How to Negotiate Practically Anything
Interview with an attorney who has an unconventional negotiating manner: kind, honest, and fair.
Advice from Bob Woolf, the man who's closed deals for everyone from Larry Bird to Gene Shalit
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If you're like most people, you don't like to negotiate. It's confrontational, unfriendly, sometimes downright mean. What's more, if you don't do it right you stand to get beat, which will cost you. And you're pretty sure you don't do it right.
Bob Woolf no doubt has mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, he wants to strip negotiating of its (he thinks) undeserved terror. He's quick to tell you that 95% of the folks you'll ever negotiate with feel just as you do: scared. On the other hand, fear of negotiation has made Woolf rich.
Woolf today is perhaps the preeminent sports and entertainment attorney alive. In 1962, 10 years after he began practicing law, Woolf fell into some work for an obscure Boston Red Sox pitcher named Earl Wilson. Wilson referred several of the city's athletes to him, and pretty soon the attorney's practice also included negotiating the contracts and finances of 9 out of 12 members of Bill Russell's legendary Boston Celtics. Later came actors, entertainers, media personalities, eventually even politicians. Woolf traveled with Michael Dukakis last summer, and only Woolf's adept and creative last-second negotiation with Ted Koppel, Roone Arledge, and the Dukakis team saved the candidate's opportunity to do a "Nightline" interview one-on-one with the host. (Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
Woolf estimates that he has negotiated more than 2,000 professional contracts plus countless other agreements in the course of managing his clients' personal affairs. Bob Woolf Associates, his Boston firm, handles more than $100 million in contract value annually and has 25 employees. Woolf himself is finishing a book on negotiating called It Doesn't Hurt to Ask, due out at the end of the year.
What will the book reveal? Among other things, Woolf's simple but unexpected belief: kindness counts. Forget macho, he says. Forget Machiavelli. What every businessperson should know is that, in negotiating, the race is to the friendly, the honest, and the fair.
Woolf spoke with Inc.'s Paul B. Brown and Michael S. Hopkins.
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INC.: Nothing, you say, is as important to a negotiation as creating the right atmosphere in which to negotiate -- having the right attitude yourself and getting the other side to feel the same way. But pleasant though it sounds, a lot of people will find it hard to buy your idea that "nice guys finish first" at the negotiating table. Your argument?
WOOLF: Only that it works. Think about it: why do companies spend millions and millions of dollars on public relations and goodwill advertising to develop a nice relationship with the public? Because they want to do business. They want to create a nice atmosphere. They do it because it works.
INC.: Then why do books about winning through intimidation keep showing up on best-seller lists? It seems to us that hardball is in fashion these days.
WOOLF: Maybe, but in fact you don't win through intimidation. The deal doesn't go through. Remember, people are frightened of negotiating to begin with. Who likes confrontation? It's not pleasant to negotiate, whether you're asking your boss for a raise or selling your company. Most people would rather not do it. They're afraid.
So the last thing you want to do is to turn a negotiation into a confrontation. You want to make it a situation of mutual respect. After all, you want the other side to be reasonable, not defensive -- to work with you. You'll have a better chance of getting what you want. Treat someone the way that you would like to be treated, and you'll be successful most of the time.
INC.: But negotiations by definition are adversarial. You want more money from the boss, a better deal from a supplier. . . .
WOOLF: Right, you have a goal. More money, better terms, whatever. That doesn't mean you holler, pound on the desk, or make threats -- that's ridiculous. It's just another part of the misconception that people who are dishonest and cunning are going to win. They're not. They're going to lose. That's what I believe. And so does everybody I know who's a professional negotiator, in whatever area.
Granted, there are those who'd like you to believe they know something you don't know. They're the ones who at the racetrack tell you they won the 3d, the 8th, and the 11th race, leaving out the other 8 races they lost. But if you want to win all 11 races, and each time come to an agreement, you'll play fair, work hard to be gracious, and always deal in good faith. Your individual wins may not be as big as the other guy's, but they'll be bigger when you add them up.
INC.: If it's clear that a good atmosphere produces a good result, why do people hang onto this other view of negotiating?
WOOLF: I don't know. It's crazy. I've been hired by people because they say, "Boy, he is one hard-nosed, rough kind of guy, and that's the kind of guy I want negotiating for me." And I'm thinking, who are they talking about? Not me. I go in every time to set a nice atmosphere. I want to make you happy.
INC.: Aren't you afraid the guy across the table will perceive your eagerness to please as weakness and think he can raise the stakes?
WOOLF: Maybe, but I know it's not a weakness, and there are plenty of ways to let him know, nicely, that my pleasantries have nothing to do with the stakes. I just keep reducing his expectations -- nicely. He proposes a number and I say, "Gee, that's not really what I was thinking. I never anticipated anything like that. That's kind of way out of line." And I keep on saying it. If I can reduce expectations, things get a heck of a lot easier. It isn't costing me anything to be nice, and it does make the negotiation go better. You can be a tough, hard, efficient negotiator and still be a nice person. And it will help you reach an agreement.
