Transcript

Nolan Martin : Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with Julia Ewert, a renowned sales and negotiation expert. If you haven't already checked out part A of this show, be sure to do that first. Let's jump into the conversation with Julia.

Building Resilience Through Difficult Conversations [1:23]

Julia Ewert : Can I share a cool story about something else that I did? And I've shared? Yeah, some of my American friends and they all, I frightened the hell out of them. So, prior to Christmas, I was in a shopping center car park and there were 1 billion cars in there, that was the actual number I counted and everyone was to get out at the same time.

Anyway, so the cars are going nowhere, there's little bit of movement in front. The woman behind me is in a fancy schmancy car and she's getting annoyed. And so, there's a car in front of me. Like, no one's moving. There was a bit of movement. There's a car in front that's trying to reverse out.

So, I stopped rather than move forward. And like literally moved forward five meters. I stopped and let the car end in front of me out to join the queue. Anyway, woman behind me blast on a horn. So I did what any, you know, good negotiator would do, is I thought I'm gonna go for a chat.

So, no one one's going anywhere. Right? So no, no cars are moving. So, um, he blasted the horn and so I put my car in park. Uh, and so I got out of my car and I went to chat to her. Now, when I've told this story to some of American friends, they envisaged someone now pulling the gun on me, but I wanna let you know

NM : That's the first thing my wife would've said, so.

JE : This never happens in Australia. No one has guns here. So this doesn't happen. So there's zero risk of that happening. So you guys should live here. [laughs] So, anyway, so I went out and I spoke to my new friend and so I stood outside her and, and now, so what I know is I go, if I blast her and get angry, this is gonna not be helpful, but I go, opportunity, have a different conversation, noo, one's gonna die, like build my resilience to it. So, I'd probably get out, I walk over to her car.

She looks a bit like, holy crap now, because I'm gonna go and talk to her. And so mm-hmm, what I do is I smile really nicely. And this woman would be, I don't know, I'm terrible at guessing, age 70. So, she puts the window down. And I said to her, in my nicest, kindest voice, oh, I heard you honking your horn at me. Um, was there something you wanted to say?

Aram Donigian : Wow.

JE : And so she's expecting me to blast her. Right? Right. It's really hard to get angry at someone who's not angry at you. So, she says, well, you know what? You just stopped. And that car went out. I said, you know what, no one was going anywhere. And it's Christmas and she was very surprised  because she was wired for defense. She was expecting me to come over and swear at her and get angry at her. I thought, no, no.

And again, I like, so these are just a few examples. I do this stuff when I see opportunities. It's not every day, but when I see opportunities, I go, this is the chance for me to upscale on low risk stuff, low stakes, right?

And it's hard. I'm dying a bit on the inside, no question, but I know it's better for me. And I would, you know, back to the tennis analogy, I'd rather learn and play against Serena Williams than, I don't know, my seven year old. So like, I wanna try when the, when, when it's, when it's tough.

NM : Absolutely. And speaking of trying, when it's tough, when you're with clients, so Aram and I love to focus on preparation, we think it's the most crucial part of any negotiation that, you know, you're about to get into.

So, I kind of wanted to know how you address that with clients? What do you have them do? What do you focus on or anything like that?

JE : In terms of preparation, Nolan?

NM : Yes. Ma'am.

Importance Of Preparation In Negotiations [5:00]

JE : Oh yeah. No, you would never prepare. You would just rock up and give it a crack and see how it goes. It's a terrible idea. It takes so long to prepare. So you should never do that. Funny enough. I have someone who said to me a few weeks ago, “Yeah, Julia, I tried some of your stuff, but it just takes so long”

JE : Said, how's it working out for you? You guess? Well, I can't get business and you know, I can't convert stuff and negotiations. I go, well, but you know, I'm gonna try and hire a marketing person. That'll help me. I was like, good luck with that.

