective negotiation. Listen to this episode of the TalentGrow Show and gain actionable skills and techniques!
ABOUT ROB FLITTON:
Rob is a real estate developer, because he wants human beings to flourish. He acquires, develops and builds projects that result in amazing urban and quasi-urban ("qurban") neighborhoods. Rob focuses primarily on acquisitions - finding, underwriting, and negotiating major real estate transactions.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
- Halelly and Rob discuss why negotiation is important (6:15)
- Rob explains why he uses the word “conflict” to describe negotiation (7:35)
- How you can learn about negotiation from your relationships, and why Rob thinks that many divorces are the result of one or both partners being bad negotiators (9:05)
- Why Americans are often worse negotiators compared to other cultures (10:09)
- “Almost everything in negotiation is hidden from view.” (10:55)
- Rob gives an overview of the ‘seven skills’ of negotiation that he writes about in his book (11:14)
- Why you shouldn’t ignore emotions when you negotiate (12:29)
- The 5:1 rule: Get five pieces of information for every one piece of information you give away (13:01)
- Rob gives a brief example of how you can get someone to negotiate against themselves in your favor, and an amusing example of the opposite! (14:01)
- “The best way to convince someone they’re wrong is to let them have it their own way.” (16:03)
- When you are trying to influence someone, make them feel like they are in control and making the decisions (16:43)
- The idea of ‘principled reciprocity’ (17:38)
- Managing concessions well as a negotiator (18:20)
- Rob and Halelly dive into the first skill: being worthy of winning (19:30)
- One question you should always ask yourself when you’re considering an idea (20:15)
- Rob defines what ‘win-win’ in negotiation should mean, and on the other hand what it often mistakenly means (21:00)
- Two things you need to have in order to do well in negotiation: merit and skillset (21:50)
- Rob talks about why the 5:1 rule really works and what it looks like in practice (23:30)
- A clever metaphor that Halelly uses about two-way conversation or negotiation (25:27)
- What’s new and exciting on Rob’s horizon? (27:16)
- What’s one specific action listeners can take to help them upgrade their negotiation skills? (Rob actually offers more than one!) (28:25)
RESOURCES:
- Visit Rob’s website
- Sign up for updates on the upcoming book “Profiting From Conflict.”
- Connect with Rob on LinkedIn
- Halelly’s blog post mentioned in the show “Who cares whose idea it was? Why people love your idea if they thought of it first.”
Transcript:
Episode 97 Rob Flitton
TEASER CLIP: Rob: Negotiation, or this process of trying to influence others and deal with how they influence you, is constant. It’s a thing that’s there all of the time in your life. The other thing I’ve observed is that most people aren’t very good at it. They make compromises and do things that they shouldn’t do. People need to be better at dealing with what I call conflict. The reason I chose the word conflict is because if there’s nothing to disagree about, there’s nothing to negotiate. That’s not the case. There’s always things you disagree about. It’s how you handle it and manage it that matters.
[MUSIC] Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.
Halelly: Hey, hey, TalentGrowers. Welcome back to another episode of the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow, and this week I have a friend and an excellent professional negotiator who is going to share with us some of the principles and skills that he is sharing with the world from his 30-plus years of experience as a real estate developer who negotiates on a regular basis and has an excellent track record at it. His name is Rob Flitton. I look forward to sharing his insights with you about the seven skills that he says are necessary for a negotiation, what principled reciprocity means. We talk about how you can actually get people to negotiate against themselves, become more curious and dig for more information and even a very great and simple question right at the end that you can use in your next negotiation to potentially create an even lower price. I hope that you will enjoy this one. I would always welcome learning from you about what you thought was great about it, what you liked, what you applied, and also any feedback that you have about how we can improve the show.
Really quick note before we go into the episode, you know that I love those Apple Podcast reviews. They not only gratify me for this work that I do for free to share knowledge with you every single week, but they also help other people make the decision to try the podcast out if they discover it sort of while meandering what used to be called iTunes and now is called Apple Podcasts, looking for a new show to check out. They read the reviews to help them decide, “Is this worth my time?” Please take a moment and leave me a review. This one came from David Hackler, and the title of it is, “Must listen if leadership growth is important to you.” David says, “I listen to lots of podcasts. TalentGrow is one that I never miss. There is always at least one actionable takeaway. If you are looking to grow your leadership skills, listen to this podcast regularly. You will earn and grow.” David, thank you so much. Love it. And to you, listeners, thank you for the future Apple Podcasts review that you will leave.