So yeah, so preparation is necessary, right? Same as Wimbledon. You wouldn't just step off the plane and go straight to the court. You would prepare for the game, you'd get your equipment ready, get your tools ready. So I practice this stuff too. I spent a lot of time with my clients practicing.

And interestingly, I've got a client that I'm working with at the moment. And they've had a quiet word to me in the last week and said, Julia, the team has said that this stuff's really repetitive. I said, yes. And they said, one other team has asked when’s like the big thing coming, what big thing would that be? And they said like, they just asked when the big thing is like, we just seem to be repeating the same skills. I said yes.

JE : So again, it just shows how misunderstood this craft is. Let's just pad up and go and see how it goes. So. this stuff, you know, to, to be, to be great at anything. And I asked my clients or my prospects before they become my clients, I asked them if we start to work together, score 'em 10. How good do you wanna be?

And then just before they were there to answer, I say, cuz I reckon I'm about seven or eight. Cuz they're all they're about to say 10 weren't they they're all gonna say 10 mm-hmm <affirmative> and then they go, oh God, she's seven or eight.

So, then I say, right, so if that's the number, you wanna be, whatever the number is, what can I ask you? What you're prepared to invest in terms of time and learning to, to be that number. Cause as you would know, no one actually wants to do the work. They want the magical thing,

AD : Yeah. I get it's interesting, Julia. So as I, you know, I teach at a university here and I often get about, oh, about how midway through the course, when I get some, I do mid course feedback. I get similar feedback in that, wow, this is really repetitive. And, I've tried to let them know from the front that this is gonna be, we're gonna build, we're building a vocabulary, we're building skills, we're building muscle memory. I said, I want to be in your head.

I want you to be able to do this in your sleep. I want this to become something that, you know, five years from now, when you're in that difficult moment, you automatically go back to these skills and not maybe to our kind of our natural defensive inclination to negotiate. And so it's interesting to hear you say that you have kind of that same sort of response from clients that you get that pushback. Everybody wants that magic bill. Just tell me to do X, Y, and Z. So I can get, you know, this magical outcome.

JE : Julia, what's the one thing that you need to do to do negotiations? One thing. And I said, yes, you need to do all the things. That's the one, that's the one thing. Thing. Yeah. But same thing. I I had a long term client say to me a while ago, Julia, you know what? The team, you know, that I, I did this one activity to help their muscle memory with asking open questions and we do it a lot because necessary.

And so they challenged me and said to me, um, Julia, look, the team don't wanna do that anymore. They reckon they've nailed it.

So can we move on to some other things? And you know, again, where's the magic bring the magic next time. That'd be great. And so I said, yep, no problem. I said, the team thinks they've nailed it. No worries. So, I turned to the next session and again, an opportunity to build some resilience for Julia. So, I said to them at the start of the session, Hey guys, I, um, had an interaction recently with a competitor of yours.

JE : And as a result, I think you guys are Uber expensive. And I reckon you need to revisit your pricing strategy like this other company. I think they're doing a lot of stuff, and I named the competitor. I think they did a bunch of stuff that you guys could learn from. I reckon six of them at once talking just jumped down my throat. No, this is why they're crap. This is why we are great. This is why. And so I just sat there in silence. I said, right?

So, plot twist, I have talked to no competitor. I have no idea what your price structure is like, but you guys reckon that you are all ninjas of objection handling. If you were, what you would've done back then if you would've said, huh? It's interesting. Julia, tell me some more about that.

JE : But you didn't, all of you went to annihilate me, so I'm sorry to break it to you. You're not ninjas at this stuff. And you know, with another client, I used the analogy and I asked them, I said, is anyone in, is anyone in this group, former or a current elite level athlete? And there was a professional, former professional soccer player in the room. And I said, great. I said, how long, how old are you now? This person was 45. I said, how long old were you when you started? Uh, six? I said, right. Tell me about some of the fundamental skills in soccer. And he says, you know, kicking and passing the ball, right? I said, great.