Without further ado, let’s listen to Rob Flitton on the TalentGrow Show.
TalentGrowers, this week I have a guest named Rob Flitton. Rob says he’s a real estate developer because he wants humans to flourish. He acquires, develops and builds projects that result in amazing urban and quasi-urban neighborhoods with a focus on acquisitions. That’s his specialty. And as a result of his illustrious career as a real estate developer, he’s also an expert negotiator. This is what he does for a living. So over the years he has become interested in writing about and teaching negotiation. He is working on a book called Profiting From Conflict that’s going to be released soon. I thought it would be excellent to bring Rob on the show. He is also a personal friend of mine and we’ve been talking about this topic lately and I thought, “Hey, TalentGrowers will get a lot of benefit from his knowledge of negotiations. Let’s bring him on.” Rob, welcome to the TalentGrow Show.
Rob: Thank you very much. I hope you’re doing well and it’s nice to hear from you.
Halelly: It’s always nice to hear from you as well Rob. I look forward to sharing some of your insights and wisdom with the listeners. Before we do, we always ask our guests to describe their professional journey briefly. Where did you start and how did you get to where you are today?
Rob: I am a real estate developer, as you mentioned. I guess my specific profession, more than anything, is acquisitions, since the mid 1980s. I started in Vancouver, B.C., and this has been my primary activity. I eventually moved to Seattle. I am now in Los Angeles. What I do is buy real estate development sites, pieces of property that get developed. Sometimes in my career these have been high value, significant properties, buying them from sophisticated people, and sometimes I buy farmland from an elderly couple while I’m having iced tea and apple pie at their coffee table, and everything in between. So my job is to get a good deal for my company that works and to try to get them a good deal as well. That’s kind of the summary of it. There’s a lot of color in there, a lot of ups and downs in the real estate business. It’s a bit of a roller coaster with all the market cycles and different things that happen to you over a career, but that’s resoundingly what I’ve done for I guess about 33 years.
Halelly: There have been so many different negotiations in your everyday work, and I know that this is a topic that is top of mind for many people, and for some people it’s not top of mind because they try to shove it as hard as they can under the rug because it is so unpleasant for them. Every single professional, every single person who does any adulting at all needs to have negotiation skills. I know this because this is one of the topics that’s requested for me as a workshop I deliver a lot. I just did one in D.C. on Monday on this topic. I am excited to have some of your expert insights on this topic. You’ve been working on this book and accompanying training program that you’re building titled Profiting from Conflict: seven skills for winning every negotiation. I would love for you to share with listeners, what do you see is the biggest need for this book? In other words, what are so many people doing wrong in how they approach negotiations, given the 30-plus years of experience and success that you’ve had with this topic?
Rob: It sort of backs up to the beginning of my career. I’ve always been someone who is very interested in learning and in ideas. When I was very young, the company I worked for sent me to a negotiation school for three days. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a negotiation school. I thought, “That’s interesting.” You can actually talk about the theory of this. What really dawned on me, at the time, and just never really left my mind, is that negotiation or this process of trying to influence others and deal with how they influence you is constant. It’s a thing that’s there all of the time in your life. The other thing I’ve observed is that most people aren’t very good at it. They make compromises and do things that they shouldn’t do. That’s kind of what my edge is, I just want – as you mentioned in my profile about human flourishing, about human life being better – I just want people to be better at dealing with what I call conflict. The reason I chose the word conflict is because if there’s nothing to disagree about, there’s nothing to negotiate. That’s not the case. There’s always things you disagree about. It’s how you handle it and manage it that matters. The reason I chose the word profiting is because I want you to literally profit from it. A lot of times, in programs I’ve been over the years, they talk about this phrase that drives me nuts, conflict resolution. That’s kind of like milk toast. Why not profit from it? Why not do really well from what’s going on between two entities?
The fundamental thing is it’s a great business skill. If you’re buying and selling things, you need to know how to negotiation. You need these things with your children and your spouse, and if you’re an ambassador, there are lots of levels. I really like to speak to the average person. I’m not someone who is keyed on the high level business stuff. I really just like how it influences the average life.
Halelly: You negotiate for a salary increase. You negotiate to move from one project to another that seems more interesting to you, that you think will be more beneficial to your career or professional development. You negotiate with staff as a leader to help them have a schedule that works for them but also the team. There are so many different reasons to negotiate and so many opportunities in everyday life. They don’t have to be major negotiations where you rent out a hotel in southern Maryland and stay there for a week to try and come to world peace.