So, when you're six, how often do you do that? Is it every training session? I said, when you're 45 and you're playing the game, how much have you been training? Do you spend time kicking and passing the ball? He says a lot. I said, if you couldn't kick or pass the GA the ball, would you have been able to turn pro? He said, no. I said, this is the same. In fact, it'll be more serious, cuz you're all getting paid. All of you, you're all getting paid to play the game of the business that you're in and you haven't got the skills. So, you've demonstrated you can't kick and pass the ball properly and this is a rare conversation I have, but it's necessary. And again, it just shows how misunderstood this stuff is.

NM : Hey Julia, I kind of wanna jump into the way a lot of negotiations are occurring today. It's obviously way different than how negotiations happened before. Because before saying years ago, when we didn't have email or phones right at our fingertips, everything was done face to face. So as these modalities are changing, what are some key considerations for negotiators who are trying to get something done through email, text, or video or anything like that?

Negotiations In The Age Of Phone And Internet [11:25]

JE : Yeah. Don't use email, do not email where you can, we're trying to get face to face, right? And because of geography in the world situation, there's not a lot of opportunity for that. So, the next best thing is doing exactly what we are doing. Now you gotta eyeball someone. The baseline here is pick up the goddamn phone. People pick up the phone. So, I think, there's lots of different ways.

And I would suggest I've only probably I reckon I've only met face-to-face 30% of my clients. The rest are exactly like we are now. And you know, one of my clients in particular, um, they've been with me for a couple of years now in the second year, their level of investment with me went up three times the amount of the previous year, they're still here. We've only, we've never met. We've never met face to face.

AD : Is it harder work to do it this way than if we were sitting in a room together, negotiating, whether it's building rapport or dealing with emotions or any of that work that we would do with a client or in, in any sort of negotiation. Yeah. Is it more work or, or does it change or not?

Virtual Negotiations Require Trust [12:35]

JE : Well, see, I think again, it depends on your level of skill. People say, oh, I can't do video calls. Really? How hard have you tried? And there's a fear behind there. So they rely on email. There's something I talk about in all the programs that I teach. And it's, it's the trust equation. Are you guys familiar with David Mac's work? Okay. He's done something called the trust equation. And as we know, I'm gonna make an assumption here that the negotiations that you are both involved in are not the kind that the, the hostage and the terrorist negotiators are involved in. Right? Like the stuff that I negotiate, it's not life or death.

We have people willing to have conversations with us to some degree, to some degree. But so there's a trust equation by a gentleman called David Meister and the fundamental principle to a lot of the work that I do with my clients is based on this principle.

JE : So, I'm not doing the same as your life and death negotiations. I'm doing business stuff. Where for the most part, we have someone who is to some degree, willing to talk to us. So, we know that we are much more likely to reach an agreement with someone that we like. We also know we will go out of our way to disagree with someone, disagree with someone that we don't like.

Even if in principle, we agree. So what we're trying to do is we are, we are trying to supercharge the trust, which can be done over a zoom or a team's call. It's almost impossible to do over email. And the trust equation is basically the, the mathematical or the, um, the, how you measure trust. And it is its credibility + reliability + intimacy divided by self orientation.

So, (credibility+reliability+intimacy) ÷ self orientation.

JE : Credibility is, do you have the skills, the qualifications and the runs on the board and the experience. Reliability is what your reputation is like? And do you do, as you say, you'll do intimacy. This is the one that makes it well, sometimes giggle a bit. Oh, what does this mean? This is simply, do we connect?

• Do we have the same dogs?
• Do we have the same kids? Uh, the same hobbies
• Do we live in the same area?
• Do we have the same enemies?
• Do we love the same type of Netflix shows on Mexican drug cartels, which is what I love?

Don’t judge people like they are so good, right? So like, do we have something in common we're going for likability.

JE : And then, the negative in that, in that equation is self orientation. I could be the most credible person with the best reputation you can like me. But if you just think I'm trying to serve me, then trust is off the table. If you feel like I'm genuinely trying to serve the cause here or help you solve the problem, trust is all up for grabs.  

But back to the top line, credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, those three things are not weighted equally. We would sacrifice credibility and reliability for intimacy any day. This is how startups get a go. They've got no runs on the board. They've got no past experience, but someone goes, you know what? Aram, I kinda like you. Here's 5 million bucks, right?

Connection is what we're going for, when we are trying to negotiate, you know, over video conference. It's really, really hard to build a connection over email, really hard, not nothing's impossible, but why make it hard for yourself? The other thing I talk about as well is if there was a race and the prize was a pot of gold, would you rather enter a race with five competitors or 500 competitors

NM : Five competitors.

JE : So, if you are emailing someone and expecting to win the pot of gold, you are in the race of 500 competitors. Cause I don't know how many emails you guys get per day that any email that comes into my inbox, that's asking me for money or business, man, that's not a priority for me. So, this is, again, a terrible strategy. It's not that hard to stand out. So, first pick up the phone. People say the things, use the words, find stuff in common and get people into a, a call like this when you can eyeball.

NM : Absolutely. Thank you for sharing.

AD : Julia, you know, so much in negotiation, we talked about some misnomers or thoughts about it. So much about negotiation seems to be focused outwardly from our organization, right? Getting this supplier to align or this customer to align or whatever negotiation as just a good or critical leadership skill.

How do you encourage leaders to look inward, to managing their teams, aligning internal stakeholders, just dealing with the day to day leadership challenges that come, come up. How do you, how do you get them to think about negotiation as this skill that I can use within my organization?

Using Negotiation In Leadership [17:26]

JE : Well, simply if, if the leader wants to persuade or influence, they need negotiation skills, no different to anyone who is actually like you or me in negotiating all the time. So these skills help them persuade and influence. It helps them have performance discussions. It helps 'em to recruit the right people, to terminate the right people, to increase productivity, to get accountability and telling someone much the same.

As you know, going back to that example with Nolan of the, you know, where's your oil and gas experience. Julie, if I jump down straight and say, well, I don't need it. Here's why I'm gonna get him offside. Cuz what? I'm a hop, skip to jump away from conflict. Cuz effectively I've said to him, what I'm saying is you are wrong. You don't understand me. You are wrong. No one must be told they're wrong. Someone we're debating with someone. And this is why I talked before about we need genuine curiosity.

So, if you're a leader and you wanna have a performance discussion with someone or you wanna get a, an increased budget for something, you gotta come from a place of genuine curiosity trying to serve the other person, which is back to that trust equation, self orientation, not coming with your handout for an increased budget. So there is so much negotiation required in leadership.

AD : Do clients naturally see that? Or do you have to encourage them to see that?

JE : No one sees it. [laughs] again, people think it's this magic thing where, oh, I'm only negotiating. If I'm haggling on the price for a flat screen TV.

AD :

JE : It's just, but again, you know, the three of us, we are like masters of the craft here. We see it everywhere. And I do, I genuinely see it everywhere. I see negotiation all the time. I think, I think in open questions. What's the question I can ask? What's the question I can ask? It's the genuine curiosity, you know, when I led big teams, I wished I had that skill back then I didn't understand it. I was in a different place of learning back then,

AD : Right

JE : Yeah.

NM : Perfect. Cause I think that segues to this next question. If you don't mind sharing, what is one of the biggest negotiations failures that you've had and kind of what lessons did you learn from it? So it may have happened during that time before you were well versed in negotiations.

Julia Shares His Biggest Failure As A Negotiator [19:37]

 

JE : What's interesting about this question Nolan, is that the story that I'll share with you, you could easily go that has nothing to do with negotiating. Hmm. So one of the companies I worked with, um, so I started to get promoted pretty early in my career into management roles.