Rob: Right. I think where you really start to learn your negotiation skills is in your relationships. One of my biggest pet peeves is that people don’t negotiate their relationships. I’m convinced that a lot of divorce, for example, is caused by people being afraid to negotiate the key issues up front, at a moment when they have very little to lose, and then they find out later when there’s a lot to lose that their goals or values don’t line up very well and they’re mystified by that.
Halelly: Why do you think people are afraid?
Rob: Because conflict is a negative thing. There’s two sort of angles to it. One is this distaste for having anything negative. They don’t like the word “no.” They don’t like to be challenged. They want to be validated and they’re not getting validated. The other aspect of it is a lack of patience. We grew up in a culture where instant gratification, I’ve got to have this resolved right now, and I think if you can be patient and just let things sort of work themselves out over time and be the one that sort of manages that process, you’ll do much better. Other cultures seem to do that better than we do.
Halelly: Say more.
Rob: Say more?
Halelly: About other cultures doing it better.
Rob: They haggle. They’re more patient. I deal a lot with business people a lot from other countries and they’re remarkably low key and remarkably slow. They don’t mind conflict being there whereas sort of the American viewpoint is, “Oh, there’s conflict. I have to go throw water on that. I have to get rid of that conflict. That’s bad.” Actually there’s a very good book that came up called The Challenger Sale, which I recommend, which discusses this issue about how we want to throw cold water on problems instead of find out what’s palpable about it. Let that tension vibrate between the parties that you can bubble up to the surface what’s really going on underneath. Because almost everything in a negotiation – this is something I’ve learned – is hidden from view. The things that you think are going on isn’t what’s really going on. There are lots of motivations and agendas beneath the surface. Some they know about, some they don’t know about.
Halelly: Makes sense. Your book covers seven skills and we don’t have enough time to cover all of them in depth here, but what I’d love to do is for you to highlight the seven skills. Then let’s just dig into a couple of them, just to give listeners some actionable insights from what you’re writing about and what you teach about.
Rob: Sure. I can bounce through this real quick. Believe me, if I could do it, I would make it like 1,237 skills, not seven! It’s really hard to condense down into a group of manageable ideas. But the first thing I say is, number one, you have to be worthy of winning. It’s sort of a command to yourself. You can’t take bad products to market and expect top price. That’s just irrational. You need to get your own house in order. You need to introspect. You need to negotiate internally with your organization and with yourself before you’re very good at negotiating externally. That’s probably the most important thing to think about. If you’re just going out into the marketplace looking for suckers, you’re not going to do well.
The second thing which I emphasize very strongly is don’t get down to business right away. Don’t just walk into the room and try to get into this logical framework. Most people close off their emotional framework, which is really where they make most of their decisions or where their decisions are motivated from. You have to spend time investing in their emotional framework before they’re going to give you access to their logical framework. They don’t care about how great your logic is. They want to be treated well and understood. One of the best lines I ever heard about that was from Stephen Covey, which he says – paraphrasing – seek to understand before being understood.
The third one is, really quickly, what I call a five-to-one strategy. This effort to dig for what’s not obvious. I talked a minute ago about how things are hidden. Well, basically speaking, when you’re communicating with someone, if you’re a strategic negotiator, you’re not trying to give them information, you’re trying to get information from them. I try to use the five-to-one rule. I try to get five pieces of information for every one I give. The book I’m writing and the training course I’m working on, I really go into detail of how to get meaningful information from them without giving away a bunch of information. Unless you feel they merit it.
Fourth, work on having them negotiate against themselves, using the right kind of questions, using sort of emotional labeling and saying no to them. It makes them question their own statement. You need to sort of give them their own room and create a vacuum in a negotiation so instead of you challenging what they say, they themselves will challenge what they say.
Halelly: Can you give a very short example of that?
Rob: Off the top of my head, if someone makes a statement and you say to them, “How is that going to work?” You’ve sort of pivoted or swung back onto them this obligation to validate their own statement. One of my favorite things to do in an negotiation – and I think this should happen in every negotiation – is basically flinch.
Halelly: You mean flinch non-verbally, like show flinching in your behavior?
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Like a facial expression or tone of voice or something that just indicates polite, mild disapproval. People are very observational and when they observe that, they go to themselves in this internal dialogue. “I wonder if what I said was right?” So you’re not challenging whether it was right, they’re challenging it.
Halelly: Interesting.