But interestingly, my team, at a couple of different points, didn't like me. I was very task oriented and not at all. I had zero people orientation. And when I say zero, I probably mean minus zero. I was heavily focused on the task. I had the mindset of, well they've hired me to do a job.

So, I'll just do the job or do the things. I didn't give anything of myself personally. I shared nothing of myself and my team didn't like me, not surprisingly, right? Like I wasn't connecting with them. I had nothing in common, I made no effort to find things in common.

So, anyway I started to work with a coach who helped me see a light and I it's after a certain amount of sessions with this coach thought, well, I, I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time of why this is important and now I can, I can start to persuade and influence better. So, I held a meeting with my team and I still remember exactly where I was.

It was at three o'clock in the afternoon. Uh, there were five of them there, a small team. And I knew that they didn't like me. So I said to them, I'm here today because I wanna talk to you about something that I'm gonna try differently. And as I'm thinking, I'm thinking don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.

JE : Also, a terrible strategy. Cuz what happens when you tell yourself that 10 times? Yeah. Right. Here's are coming out. Like [laughs] I'm crying. Right. But I wasn't crying cuz I was sad. I was crying cuz I genuinely cared and I was being vulnerable and I felt exposed and I said, I'm gonna try harder. I know you don't like me. And to some degree I don't like me either. I started to work with a coach. I'm starting to understand the importance of sharing things about myself. I never thought that was important.

But I feel like I'm starting to see a light. I'm gonna start to try some stuff with you guys, but I'm gonna need your help. I'm not gonna always get it. Right. I'm gonna tank on some stuff. Please tell me that I tanked tell me when I'm tanking, but can you also, if I try something on and you go, that was weird, but it kind of worked.

JE : Tell me it was weird, but kind of worked. [laughs] like just, just talk to me. But I'm, I'm gonna try and make a real difference here to do better. And so anyway, I finished the conversation and I went out to my car and one of my team, the toughest one in my team, actually chased me out the door and she called out to me. I turned around and she ran in and hugged me.

And she said to me, that is all he needed to do. Back then. That was not a lesson at all in negotiating. That was just leadership. Maybe 1 0 1 or maybe I don't know, 2 0 1, but that wasn't negotiating. But now I look back and go, well it's just persuading and influencing, right? I was doing a terrible job.

So, giving it myself, being vulnerable, it's necessary because this is that ego thing I talked about, you know, when we started talking and so ego kills negotiations, ego kills your ability to persuade and influence.

AD : I love the authenticity that you demonstrate. You used the word vulnerability, which was what I was thinking too. As you were sharing your story, authenticity just seems to be a critical skill for a negotiator. And, and maybe that's what gets in our way sometimes, is that we think we have to be something else versus just being us.

JE : Uh, Aram, I was caught up for so long in who these here want me to be. They obviously don't wanna be me to be me and they try to be someone else. It was so hard. It was exhausting working in some senior roles. Because as you know, you know, when you, when you work for another corporation, welcome or not, you get feedback. So, I spent a lot of my time confused

Becoming A Ninja Negotiator By Practicing Negotiations In Personal Life [23:50]

AD : As a ninja negotiator. I mean, as someone who you know is referred to as the Ne-negotiator, I'm gonna guess you always get this right in your personal and home life too. I mean, you illustrated a beautiful example of coaching your son through a conversation. So you probably get this right. All the time in your personal life too. Is that true?

JE : Yes. I'm completely flawless at all times and I'm very happy for your listeners to think that way. No, as I said, like the, the most common language in my house with my kids is whining and complaining. I'm shouting, shouting all the time, because sometimes I couldn't be bothered.

So, Fraser and Matisse, my children tell me some more, like sometimes I just wanna shout at them, put your shoes on or we are going to be goddamn late!

I know if I would use some negotiation skills, we'd get there a lot better, but you know, feels good to shout sometimes. And I don't then you got six kids. You must be shouting at everyone, right?