Rob: I love this little story I heard once, where a guy goes to an optometrist and he’s trying on glasses. He’s very happy and he says to the optometrist, “How much are they?” And the optometrist says, “They’re a hundred dollars.” When the guy doesn’t flinch, he says, “That’s for the frames.” Then he says, “Well, how much are the lenses?” He says, “They’re also a hundred dollars.” And when the guy doesn't flinch, he says, “Each.”
Halelly: This is like the anti-negotiation!
Rob: Exactly.
Halelly: Good, I like that.
Rob: That dovetails into the fifth skill, which is what I call haggle strong. Really get your haggling game together. I tell this story about when I was a kid, I went to an adult friend in the family and said, “Hey, can I borrow $20?” And he said, “$18. $16 is a lot of money. I don’t even know if I have $14. What would a kid your age do with $12? All right, take the $10 and get out of here.”
Halelly: He had that whole conversation with himself like that?
Rob: Yeah, but it was basically haggling with me, right? Like a 10 or 12 year old kid. I thought it was amazing. The sixth skill is make it their idea. You really want, my grandfather had a great statement that I love, which is the best way to convince someone they’re wrong is to let them have it their own way. You hear lots of statements like this that are out there, like basically, what you’re trying to do is make sure no matter how you want to influence someone, it’s better if it becomes their idea. You’re trying to foster the environment and the culture through the dialogue that they come up with it, and they put their stamp on it. You’re not trying to convince, necessarily by the power of your voice and your ideas. Butchering an old phrase, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. You’re not just trying to arrive to a yes. You’re trying to get a meaningful, actionable yes so it’s not just, “Oh, yes, I agree,” and then you turn your back and walk away and they don’t perform.
Halelly: I love that. I actually wrote a blog post about that. I’ll link to it in the show notes about how they love your idea much better when it’s their idea.
Rob: Exactly! Winston Churchill once said, “I’m always willing to learn, but I’m not willing to be taught.” There’s someone who is powerfully interested in ideas, sort of telling you that you need to make it palatable to me in a way that I can come to it on my own terms. It’s the whole idea of control I don’t like. You have to give people the room and the space all the time. Your children, the people you do business with, to let things digest in them and let them come to their own conclusion.
Halelly: I think we’re going to talk more about that, because I want to come back to your first skill – be worthy of winning – in a bit, and I think we’re going to talk more about that. I know you have this term called principled reciprocity, but this idea that both parties are in, that are bought in, and so you have to let them commit to the outcome, rather than force it on them, is what you’re saying?
Rob: Exactly. And be willing to walk away. Don’t need the deal. And don’t expect them to need the deal. We have this sort of thing that goes on with people where we reserve for ourselves a set of biases and principles and we don’t let other people have that same prerogative. That’s part of reciprocity, or principled reciprocity, is let standards upon everybody.
Halelly: What’s seven?
Rob: Seven is really just a quick thing which is ensure skin in the game through concession management. As a real estate developer, I can tell you one thing about human nature is that people want the upside. They’re always willing to come along for the upside on a deal. The downside, not so much. And they like to have their opinion heard or they like to have actions taken, but they don’t always want to be responsible for the consequences of those actions. So one of the things you make sure you do is if you’re getting down to a point where you’re going to make some concessions in agreeing with people, you’ve got to make sure you’re using a lot of if/then statements. And that you manage your concessions well and begrudgingly, very begrudgingly, and that you never give a concession without getting a concession. There’s a variety of other things, because you’re trying to get to the point where they have as much skin in the game as you do. They have as much at risk as you do.
Halelly: All right, good. I’m glad we covered all of those. I definitely wish I could ask you follow-up questions about every single one of those, but because I don’t, let’s talk more about what I think is probably one of the most differentiating aspects of your model, which is this idea of be worthy of winning and we’ll talk more about reciprocity, what a lot of people are getting wrong about maybe their mindset in negotiations, it seems to me? Or their premise, their philosophical premise. You’re a little bit of a philosopher and I’m a little bit of a philosophy geek and we’re not going to get too philosophical here because our listeners might not want that. But I think that a lot of times, how you think about something dictates how you act. Let’s speak about that one.
Rob: Absolutely. First of all, you have to start with an initial premise. I say right up front, I’m all about self interest. Now, when you say that in this culture, a lot of people look at you like how could you say such a brash thing. But there’s this question that I tell people to always ask yourself about any idea you’re presented with, and I think it’s a very simple thing. Ask yourself what would the opposite of that be? Therefore, when I say I’m all about self interest, and that makes the hair on your neck stand up, well, what should you be for? I think that the opposite of self interest is to be sacrificial, to be interested in promoting the affairs of everyone else around you. That’s really a gray, undefined thing that really can’t be achieved in practice. So, this question comes up all the time about win-win when you’re negotiating. People say, “Oh, you must win-win.” I say define your terms. Are you talking about two self interested people exchanging people of value with one another and you both have a great outcome. That’s a win-win, and that’s bonafide and valid and the highest achievement you can make in a negotiation.
But that’s not always what win-win means. People want you to make a deal in their favor. They want you to be self sacrificial while they’re self interested. And going back to what I said a minute ago, you can’t reserve for yourself one set of biases and principles and not allow them for the other party. If I’m self interested, that means I have to expect the other person to be self interested. When I find out they’re not self interested, and that means they want to take advantage of me, I have very little sympathy for them. My goal is to basically win the negotiation, if I choose to continue negotiating with them. And I have no problem taking everything off the table if I can. I think that you need to have two things present to do well at negotiating. One is the merit on your side, and the other is the skillset. To the degree that you have merit and skillset, you’ll do well. To the degree you don’t, you won’t. Now, if I want to feel benevolent toward someone, it’s going to be because they have merit. It’s not going to be just because that’s my default position necessarily. I want to learn something about them. Win-win is contextual.
Halelly: So let’s just make sure we define the terms. You say merit and skillset – can you just say one more sentence about each of those?
Rob: Merit means that my goals, my self interest, the ideas I want to influence someone with or the price, the terms, whatever I’m proposing, has to come up and meet one standard. That is it has to be rational. If it’s something irrational that I’m trying to push through the pipeline, not only do I have no right to do that, it’s not going to work. The skill side of it is, I have to sort of practice the skills of being a big empathetic negotiator where I can really listen to what someone is trying to get to before I make my decisions about what I want to do. I don’t go into negotiation having already decided. I go looking for information, trying to learn. I’m trying to sort of find out the science of the matter, what the facts of the matter are. And after I’ve figured out all the facts, then I try to become sort of like an engineer of making an engineer’s resolution to whatever it is that I’ve learned. That’s the skillset, making it their idea, if haggling strong, of getting them to negotiate against themselves.
Halelly: Let’s talk more about the five-to-one strategy. I hope that you can share maybe an example or a story that can help us understand more about how can you actually do that? Without the other person feeling like you’re interrogating them or that they’re giving away an unequal amount of information?
Rob: It’s fantastically easy, actually. The reason it is is because people want validation. I was amused when Oprah Winfrey finished her 25 or 30 year TV show, whatever it was, and I’m paraphrasing this by memory, she said to someone, out of the 30,000 guests that I’ve interviewed in my career, every single one of them had one thing in common. They all were there seeking validation. So the five-to-one skill is really not needing to be the talker. Not needing to be the explainer. Not having an agenda with your ideas. Just opening them up to talk about what’s really going on underneath the surface. You do that by avoiding the logical framework and delaying it as long as possible. You want to have a friendly, empathetic, listening conversation. So when they ask you a question, perhaps you give them a tidbit of a response, but you’re trying to spit it back into a question for them. But I notice actually in my relationship with you, you’re very good at that.
Halelly: Well thank you.
Rob: You are, and it’s not a cheap skill you’re using to play people. You’re just very empathetic communicator and listener and I think that you’re very good at making whoever you’re speaking with feel comfortable telling you a lot of things. That’s kind of what I’m driving at there by the five-to-one. Get it right in your head that you’re not trying to download everything you know into their head. You’re trying to find out what they know. You already know what you know.
Halelly: Yes, I sometimes use a metaphor when I do the training workshops on this, and I say it’s like you’re coming to the table and any kind of conversation – especially in a negotiation – you’re coming to the table with a box with half of the jigsaw puzzle pieces. And the other person has a box with the other half, and neither of you have a picture on that top half of the box. So it’s very presumptuous that you assume you know what the final outcome will be, should be, based on the half of the information that you have. The outcome needs to be a win-win, if both parties need to feel like their needs were satisfied, that means that both of them feel like the picture is whole. Together, by you discovering more about what they have and need and they discover more about what you have and need, you can build something that works for both of you. Maybe it sounds idealistic, but I think that in human relations that works.
Rob: I’ve never heard that metaphor before.
Halelly: I made it up!
Rob: And I love it. I’m hereby offering you five dollars to put it in my book.
Halelly: Come on, you can do better than that! $25!