AD : Right.

JE : So yes I do. But interestingly, something that has helped me lately and I've had some really big parenting lows. So, at one point my husband was working away 26 weeks a year. I had two kids under three, we got no family here. I could barely put a mill on the table without someone screaming and or me screaming.

Life was tough and there were so many parenting lows. But interestingly, even now when, and my kids, if they, if they're literally their eyes are open, they're fighting. But when I'm out with them in public and this is happening as ridiculous as it sounds. And I shared this with someone only just the other day, but I said to myself, Julia, pretend your clients are watching and give a masterclass.

AD : That's beautiful.

JE : And that really helps me because what I really wanna do is shout at my kids to God and get the car so, or stop doing the things, right. Yeah. I do wanna also say that I obviously love my kids an awful lot.

AD : We know

JE : It's hard though. But this is why, you know, and with this client telling me your stuff takes a long time Julia. Yep. This takes time and effort and dedication. Like if you wanna be great, if you wanna win Wimbledon, you can't just smack a ball around a couple of times a week. You gotta play every day and get up at four o'clock and eat well and go to the gym all the time.

And you have to serve a hundred thousand times, sometimes without even a racket or ball in your hand, you just have to practice the movement. You don't get to touch the racket. Training is boring and this is why only some people make it to the top at the elite level of any activity in the world, sporting or professional or otherwise. It takes proper dedication to get this stuff right.

And that's why I say I reckon I'm a seven out of 10. I probably spent a lot between I've cut back, but I probably reckon I'm spending, I was doing probably four to six hours a week. I'm probably gonna do about three to four hours a week at the moment where I practice these skills every week properly in training with professionals teaching me every week because I go the better I am also, it feeds my thirst for knowledge. So it's satisfying to me, but I'm in some groups and I, and I'm humbled by how little I know about this stuff.

AD : Hmm. That puts me in a two and a half or three Julia.

NM : So I'm not even on the board. So,

JE : Not even?

NM : No, I think that this has been an awesome podcast. And as we start to wrap up here, is there anything that Aaron and I did not ask you that you'd like to, to basically just give to our listeners of, of what they can do to be more successful?

Julia Shares Some Tips On How To Be More Successful In Negotiations [27:42]

JE : I genuinely believe you can negotiate. You can persuade and influence anybody with these skills. So you use 'em for good, not for evil. These are life skills. These are not skills that we use. And we're haggling for price on something. Is it every day and every way. I hope some of the listeners want to dedicate themselves to the cause, practice the things, and do all the things. But yeah, I think you guys have a cracking podcast. I love the guests that you've had here. I love the work that you do. It's necessary work. This shapes the future. So thank you for what you do.

NM : Thank you, Julia, for joining us today. Yeah. And before I turn it over to a, this is a podcast that is all about elevating your influence through purposeful negotiations. So with that a, are there any key takeaways for our listeners today?

Key Takeaways From The Podcast [28:34]

AD : Yeah. And I'll start by just saying thank you, Julia. Brilliant. As we expected, you would be. And so insightful. So thanks and thanks for making us now a kind of a global podcast by getting us down under really appreciate that. I'll just say, you know, Julia said it numerous times, this isn't, it's not magic.

These are learned skills and it takes discipline, dedication and some time and a real commitment, a willingness to, to, to develop these things. And so just encourage everyone to, as you listen to this, take yourselves on that. Self-orientation is part of the trust matrix, take yourself on and look at ways that you can, you can get better in influence and persuasion opportunities that are gonna show up every day. And as Julia said, thousands of times each day.

NM : Absolutely. Well, that is it for us on today's podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you could please rate, review and subscribe to the negotiate X podcast, we greatly appreciate it. It's gonna help get this podcast in front of other leaders and help them be more effective negotiators.

So, that is from us. Appreciate it. We'll see you in the next episode.