Rob: I’ll get back to you. No, it’s a fantastic metaphor. It’s really a good one. It’s exactly what you’re trying to do is figure out, you already know what your pieces are. Let’s figure out what their pieces are.
Halelly: The only way you can do that is by actually being curious. By being open and not judging and inquisitive and asking questions because you truly want to learn, not because you’re gaming them and you’re waiting until you’ve finished your fifth question so you can do something.
Rob: Exactly. Otherwise, you’re just a cheap Svengali that’s trying to wordsmith to manipulate them into doing something. I don’t want to be that guy.
Halelly: And that’s why I like you, because you are not. I’m so glad that you came on and I’m so sad that we’re out of time, but I want to make sure that we get to the closing questions and then for people to continue to follow up with you to learn more from you with that training and the book that are coming soon. What’s new and exciting with you on your horizon these days?
Rob: Just a lot of work. Trying to win at the negotiating table, but this book is absorbing me. I set up a URL for it, ProfitingFromConflict.com. The two hashtags are going to come out this year with a lot of information on social media are #HaggleStrong and #WorthyOfWinning. Basically, it has to take a backseat to my actual work, so it’s a little slower at being developed than I would like. I wish I had a six-month sabbatical to get it all finished and wrapped up. But the main goal out of all of it is to have a great corporate and personal training program, and that’s really what’s driving me the hardest.
Halelly: My listeners know that I love bringing on people that do things as a side hustle, as an example of having a multi-faceted career, and not just completely negating an interest or an are that you want to develop just because you’re currently in a job that’s different or that doesn’t allow for that. There’s always a way to do something on the side, even if as you said it goes slower than if you were doing it full time. So what’s one specific action that you can recommend our listeners take today, this afternoon, this week, to help them upgrade their negotiation skills?
Rob: I have a couple of really good ones, just really briefly. You said one thing, but I’m going to negotiate against that.
Halelly: We’ll take two or three.
Rob: Basically speaking, if you’re a sophisticated negotiator, I have one thing to say which is, slow down. Break the ice with people. Don’t try to get into this logical discussion too early. Spend time trying to get to know them. Even sophisticated people that right up front tell you they’re not interested in doing that, there’s lots of ways to sort of get to know them. And for unsophisticated people that are maybe just not comfortable with negotiation, I have this great sentence I developed and I’m sure other people have, but I came up with it myself like 30 years ago. Because someone in my family was complaining they hated negotiating and it’s a simple question. Just ask someone, “Is that the lowest price you’ll take?” That’s a super easy flinch or a super easy way of getting them to negotiate against their own price. You’re not being judgmental. You’re not being outrageous. You’re just saying, “Is that the lowest price you’ll take?”
Halelly: That’s a great, short, easy question and outcomes can be either they’ll say yes and then you’ll know, or –
Rob: Try it for a week, and believe me. You’ll be amused at how well you’ll do.
Halelly: Awesome. I love that. Very simple and actionable. All right, Rob, you already told us how you can follow your book with the hashtags and the website, and should people follow you on social media? What are your best places for people?
Rob: I’m in and out of there. I’m going to have to obviously start using more and more social media. I’m a business person. You can find me on LinkedIn. Happy to take all requests. Honestly, my contact information is at my website, RobFlitton.com, or ProfitingFromConflict.com. Email me and I’ll answer your question if you have a question about negotiation, I’ll answer it.
Halelly: Super, actionable, interesting, insightful. Thank you so much, Rob, for coming on the TalentGrow Show today. I appreciate you.
Rob: Thank you very much. And by the way, your podcasts are very good and are a great benefit to the people that listen to them. Thank you for doing that.
Halelly: Well thank you for saying so. I appreciate that you like them. Thank you. All right, make it great today.
Rob: Thank you.
Halelly: So there you have it, TalentGrowers. A lot of actionable, interesting insights about negotiations, which as we said, is something that every single person needs and I said adults, but truly if you have kids or no kids, man, they negotiate too. So it’s a skill that’s helpful in life and in your profession. I’m so glad that Rob agreed to come on the show and share some of his hard earned insights with you. I hope that you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought. Let me know what feedback you have for me, and let me know what you want to hear about next. I’ve got that way for you to leave feedback via voicemail on my website. It’s just that little black tab on the right side of my website on any device, and you just record a short message and if you want me to play it on the air, just give me your permission. As long as the sound is good enough, we can do that. I look forward to hearing from you. I am so glad that you tuned in to another episode of the TalentGrow Show. I am Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow and until the next time, make today great.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com.
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Intro/outro music: "Why-Y" by Esta
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